{"id":36076,"date":"2026-09-09T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=36076"},"modified":"2026-09-08T13:55:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T12:55:46","slug":"being-a-learning-organization-is-a-choice","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/being-a-learning-organization-is-a-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Being a Learning Organization Is a Choice\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 9 Sep 2026 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

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In the second part of our interview, Dr Wendy Walsh and Andrea Tullos ponder how teams can identify and develop the potential of their young athletes.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
A few years ago, the US Air Force invested a year of time and substantial resources to better understand why nearly a third of its pararescue candidates were self-eliminating within the first 72 hours of entering the training pipeline.<\/h6>\n

\u201cIt would be like you\u2019re already through the NFL Draft, you show up to training camp, and 30% of your draftees say: \u2018I thought I wanted to be an NFL player, but now that I\u2019m actually doing it, not so much\u2019 and they just walk,\u201d says Andrea Tullos.<\/p>\n

It led to a period of introspection, she tells the Leaders Performance Institute. \u201cWe realized we didn\u2019t believe we were bringing the candidates to the camp that had the greatest potential to be exceptional performers across a career versus just successfully getting them through the training,\u201d she continues. \u201cAnd those can be two very different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tullos, a retired Air Force lieutenant general now leading strategic advisory firm Outperform IQ, felt a moral obligation at the time to provide the Air Force with the best possible candidates. They decided to \u201cgo down that road less traveled,\u201d which meant reweighting assessments towards attributes harder to measure such as will or imperviousness to discomfort rather than versus counting pushups or swim times over pool lengths.<\/p>\n

It made some Air Force people nervous, but they pressed on. \u201cWe learned a ton through the process too,\u201d says Tullos. \u201cThat\u2019s what I believe is an attribute of a learning organization; when you\u2019re not afraid to go down these rabbit holes that might not end up where you think they were going to end up.\u201d It could not have happened by accident. \u201cBeing a learning organization is a choice,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

It was also a triumph of imagination, a point raised by Dr Wendy Walsh, the Chief Learning Officer at the US Air Force, who has joined Tullos in the conversation to discuss their six years working together. Walsh made a similar point in part one<\/a> with regards to the 9\/11 Commission\u2019s warning about a \u201cfailure of imagination\u201d and, here, commends the Air Force for confronting the possibility that their system was solving the wrong problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo don\u2019t get stuck in a data story that is not taking you to a possibility that you want to imagine,\u201d Walsh tells the Leaders Performance Institute. \u201cIs there something else that we can notice, that we can investigate, that we can try?\u201d<\/p>\n

How organizations learn and help their people to learn is at the heart of learning engineering<\/em>, a topic introduced by Walsh when the duo spoke onstage at June\u2019s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York. \u201cIt\u2019s a new one for a lot of people,\u201d says Walsh. \u201cIt\u2019s been emerging over the last decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning engineering asks how information moves between the learner and the teacher within an environment. Walsh uses AI as an example of what is risked when learning is not engineered. \u201cYou can give a teacher AI, but if you don\u2019t teach them how to utilize that and give them that psychologically safe space to investigate and to actually learn it, when they bring it into a classroom, especially a classroom today where people have been utilizing it, the technology risks becoming a source of anxiety rather than learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In part one, Walsh and Tullos explored the threats<\/a> that can cause leaders to lose sight of their people\u2019s development needs. In part two, we turn our attention to what happens when we have the person in our sights: how do we identify and develop their potential?<\/p>\n

Learning engineering explained<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Walsh says, learning engineering provides \u201ca rigorous rubric to understanding the variables of learning so that you can optimize.\u201d It asks: do we understand this person well enough to help them become who they could be?<\/p>\n

She simplified it to three tenets:<\/p>\n

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  1. Human-centered design: understand the learner<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u201cWe really want to start with the learner,\u201d says Walsh. Understand the person before designing the intervention. Coaches, for example, can ask:<\/p>\n

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    • How does the athlete learn?<\/li>\n
    • What support to they need?<\/li>\n
    • What environments help them succeed?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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      1. Interdisciplinarity: no single discipline sees the whole picture <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Interdisciplinary collaboration broadens that understanding of the learner by bringing together multiple perspectives. \u201cDifferent disciplines can have different theories, different scholarship, that are valuable to achieving the outcomes that we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

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        1. Evidence: test your assumptions against reality<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          The findings then feed back into the learner\u2019s experience to create a cycle of improvement.<\/p>\n

          \u201cLearning engineering is an empowerment structure for the learner too,\u201d says Walsh. <\/strong><\/p>\n

          \u201cUsing the evidence not just to have somebody tell me what I need to do or to assess me, but for me to know how I\u2019m going to be assessed, how I can gain those reps and sets or learning that needs to happen for me to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

          Tullos, for example, says she is \u201cnot good at being the first person in line if I hadn\u2019t seen it\u201d but, once she\u2019d seen it, \u201cI was on.\u201d She echoes Walsh in emphasizing the importance of understanding how someone learns and, if you have a firmer grasp of the required learning methodology, \u201cyou can prepare before the player even shows up.\u201d<\/p>\n

          She adds: \u201cYou don\u2019t want to structure practices and then realize that for 90% of the team it just went in one ear and out the other because it was delivered in the wrong format.\u201d<\/p>\n

          Choosing to learn<\/strong><\/p>\n

          Tullos is keen to address the elephant in the room. \u201cIn certain sports today, the incentive structure is not to be a learning organization, because your coaching turnover is too high, your player turnover is too high, and you\u2019re designed to be a stepping stone,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to get the talent that you have optimized to win once.\u201d<\/p>\n

          The fact is, she adds, \u201cyou can win without being a learning organization\u201d. However, \u201cthe dynasties, the ones that never get relegated? My hypothesis is they are learning organizations.\u201d They have more stability and are \u201ccontinuously feeding that family tree of great coaches to the outside because they\u2019re investing in them. Everybody wants to go to that organization.\u201d By contrast, where it\u2019s obvious that athlete and coach development aren\u2019t priorities, \u201cyou want to go there, but God, you want to get out of there too. You want to take what you can get, win a championship, and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

          Walsh has been listening intently. \u201cIt takes practice to be present, how we respond to uncertainty takes practice,\u201d she says, adding that no leader can assume that learning just happens naturally.<\/p>\n

          As a practical tool for tracking learning, Tullos recommends \u201cdisciplined debriefs\u201d that happen win or lose. She suggests three questions as a starting point:<\/p>\n

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          • Were we as prepared as we could have been?<\/li>\n
          • What happened that we did not expect?<\/li>\n
          • What can we do better tomorrow?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

            At the heart of these is the notion that success is not proof that your preparation was perfect and failure not proof that everything was wrong.<\/p>\n

            \u201cIt\u2019s not about assigning blame. It\u2019s about understanding how to get up tomorrow to do it all over again as a team and get better,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a two-way conversation between coaches and performers that happens after every single competitive event, whether it\u2019s the best performance you\u2019ve ever seen or the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

            Andrea Tullos is a retired Air Force lieutenant general and founder and CEO of Outperform IQ. Her views are her own and do not represent those of the Department of War or the Department of the Air Force.<\/em><\/p>\n

            Read part one<\/strong><\/p>\n