Are you ready for some football?
NFL training camps are underway, which means teams are spending their days preparing for the start of another season.
Miami Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley has a refreshingly simple philosophy about how players get better: “You know how you get good at football? You play football.”
Why it matters: Hafley’s point applies well beyond football. In L&D, we spend a lot of time trying to recreate the job instead of helping people learn while actually doing the job.
Think about the traditional corporate role play. Two people are handed a scenario and asked to pretend they’re having a difficult conversation.
Everyone knows it’s fake. The stakes are low, the emotions aren’t real, and the “difficult employee” often deserves an Academy Award.
That doesn’t mean practice is bad. Football players spend countless hours practicing plays, running drills, studying film, and preparing for different situations.
But practice has a purpose: to prepare you to perform when the game is real.
Imagine a new manager having an actual difficult conversation and then spending 10 minutes afterward with a coach or colleague discussing what worked, what didn’t, and what to try next time.
This is where managers can become incredibly important to L&D. In football terms, they're standing on the sideline while the game is being played.
They can observe, coach, provide feedback, and help employees make an adjustment before the next play.
AI creates even more possibilities. An employee can get help preparing for a real conversation, use AI to think through options, do the actual work, and then use AI afterward to reflect on the experience.
Instead of creating another learning event, we can wrap learning around the work itself.
Our view is that classes, simulations, and practice still matter. They give people foundational knowledge and a safe place to experiment before the stakes become real.
But practice should prepare people for the game, not become a substitute for playing it.
We also believe that this is one of the most powerful applications for AI.
Our SPARK Learning is the best of both worlds - classroom learning combined with AI to help people prepare and debrief almost instantaneously.
The opportunity for L&D is to stop thinking of work and learning as two separate activities.
The bottom line: Maybe we should spend a little less time asking, “How can we make our training more realistic?” and spend more time asking, “How can we turn real work into learning?”
Because, to paraphrase Miami Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley, “You know how you get good at the tough parts of work? You work.”
When the game starts, that's not when learning ends. That's when some of the best learning begins.
