Where the Action Is

Recommended Reading & Resources

This page provides links to the sources referenced in our latest book, Where the Action Is. The sources on this page are organized by type; you can also view the book sources by chapter instead.

Articles

"'Infomania' worse than marijuana", BBC News (2005).
"10 Proactive Questions Every Board Member Should Be Asking," Andrew White, Tazim Essani, and Eric Wilkinson (2021)
"11 Myths About Decision Making", Cheryl Strauss Einhorn (2021)
25 Questions to Ask in One-on-One Meetings by Elise Keith for Inc.
A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews, Angus Fletcher, Preston B. Cline, and Matthew Hoffman (2023)
"A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making", David J. Snowden, Mary E. Boone (2007).
"Billionaire Ray Dalio: 12 steps you can follow to run better meetings", Zameena Mejia (2017).
"Brain Interrupted", Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson (2010).
"Can You Keep Your Meeting to Five Minutes?", Sue Shellenbarger (2017).
Cisco Studied More Than 15,000 Teams and Found One Simple Practice Consistently Improves Engagement by Elise Keith for Inc.
"Cold Offices Linked to Lower Productivity", APS: Association for Psychological Science (2015).
"Effective safety committees", Thomas J. Bukowski (2014).
"Essential Guide to Staff Training", Maggie Bayless (2014).
"Every Cook Can Govern: A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece Its Meaning for Today, Correspondence, Vol. 2, No. 12.", C.L. James (1956).
"Four stages of competence", Wikipedia.
"How a Single Mom Created a Plastic Food-Storage Empire", Jen Doll (2017).
"Learning from Success and Failure", Bob Sutton (2007).
"Learning in the Thick of It", Marilyn Darling, Charles Parry, Joseph Moore (2005).
"Making great decisions," Chip Heath, Olivier Sibony (2013).
"Metcalfe's law", Multiple (circa 1980).
"New Research: Diversity + Inclusion = Better Decision Making At Work", Eric Larson (2017).
"Organic. Big results from small seeds.", Organic Trade Association.
"Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything: Dwight D. Eisenhower? Winston Churchill? Richard M. Nixon? Anonymous?", Garson O’Toole (2017).
Reid Hoffman's Rituals of Great Board Meetings: The 8 Strategic Tools Used by Top Companies on Coda
"Research: For Better Brainstorming, Tell an Embarrassing Story", Leigh Thompson (2017).
"Stewart Butterfield of Slack: Is Empathy on Your Résumé?", Adam Bryant (2015).
"The Decision-Driven Organization", Marcia W. Blenko, Michael Mankins,Paul Rogers (2010).
"The Impact of Stress", Steve Bressert, Ph.D. (2016).
"The Protégé Effect: Why teaching someone else is the best way to learn", Annie Murphy Paul (2012).
"The robots-vs.-robots trading that has hijacked the stock market", Steven Pearlstein (2018).
"The Science and Fiction of Meetings", Steven G. Rogelberg, Cliff Scott and John Kello (2007).
"Up to 27 Seconds of Inattention After Talking to Your Car or Smartphone", David Strayer, Joel Cooper, Lee Siegel (2015).
When Surprise Is a Good Negotiation Tactic by Roi Ben-Yehuda and Tania Luna for Harvard Business Review

