Chapter 2
Navigate Learning Environments

Most of the teams we work with in our liftoffs have knowledge workers as team members, and you may find that most of yours will, too. Knowledge workers understand systems. They solve nonroutine problems in creative ways. They have jobs like software programming and testing, user experience investigating, and designing and building new civic and virtual infrastructure, to name a few. They may hold medical, legal, executive, or academic positions. Knowledge workers must continually learn and access what they’ve learned, applying their learning in novel situations.

In this chapter, you’ll discover new mental models for facilitating and supporting knowledge workers and knowledge-work teams. You’ll explore how liftoffs and teams exhibit characteristics of complex adaptive systems, and why you’ll benefit from this perspective. We also introduce a new set of rules for learning you can apply in liftoffs and elsewhere as individuals and as a group.