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

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  1. Marga Biller

    Agency for Unimagined Events

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    Comment November 22, 2021
    Agency and structure matter for how you act but also for what future events you imagine or can’t imagine.  Lets look at reflective agency - when you consider scenarios that could happen, you do so based on your current position and the information available to you at the time which lead you to consider different alternatives and contingency plans.  Pre-reflective agency driven by past experiences, will lead you to take for granted that some aspects of reality will be as they have been in the past – leaving you in the dark about the future.  
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  3. Marga Biller

    by
    Comment April 6, 2021
    What is the impact of multiple interfering change initiatives on employees? During the March LILA Harvard meeting, Rouven Kanitz shared the findings from a 4 year longitudinal qualitative study which revealed key factors that contributed to the harmful outcomes. The values and norms signaled by different initiatives led to negative individual emotional states such as those related to uncertainty (confusion and worry), moral (indignation and shock), and detachment (annoyance and apathy). Individual emotions were later translated into the social network and became collective emotion where a significant number of people were sharing, thinking, and feeling negative emotions. Over time, these negative emotions affected people who then became disengaged. This affected the performance of the change initiatives through delays, requirement of more resources, and departure of senior management.
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  4. Marga Biller

    Leadership in Times of Diversity: Astrid Homan

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    Comment January 4, 2021
    What can leaders do to effectively manage diverse teams? If a diverse team is functioning well, what can a leader do to encourage the teams’ continued progress? Or conversely, if a diverse team is embroiled in conflict, how can a leader intervene in order to turn things around? Essentially, which competencies do leaders need in order to adapt and appropriately respond to their teams’ needs?
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  5. Marga Biller

    Curiosity Where are You? Spencer Harrison

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    Comment January 4, 2021
    Curiosity is a great source of new ideas, a great source of finding these patterns – and yet the majority of people don’t feel like they have permission to be curious at work. Spencer and his colleagues spent six months creating a new set of measures to assess curiosity. During this process, he and his colleagues identified that there are different types of curiosity. There is productive curiosity – where someone is actively investigating problems that are associated with the work that they’re doing. And unproductive curiosity, where someone is taking a break at work to look at something else – usually sports or social media related and doesn’t have anything to do with work. These two types have different consequences.
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  6. Marga Biller

    LILA Theme 2020-2021: System Leadership

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    December 10, 2020
    Each year, LILA focuses collective discussion and exploration around a contemporary theme that optimally encompasses members’ practical interests and illuminates challenges in the larger field of human learning and innovation. A fruitful theme is typically identified by criteria such as its resonance with members’ concerns, its readiness to be explored through multiple, interdisciplinary lenses, and its ability to frame and advance the experimental practices of LILA members. Based on member interviews, the discussions during past gatherings, availability of academic research on the topic, and the current social context, the theme for 2020-2021 is System Leadership – Navigating Complexity at Scale.
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  7. Marga Biller

    Navigating Complexity at Scale with Mary Uhl Bien

    by
    November 13, 2020
    System leadership creates the container that allows solutions to emerge over time. Complexity Leadership is leadership in and of emergence. Emergence is what allows individuals and organizations to adapt and survive. The pressure of survival is the strongest complexity pressure that promotes the most adaptation. Three different types of leadership is required - entrepreneurial leadership, enabling leadership, and operational leadership.
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  9. Marga Biller

    LILA @20 in 2020 Summit: Ecologies of Learning Perspectives and Provocations

    by
    May 5, 2020
    This year, the Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA) community has been exploring the theme of Ecologies of Learning which in hindsight seems to be particularly relevant theme given the crisis we all face. Learning Ecologies offers a perspective on how organizations can develop new capabilities, organize work, and manage careers in order to take advantage of the new world order. The idea of a learning ecology recognizes that learning is unfolding all the time in complex ways, through peer relationships, networks, informal coaching, the way people interact in person and virtually, etc. which can be learning-synergistic or not.  What people are learning...
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  10. Marga Biller

    April 2020 LILA Member Call Beth Schinoff – Workplace Relationships in a Virtual World

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    Comment April 30, 2020
    The workplace is often the seedbed for meaningful connections - one of the “three main spaces” in our lives - home, work, church. Church has receded over time, replaced by technology and other places of congregation (e.g., coffee shop). Workplace has become an increasingly important source of belonging. At the same time, we are facing a loneliness epidemic. We have an aging workforce, and remote work seems to play a huge role in loneliness epidemic, even among millennials. Hence, there are societal reasons to foster connection at work. From an organizational perspective, when a friendship is overlaid on coworking relationship, this is referred to as “multiplex relationship.” The major benefits of these relationships for organizations are that they generally enhance job performance and organizational commitment.
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Harvard Graduate School of Education