Blog Posts

"55 Million: A Fresh Look at the Number, Effectiveness, and Cost of Meetings in the U.S.", Elise Keith (2015).
"7 ways to prepare for an effective one-on-one meeting with your manager", (2018) Claire Lew
"7 Ways to Write Better Action Items", Charlie Gilkey (2012).
"A Good Place to Work", Ben Horowitz (2012).
"Battle Axes to Boardrooms: A Discussion with Wilbert Van Vree". Elise Keith (2018).
"Etsy’s Debriefing Facilitation Guide for Blameless Postmortems", John Allspaw (2016).
"How SoundCloud Keeps Communication Flowing Across 4 Offices in 4 Time Zones", First Round Review.
"Intel Knows Meetings". Maxine Attong (2011).
"Is this really an "ancient Chinese proverb"?". Metafilter (2013).
"It’s the leading edge of sustainability, but we’ve not cracked it", Oliver Bach (2015).
"Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule", Paul Graham (2009).
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy", Sean Newman Maroni (2015).
"No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers – Business Plans versus Business Models", Steve Blank (2010).
"One-on-One", Ben Horowitz (2012).
One-on-ones are my most valuable meetings; here’s how I run them by Mathilde Collin for The Startup
"Predictions for what robots will do to the US workforce, ranked from certain doom to potential utopia", Sarah Kessler (2017).
"Take a moment so that the soul can arrive", Beatrice Briggs.
"The 4 questions you should stop asking during your one-on-one meetings", (2018) Claire Lew
"The five keys to a successful Google team", Julia Rozovsky (2015).
"The Real-Time Agenda Technique", Elise Keith (2018).
"The Secret to a Really Good Interview Is Simply Knowing When to Shut Your Mouth", Richard Moy.
"The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less," Jeff Bonforte.
"Tooling Up: First Impressions—Are Interview Results Preordained?, David G. Jensen (2004).
"Tuesday’s Master Facilitation Tip: Preparing", Michael Wilkinson (2015).
"What A Dog And A Monkey Taught Me About Management At Google", Tomasz Tunguz (2013).
What is the optimal group size for decision-making?. Sheila Margolis (2011).
"You Waste a Lot of Time at Work". Atlassian.

Books

(GTD) Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. David Allen (2002).
A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business. Ari Weinzweig (2016).
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Esther Derby, Diana Larsen (2006).
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Robert Sapolsky (2017).
Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business. Patrick Lencioni (2004).
Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. Chip and Dan Heath (2013).
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Cal Newport (2017).
Democracy in the Making: How Activist Groups Form. Kathleen Blee (2012).
Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels. Donald L. and James D Kirkpatrick (1996).
Facilitating the Project Lifecycle: The Skills & Tools to Accelerate Progress for Project Managers, Facilitators, and Six Sigma Project Teams. Janet A. Means, Tammy Adams (2005).
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2008).
High Output Management. Andy Grove (1983).
How to make meetings work: The new interaction method. Michael Doyle (1976).
Influence: Science and Practice. Robert Cialdini (1984).
Let's Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done. Dick and Emily Axelrod (2014).
Liminal Thinking. Dave Gray (2016).
Meetings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Conversations. Paul Axtell (2015).
Meetings Suck: Turning One of The Most Loathed Elements of Business into One of the Most Valuable. Cameron Herold (2016).
Meetings, Manners, and Civilization: The Development of Modern Meeting Behaviour. Wilbert Van Vree (1999).
Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging and Enjoyable Meetings. Mamie Kanfer Stewart, Tai Tsao (2017).
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool (2011).
People Capability Maturity Model® (P-CMM®) Version 2.0. CMM Institute (2010).
Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. Robert Cialdini (2016).
Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. Amy Cuddy (2015).
Principles. Ray Dalio (2017).
Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (11th Edition). Henry M. Robert III (Original Author), Daniel H. Honemann (Author), Thomas J. Balch (Author). (1915-2011).
Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, 11th Edition, by Henry M. Robert III, Daniel H. Honemann, Thomas J. Balch, et al.
Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights. Gary Klein (2013).
Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders. Jennifer Garvey Berger, Keith Johnston (2016).
Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Broadway Books (2013).
Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less—and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined. Scott Sonenshein (2017).
The Board Book: An Insider's Guide for Directors and Trustees. William G. Bowen (2012).
The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science. Edited by Joseph A. Allen, University of Nebraska, Omaha , Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam , Steven G. Rogelberg, University of North Carolina, Charlotte (2015).
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done. Peter Drucker (1966).
The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making. Sam Kaner (2014).
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book). Don Miguel Ruiz (1997).
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. Ben Horowitz (2014).
The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. Steven Sloman, Philip Ferbach (2017).
The Meeting. Gatherings in Organizations and Communities. Schwartzman, Helen B. (1989).
The Project Meeting Facilitator: Facilitation Skills to Make the Most of Project Meetings. Janet A. Means, Tammy Adams, Michael Spivey (2007).
The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Coaches, and Trainers (3rd edition). Roger Schwarz (2016).
The Surprising Power of Liberating Structure. Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless (2014).
Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques. Michael Michalko (2006).
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business. Gino Wickman (2012).
Zingerman's Guide to Good Leading, Part 2: A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to Being a Better Leader. Ari Weinzweig (2012).

