For years, our field has agreed that most learning happens in the flow of work. What we have lacked is a practical way to act on it.
This playbook started as a workshop with L&D leaders in our community. Linnéa Sjögren took the challenges they raised and turned them into a method you can use immediately.
Questions like the ones addressed in this workshop are often easier to work through together. If something here sounds like a problem you are living with right now, bring it to the community.
Statement: L&D should use its learning expertise to support learning in the flow of work.
That may sound obvious. For a long time, it has been almost undisputed in our field that most workplace learning happens outside formal training. People learn while working, solving problems, asking colleagues, searching for information, using AI tools, making mistakes, getting feedback and figuring out what works in their context.
And what people are learning here might not be what the organisation wants them to learn. But it could be, if a learning lens were applied to identify what is already happening and what is needed.
But this is what is so frustrating: we have said for years that learning happens in the flow of work, and there are plenty of theories of what it should look like. And yet there is little support for getting from A to B without first getting your organisation on board. So I created a starting point.
That is what this workshop and playbook is about: one practical starting point we can all set out from, without having to ask for permission or change the organisational structure.
It does not take us all the way to B. Before that we will need to address other things such as culture, leadership, feedback, psychological safety, systems, incentives, workload and organisational design.
What it does do is offer us a way to sneak out of the narrow box we often find ourselves confined to.
Here's the plan: we find a way to show the organisation that the learning lens is needed outside formal training, and that we can provide value far beyond courses. After that we can hopefully create a shared understanding of everyday learning and the organisation's role in it.