Accenture, Learning

Learning for One

First published in theHRDIRECTOR magazine, May 2007. Reprinted with permission.

The recent history of enterprise learning solutions is one that describes an inevitable march toward greater granularity and focus in the way learning is designed and delivered. Like the packaged consumer foods companies that sell individual servings like ‘soup for one’, the field of enterprise learning is evolving toward ‘learning for one’ solutions – learning that is flexible enough to be applied to broader workforces, then more narrowly to specific roles, and then finally to individuals themselves.

The primary driver for this development is the increased focus on the business impact of learning. Senior-level management is ever more aware that the measure of training success is not in a generic average of test scores from a workforce. Fewer decision makers and budget managers care now whether a sales force or customer contact staff is, on average, well-trained. What matters is a specific sales person speaking to a specific target client, or a particular service agent delivering an effective experience to a specific customer. With apologies to Shakespeare, the slogan for corporate learning is no longer “the readiness is all,” but rather, “the performance is all.” And business performance is, at its core, the sum of individual performance.

To access the full article, click here: Learning for One