Other

"2017 Gartner Symposium: Gartner Analyst Opening Keynote: Creating Digital Value at Scale", Gartner (2017).
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Daniel Pink (2011).
Ministerial Panel on Child Intervention archive. Government of Alberta (2018).
"United States Constitution Amendment 1", United States Government (1791).
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 20, United Nations General Assembly (1948).

Podcast

Podcast: This is Retrospective Facilitation hosted by Enrico Teotti

Research Papers

"A public sphere in Amazonia? the depersonalized collaborative construction of discourse in Xavante", Laura Graham (1993).
"Developmental sequence in small groups", Bruce Tuckman (1965).
"Dimensions and psychology of peer teaching in medical education", Olle Ten Cate & Steven Durning (2009).
"Employee satisfaction with meetings: A contemporary facet of job satisfaction.", Rogelberg, S. G., Allen, J. A., Shanock, L. , Scott, C. and Shuffler, M. (2010).
"Manager-Led Group Meetings A Context for Promoting Employee Engagement", Allen, J.A., Rogelberg, S.G. (2013).
"Meeting Design Characteristics and Attendee Perceptions of Staff/Team Meeting Quality", Cohen, Melissa A.,Rogelberg, Steven G.,Allen, Joseph A.,Luong, Alexandra (2011).
"Meeting Preparation and Design Characteristics", Odermatt, König, Kleinmann (2015).
"Mindful multitasking: Meditation first can calm stress, aid concentration", Peter Kelley (2012).
"Perceived Meeting Effectiveness: The Role of Design Characteristics", Desmond J. Leach, Steven G. Rogelberg, Peter B. Warr, Jennifer L. Burnfield (2009).
"Reciprocal peer teaching: Students teaching students in the gross anatomy laboratory", Krych, A. J., March, C. N., Bryan, R. E., Peake, B. J., Pawlina, W. and Carmichael, S. W (2005).
SENSEMAKING Framing and Acting in the Unknown Deborah Ancona, MIT-Sloan School of Management
"The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress." Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith, and Ulrich Klocke (2008).
"The effects of facilitator characteristics on meeting preparation, set up and implementation". Niederman, F., & Volkema, R. J. (1999).
"The Influence of Handshakes on First Impression Accuracy", Frank J. Bernieri, Kristen N Petty (2011).

Videos

Building a psychologically safe workplace. Amy Edmondson (2014).
Dr. Daniel Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain. Danie Siegel (2012).
Flow, the secret to happiness. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004).
How to build a company where the best ideas win. Ray Dalio (2017).
Special Districts: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. HBO (2016).
The Blind Men and the Elephant. John G. Saxe (read by Tom O'Bedlam (2010).
The Power of the Mindful Minute at Work. Birju Pandya.

Websites

Agile Manifesto
Awesome Retrospectives, a GitHub repository of resources
Beatrice Briggs, Paul Axtell, and more, Lucid Meetings (2018).
Bridgewater Associates.
CMM: Capability Maturity Model. CMM Institute.
Email Overload: Research and Statistics.
Historical Vignette 038 - An Army Engineer Brought Order to Church Meetings. U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
Information Overload Research Group.
ISO 9001 Quality Management Standards. ISO.
Kata. Lean Enterprise Institute.
KPIs: Key Performance Indicators. KPI.
Kunsido.
Lean
Lean Coffee.
Meetup.
Multitasking: Switching costs. American Psychological Association (2006).
Open Space Technology.
PMI: Project Management Institute. ISO.
Reading List: Better Meetings, Better Business. Elise Keith (2018).
Reichstag Fire Decree, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
SCRUM. Scrum Alliance.
"Tupperware History: Brownie Wise." Tupperware.
Wildland Fire Leadership Council AAR Resources.
Your Logical Fallacy Is. Gabriel Weinberg.
Zingerman's.