Summer Reading List: What we’re reading, watching and listening to this summer!

Summer can be a period of transition and slowing down, as many colleagues take time for personal leave or to take stock after a busy Spring and reorient themselves for the upcoming Fall. During these slower months, the Learning Lab team wants to share a curated reading list of old favorites and new gems around organizational learning and adaptive management for your enjoyment. Do you have a go-to blog or resource from Learning Lab or around the web? We’d love to hear from you, either through conversation on the Learning Lab LinkedIn or through a blog of your own! 

See below what our team is reading, watching, and listening to this summer:

Reading

• The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker - This book, by Priya Parker, sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.
• Double Loop Learning in Organizations - This foundational Harvard Business Review article on double-loop learning in organizations reviews how processing new information—and learning from mistakes—paves the way for long-term success. 
• Theories of Change, the muddy middle, and what to do about assumptions - This blog, by Duncan Green, reflects on a conversation between Oxfam Campaigns and Advocacy Leadership Programme participants on Theories of Change and the need to distinguish between theories of change and theories of action.
• Means and Ends in Collaborative Efforts (oldie but goodie!) - This page, from Interaction Institute for Social Change, presents the R-P-R Triangle, which makes the case that success in collaborative efforts is a multi-dimensional affair, and represents “the spine of collaboration.” Read how these dimensions are intimately linked and dependent upon one another when diverse stakeholders come together to realize a shared vision.

Podcasts

• Hidden Brain: The Obstacles You Do Not See - This podcast from the “Success 2.0” series discusses how introducing new ideas is hard. Many think the best way to win people over is to push harder. Listen to organizational psychologist Loran Nordgren on the more effective approach of focusing on the invisible obstacles to new ideas.
• How to Build Exceptional Relationships (from “Feel Better, Live More”) - Listen to two experts, David Bradford and Carole Robin, on building exceptional relationships and why it is so important for us to have them in our lives. This conversation also includes thoughts on parent-child relationships, friendships that are no longer nourishing, and how we can improve our digital interactions.

Videos

• Trusting Teams (or any of the Infinite Game videos) - This video, from Simon Sinek, reviews how we can create an environment in which our people work at their natural best, and discusses how leaders are not responsible for results, they're responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. 
• Change: How to Make Big Things Happen - This video, from Damon Centola in the 2021 Stretch Conference, discusses his theory about the complex way ideas and behaviors spread, and how to efficiently effect the change you want to see in the world.
• TedTalk on Thinking Creatively - This TEDxAUK video, of Duncan Wardle–a former head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney, discusses the importance of creativity and why it will be the one core human element to compete in a world that is becoming automated faster than we can think.