Building the Learning Engine - Level Five Associates

From Concept to Culture: Building Organizations That Practice Adaptive Leadership

Your leadership team gets adaptive leadership. They’ve read the books, been to the workshops, had the conversations.

But understanding something and actually doing it when the pressure is on? That’s a different game entirely.

The gap isn’t about knowledge. Your leaders already have that. The challenge is creating the conditions where that knowledge becomes the foundation of how your organization operates day-to-day.

Learning Under Real Pressure

Leaders develop adaptive capabilities when they practice making clear decisions under pressure – not theoretical pressure, but the kind that generates real physiological responses. Elevated heart rate. Heightened focus. The weight of consequences.

High-stakes simulations create these conditions safely. Budget crisis scenarios. Market disruption exercises. Rapid response drills. These experiences allow your leaders to practice tactical patience and clear thinking in environments that feel urgent without posing real risk to customers, revenue, or team stability.

Practice can expose where there may be flaws in leadership strategy, and how they can be improved.

But simulation alone doesn’t create lasting change. The real transformation happens in what comes next.

The After-Action Review: Your Most Powerful Tool

The military-designed After Action Review cuts through complexity with seven focused questions:

What was the plan?
What happened?
What went well?
What went poorly?
What are we going to fix?
Who will lead the fix?
By when?

This structure separates analysis from action, ensuring learning translates into concrete improvements.

Notice what is absent here: blame and defensiveness. The review works because it focuses on the situation, not the person.

There’s one prerequisite: psychological safety. Your leaders need to know that honest assessment advances careers rather than threatening them. Creating that environment isn’t optional – it’s foundational to real learning.

Building Organizational Muscle Memory

Sustainable behavioral change requires cycles, including explicit instruction, experiential practice under pressure, structured review, and then more practice.

The mission and goals need to be clearly defined — or as I’ve said in the past: “Set The Azimuth” before you proceed.

Your leaders need to experience these principles in action across various scenarios – including budget pressures, personnel transitions, competitive threats, and strategic pivots.

Repetition builds trust in the process. The habits stick when leaders see the framework produce results across varied challenges. Think less about a single transformative event and more about creating ongoing learning rhythms.

What Success Looks Like

The goal isn’t perfect execution. The goal is to build organizational muscle memory for continuous learning and adaptation.

Success looks like teams instinctively running After Action Reviews when projects don’t go as planned. Success looks like team members knowing what to do, because good behavior has been modeled by team leadership.

Leaders maintaining tactical patience during uncertainty instead of rushing to premature solutions. Teams listening with intent to understand rather than waiting to speak.

That’s when adaptive leadership moves from concept to culture.

The Real Question

Your organization operates in an environment where yesterday’s playbook doesn’t fully prepare you for tomorrow’s challenges. Your leaders understand adaptive leadership principles.

The question is: what systematic learning experiences are you creating this quarter to build an organization that practices these principles under pressure?

Ready to develop adaptive leadership capabilities in your organization? Contact me to explore simulation-based learning and structured review processes that transform team performance.

Video Transcription:

[00:00.0]

Understanding adaptive leadership is one thing; building an organization that practices it is entirely different. The bridge between concept and culture lies in creating systematic learning experiences that develop these capabilities under realistic pressure. The most effective approach combines high- stakes simulation environments — flight simulators, operating rooms, crisis command centers — with structured reflection processes.

[00:23.5]

These settings automatically generate the physiological stress response that leaders must learn to navigate while maintaining clear thinking and tactical patience. The key learning tool is the military- designed After Action Review, AAR, which follows these components: What was the plan?

[00:39.4]

What actually happened? What went well? What went poorly? What are we going to fix? Who will lead the fix? And by when? This structure separates analysis from action, ensuring learning translates into concrete improvements. However, this process only works within a foundation of psychological safety.

[00:54.8]

Without it, the “what went poorly” portion becomes superficial or degenerates into blame. Leaders must first create environments where honest assessment is rewarded rather than punished. The teaching progression is critical! Explicit instruction in principles, followed by experiential exercises, then structured review, then more exercises.

[01:13.4]

Repetition breeds habit. And habits stick. But don’t expect overnight transformation. Real behavioral change requires multiple cycles under various pressures. Leaders need to experience these principles working across budget crises, personnel changes, and strategic pivots before they trust them as reliable tools rather than interesting concepts.

[01:32.7]

The goal isn’t perfect execution — it’s building organizational muscle memory for continuous learning and adaptation.

WHAT CAN WE DO FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION?