Learning has a crucial role to play in today’s rapidly changing business environment: helping employees engage with and own strategic changes happening within our organizations. This Field Manual looks at why this strategic shift in L&D is so crucial. It explores how learning can help solve business problems and affect culture. And it looks at the attributes of a modern, high-performance learning organization.

We learn every day, whether we mean to or not. When we try new things—a new idea for a client proposal, a new way to organize email, or even a new restaurant—we learn from those experiences. This Field Manual explores how to transform everyday experiences into learning opportunities that can that affect individuals, teams, and even entire organizations.

Learning from our own experience is powerful, but sometimes we need to learn from someone else’s experience, someone who is an expert at their craft. This Field Manual explores the ways we learn from one another, whether it’s in a formal relationship with a coach or mentor, or informally, by sharing knowledge among peers and colleagues.

“Design thinking” has taken the business world by storm, influencing sectors far beyond traditional design. As learning professionals, design thinking offers insights into how we can create learning experiences that are tailored to the needs of our “end users:” learners. This Field Manual explores the connection between design thinking and learning design.

To stay current and competitive in today’s business environment, learning can’t happen once or twice a year. This Field Manual explores how we can make learning continuous and how technologies aid us in this pursuit—now and in the future.