If you’re an L&D practitioner, your days are likely varied. Some days you’re designing practice. Other days you’re facilitating leaders through change. You might be running a global onboarding program, managing learning technology, or building a learning roadmap. You might do all of these, or focus on one area deeply.
That’s why this list is organized by role. Each book is a voice in an ongoing conversation about how people learn, how behavior changes, and how organizations build capability. When you read, you’re joining that conversation. Whether you extend it in practice is up to you.
We’ve included books we’ve found useful, challenging, and occasionally frustrating. Some industry titles lean hard on case studies and take their time getting to the point. In a few places, we don’t fully agree with the authors. That’s part of the value. These are perspectives to test and adapt to the reality of your organization.
🚩 A quick note on context: These recommendations are English-language and often center western ways of working (how organizations communicate, lead, and learn). That’s the reality of many of the environments we build for, but it’s not universal. Use this list as a starting point, then create a version that reflects the practices that work in your organization.
Learning experience design
If you design learning experiences, these books help you build learning that sticks and transfers to real work.
The First 90 Days
— Michael D. Watkins (2013)
- Best for: onboarding owners, leadership development, internal mobility teams, enablement leads building transition programs
- Use it when: new leaders or internal movers ramp slowly, expectations are unclear, and early momentum gets lost
- Key ideas:
- Diagnose the situation: transitions differ; your approach should change by context.
- Secure early wins: momentum matters, and early credibility compounds.
- Build alignment fast: clarify stakeholders, expectations, and success measures early.
- Try this at work: Build a “First 30 Days” track for one high-impact role: a short sequence of stakeholder conversations, a definition of success, and a first-win plan. Pair it with a manager check-in script and a lightweight progress signal at day 14 and day 30.
- Worth debating: It’s written for individual transitions, so L&D teams need to translate the advice into program scaffolding that works across levels, cultures, and different manager styles.
Talk to the Elephant
— Julie Dirksen (2024)
- Best for: L&D practitioners designing learning for behavior change, not just understanding
- Use it when: the request sounds like “we need training,” but the real gap is motivation, environment, habits, or workflow friction
- Key ideas:
- Start with the system: training is rarely the only lever that matters.
- Map the change path: support looks different at different stages of change.
- Design for context: capability, opportunity, and motivation all shape behavior.
- Try this at work: Before building, do a quick behavior-change diagnostic: is the gap capability, opportunity, or motivation? Then ship one non-training lever alongside the learning—like a job aid embedded in the workflow, a manager prompt for 1:1s, or a simple checklist at the moment of action.
- Worth debating: It offers a lot of models; the risk is sampling everything and operationalizing nothing—pick one framework and use it consistently across projects before you add more.
Tiny Experiments
— Anne-Laure Le Cunff (2024)
- Best for: instructional designers, learning experience designers, and L&D teams iterating onboarding, enablement, or practice-based learning
- Use it when: you’re stuck debating the “perfect” design, or you need a way to test what works without a long build cycle
- Key ideas:
- Run small tests: reduce risk by learning in short cycles instead of big launches.
- Focus on signals: define what you’ll look for before you ship (confidence, completion, behavior, performance).
- Make iteration normal: treat learning design as an evolving product, not a one-and-done deliverable.
- Try this at work: Take one lesson or module and create two versions that differ in one meaningful way (scenario-first vs concept-first, practice frequency, manager involvement). Pilot with two small cohorts for two weeks and compare one behavior signal (e.g., task accuracy, time-to-complete, quality checks, manager observation).
- Worth debating: Experimentation can drift into “random testing” without a clear performance goal—tiny experiments work best when you define what success looks like and keep variables tight.
Program architecture
If you own onboarding, academies, or role readiness, these books help you design the full journey and make it land at scale.
The First 90 Days
— Michael D. Watkins (2013)
- Best for: onboarding owners, leadership development, internal mobility teams, enablement leads building transition programs
- Use it when: new leaders or internal movers ramp slowly, expectations are unclear, and early momentum gets lost
- Key ideas:
- Diagnose the situation: transitions differ; your approach should change by context.
- Secure early wins: momentum matters, and early credibility compounds.
- Build alignment fast: clarify stakeholders, expectations, and success measures early.
- Try this at work: Build a “First 30 Days” track for one high-impact role: a short sequence of stakeholder conversations, a definition of success, and a first-win plan. Pair it with a manager check-in script and a lightweight progress signal at day 14 and day 30.
- Worth debating: It’s written for individual transitions, so L&D teams need to translate the advice into program scaffolding that works across levels, cultures, and different manager styles.
The Culture Map
— Erin Meyer (2014)
- Best for: global program owners, enablement teams, leadership development, HRBPs supporting multi-region rollouts
- Use it when: a program “works at HQ” but adoption drops across regions, or feedback suggests the tone and expectations don’t land the same way everywhere
- Key ideas:
- Cultural dimensions shape learning: communication style, feedback norms, hierarchy, and decision-making affect participation and transfer.
- Same content, different interpretation: what feels “clear” or “direct” in one culture can feel rude or vague in another.
- Design for friction points: anticipate where collaboration breaks down and build explicit norms.
- Try this at work: Before a global rollout, identify 2–3 places your program depends on norms (speaking up, challenging ideas, manager involvement, self-directed learning). Adjust prompts, examples, and manager guidance for each region, and pilot in one market before scaling.
- Worth debating: Cultural frameworks can slide into oversimplification; use the dimensions as hypotheses to test locally, not labels for individuals.
