Captain reported that the Captain's windshield made a loud pop and the outer pane shattered. The flight crew requested immediate descent to reduce stress on the windshield and continued to make a landing at an airport where maintenance was available.

Narrative

We were in cruise at FL360 and the left windshield made a loud pop and shattered. I was able to quickly determine the cracks were in the outer pane only; which is non structural. I had the SIC notify ATC that our windshield had a cracked and that we were requesting lower; but that we did not need assistance nor special handling. I intentionally did not declare an emergency as we had 15 minutes to reduce the differential pressure to below 7 PSI per the AFM (Aircraft Flight Manual) abnormal procedure. Plus I did not want to distract/overload ATC with an unnecessary action. ATC asked if we were willing to accept an off course vector to descend and we accepted the 180 heading offered. ATC advised we would be Southbound until he could get us clear of traffic; which was just fine with us as it would give us extra time to sort things out. After initiating the decent; verifying the passengers were secure and consulting with the owner; we informed ATC that we would like to descend to 10;000 feet and change our destination to ZZZ. The AFM procedure does not call for landing because of a cracked windshield; and the airplane was scheduled to go to ZZZ1 after this trip for routine maintenance anyway; so ZZZ1 was the best plan B. Everything went well and we landed in ZZZ1 without any further issues. There was a fire truck waiting for us at the FBO (the cracked windshield story followed us all the way). I told them Thanks; and that we certainly appreciated them; but that we wouldn't be needing their services today.