Social learning lessons from Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management

•As “co-produced” research becomes more popular, there is a need to evaluate the processes and outcomes of successful cases.•The Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management project is a case of a ranch-scale, 10-year grazing experiment ongoing in Colorado. We used social science to evaluate group learning.•We describe the complex, challenging aspects of the collaborative process, and how those challenges helped inspire learning as the team grappled with new problems and knowledge.•Respect, trust, and shared understanding are essential to success.•Social science can help collaborative research teams better design and implement complex co-production methods to engage stakeholders.