Organizational development
If you shape learning culture or org change, these books help you design the environments, rituals, and spaces where growth becomes the norm.
An Everyone Culture
— Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey (2016)
- Best for: org development, learning culture leads, HR and talent leaders, L&D teams partnering on transformation
- Use it when: learning feels separate from work, feedback is inconsistent, and growth depends too much on individual managers
- Key ideas:
- Development is the work: growth is built into daily routines, not added as extra.
- Systems beat slogans: culture changes through practices, transparency, and shared standards.
- Practice at org scale: make feedback and reflection visible and repeatable.
- Try this at work: Pilot a “weekly development rhythm” with one team: one structured reflection prompt, one peer feedback moment, and one manager coaching prompt. Run it for 6 weeks, then decide what to standardize and what to drop.
- Worth debating: DDO concepts can be heavy to implement; the practical path is to start with one visible practice and build credibility before attempting a full cultural operating model shift.
The Art of Gathering
— Priya Parker (2018)
- Best for: org development, leadership development, L&D program owners, HRBPs, anyone designing workshops, cohorts, or rituals that reinforce culture
- Use it when: you bring people together a lot, but those moments don’t reliably create clarity, commitments, or momentum back in the work
- Key ideas:
- Purpose drives design: be explicit about why you’re gathering and what should change afterward.
- The guest list is a lever: who’s in the room shapes what’s possible.
- Design for participation and closure: create contribution, then end with commitments and follow-up.
- Try this at work: Turn one recurring meeting or learning touchpoint into a “learning ritual”: write a one-sentence purpose, design one structured participation moment, and end with explicit commitments (who does what by when). Add a short follow-up 7 days later to reinforce decisions and learning.
- Worth debating: Some examples skew toward special events; the payoff comes from translating the principles into repeatable formats for onboarding cohorts, manager sessions, and transformation workshops.
The Right Kind of Wrong
— Amy C. Edmondson (2023)
- Best for: org development, learning culture leaders, transformation teams, and L&D leaders building psychological safety and continuous improvement
- Use it when: teams avoid surfacing risks, “failure” is punished or hidden, and learning happens too late (after problems escalate)
- Key ideas:
- Different failures need different responses: preventable, complex, and intelligent failures aren’t the same.
- Make learning fast: design systems that surface weak signals early and turn them into improvement.
- Psychological safety is operational: it’s shaped by routines, leadership behaviors, and how work is reviewed.
- Try this at work: Add a “learning review” to one recurring team ritual: What did we expect? What happened? What surprised us? What will we change next time? Capture 2–3 “intelligent failures” and turn them into a shared playbook or short internal story others can learn from.
- Worth debating: “Celebrate failure” can backfire—what matters is creating safety for smart risk-taking while still holding clear standards for preventable mistakes.
Strategy and operations
If you lead L&D strategy or learning operations, this section helps you prioritize in the noise, build governance that scales, and show impact in business terms.
- Best for: L&D leaders and senior practitioners who need to manage up, influence stakeholders, and protect focus
- Use it when: your roadmap gets hijacked by urgent requests, priorities change weekly, and leaders still measure L&D by volume shipped
- Key ideas:
- Diagnose before you build: respond to requests with questions that surface the performance goal and constraints.
- Make tradeoffs explicit: a “yes” always costs something; protect time for what moves performance.
- Shift the conversation to outcomes: define success in business terms, not activity.
- Try this at work: Create a one-page “intake + tradeoffs” template for new requests: business goal, audience, risk of not acting, required support (SME/manager), and what will be deprioritized if you say yes. Review it monthly with your primary sponsor to reset focus.
- Worth debating: “Stop order taking” is directionally right, but the real unlock is governance—decision rights, sponsorship, and an agreed way to prioritize when everything feels urgent.
Hidden Value
— Dr. Keith Keating (2025)
- Best for: learning operations, learning technology leaders, and L&D leaders responsible for measurement, governance, and executive reporting
- Use it when: you can ship learning, but you can’t consistently show what changed—or you’re stuck reporting activity instead of impact
- Key ideas:
- Value needs a shared definition: agree on what “better” means with the business before you build.
- Measure what drives decisions: use indicators that improve prioritization and program design, not just reporting.
- Make impact visible: treat measurement and storytelling as part of the operating system, not a one-off deck.
- Try this at work: For one priority program, write an impact chain before you build: business outcome → behavior change → leading indicators → learning supports. Pick 1–2 leading indicators you can measure within 30–60 days and review them with a business sponsor every two weeks.
- Worth debating: Not every outcome is cleanly measurable, and L&D can’t own performance alone—measurement works best when it’s paired with operational levers like workflow design, tooling, incentives, and manager support.
No one is assigning homework, but if we were, we’d recommend picking one book that matches your current role. Then choose one “Try this at work” and run it as a two-week pilot. Even better, invite your colleagues to read along.
That said, the smartest perspectives in L&D aren’t always in books. A lot of the best advice shows up in the field, through practitioners sharing what they’ve tried, what worked, and what didn’t. You’ll hear it in webinars and conferences, in podcasts, and inside your organization.
If you’re reading to join a conversation, it helps to have people to talk to. We recommend finding a network of practitioners you can learn with and learn from (I recommend Offbeat).
🧠 Bonus books: If you’re interested in neuroscience and AI
These titles go deeper on how intelligence works (in brains and machines) and what that means for learning, decision-making, and leadership.
