LILA ~ Learning Innovations Laboratory at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Looking for content and documents from our Gatherings? Login

  1. Marga Biller

    Genesis of GPS as Flexpertise

    by
    2
    "An environment that encouraged people to think broadly and generally about task problems and one in which inquisitive kids felt free to follow their curiosity." Equally important, it was an environment wherein kids with an initial success could turn to colleagues who were broadly expert in relevant tasks, because of the genius of the Laboratory Directorship, colleagues who were also knowledgable about hardware, weapons and weapons needs. Finally we agree that it probably couldn't have happened without Frank McClure and Dick Kershner. They were unique."
  2. Michele Rigolizzo

    Transparency & Unlearning with Ethan Bernstein

    by
    Transparency – there is a gospel of transparency in leadership in organizations. The concept went from ‘being able to see’ to a broader definition of openness and freedom of information. But there was an unanswered question in this assumption of transparency as good - does transparency increase productivity? Ethan conducted a field experiment in a factory in China that was, at the time, following all best practices.
  3. Marga Biller

    Innovation Adoption as Unlearning with Janet Pogue

    by
    Key Questions/Themes: What behaviors currently inhibit innovations that need to be ‘unlearned’ and what new behaviors need to be supported or encouraged? How can ‘triggers’ and/or the physical environment be leveraged to reinforce behavioral change? How can we engage early adopters in making the innovation their own? And then, foster to go viral? Summary of Session Content Janet Pogue is a Principal in Gensler’s Washington D.C. office. She co-leads the firm’s Workplace Practice and is a frequent writer and speaker on the critical issues affecting the design of high performing work environments. In this session, she shared on her views...
  4. Thriving at Work

    by
    Christine Porath from Georgetown shared her thinking and research on what does it mean to thrive at work in order to create sustainable performance?  She shared that her personal journey in her first job was working in a toxic culture and what she learned that those early experiences strongly shape the way we learn and develop in the workplace — do we stay and thrive? stay and whither? Leave for greener pastures? Her research shows that thriving depends on learning, engagement, and performance.  Through her work with Gretchen Spreitzer, they have defined thriving a joint experience of vitality and learning which...
  5. Marga Biller

    Strategic Leadership & Organizational Learning: Dr Dusya Vera

    by
    Dusya Vera, from the University of Houston, shared her research on what leaders do to support organizational learning.  She began by offering an overview of an org learning framework that she and Mary Crossan developed to represent the various levels of “stocks” and “flows” that support learning.  For example, there are individual stocks of competence, capability, and motivations.  There are group learning stocks such as the group dynamics that support the development of shared understanding.  And there are organizational stocks such as the alignment between nonhuman storehouses of learning and systems that support learning as a competitive advantage.  In addition...
  6. Leadership Character & Organizational Learning: Dr. Dusya Vera

    by
    Dusya began sharing some new research that is trying to answer three questions: which barriers to learning reside in leaders? They drew on two models of leadership: transcendent leadership model (which is the intersection of self, other, and organization leadership). This is more of an umbrella label for other theories of leadership that have been established. Like other work she does, this is a multilevel approach and it highlights the leadership of the self.
  7. Marga Biller

    Leaderful Practice by Joe Raelin

    by
    Joe Raelin, from Northeastern, shared his thinking about the need for shifting our thinking away from leadership as what a single person does to leaderful practice.  The roots of the word don’t help us, he reminds us: it comes from an anglo saxon word that means to step in front of.   Years ago he was struck by how popular the notion of leaderless groups, which seemed odd.  Because there was lots of leadership in these groups.  So he became interested in the notion of leaderful groups. What he notes is an interesting shift from conventional to leaderful leadership.  A shift...
  8. Marga Biller

    April 2014: Changing Systems Animation

    by
    This year at LILA, we explore the theme of unlearning, this time, adopting a systems perspective. Unlearning is what we face when we are trying to learn something new, but prior learning gets in the way. LILA’s own David Perkins notes that even though we can’t really UNlearn, it is helpful to have a name for this type of learning as it presents unique challenges. While trying harder often succeeds in moving outdated skills to the fringes of our repertoire, some things resist even our most earnest attempts at sidelining. In these stuck cases, Dave suggests that, instead of trying harder, we change the game. Before imagining how we might design game-changers for our organizations, we look at several tools, models, and theories to test if and how they might help us understand the nature of system stuckness.
  9. Katie Heikkinen

    Wendy Wood Provocation: Habits in Everyday Life and in the Workplace

    by
    Day 1: Habits in Everyday Life Dr. Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, presented the event’s first provocation by sharing her research on habits.  In the talk, she explained what habits are, how they can become misaligned with our intentions, how they are often the default response (winning out over other behaviors), and how they often are useful. She opened by sharing her research on the habit of eating popcorn at the movies. We usually think we’re eating because we want to, like to, or somehow it meets our needs. But this...

Harvard Graduate School of Education