learning - John Cone

Title: Vice President
Company: Dell University
Location: Round Rock, Texas
Age: 47

It's a defining principle of the new economy: winning companies are smart companies. Competition today centers on how much knowledge organizations create, not how many factories they build. Companies that want to grow fast need people who can learn fast. But how do you create tools that allow the pace of learning to match the speed of change? How do you train already overworked employees without pulling them away from their jobs?

John Coné, vice president of Dell University, is answering those questions at one of the new economy's flagship companies, Dell Computer Corp. Since its creation 14 years ago, in Michael Dell's dorm room at the University of Texas, Dell has expanded to employ nearly 21,000 people. Today it generates annual revenues of more than $15 billion and is growing at a rate of more than 50% per year. In 1996 and 1997, the company had the top-performing U.S. stock on the Dow Jones World Stock Index. More important, Dell has pioneered a model for the computer business to which other giant companies are struggling to adjust. Dell's direct-to-customer business model hasn't just created a prosperous company -- it has also redefined the terms of competition that prevail in one of the world's biggest and most influential industries.

Coné's job is to redefine education, training, and learning within this high-tech juggernaut. It's a tall order. The new economy may be a knowledge economy, and people may be every company's most critical asset, but job education in many organizations remains an undeniable backwater. Far too many instructors from the training departments of far too many companies are frighteningly reminiscent of the dreary science teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Not at Dell. Coné is a genuine radical in a field that is decidedly resistant to change. "The teaching philosophy of most companies today is similar to that of the schools I went to," he says. "Lots of people sitting in a classroom, with an expert up front telling you things. I've always thought that if that was the natural way for people to learn, we ought to see four-year-olds on the playground spontaneously forming themselves into rows. The natural way to learn is simply to be who we are and to do what we do. Kids learn by doing things. And they learn new things when they need to know them."

That's the philosophy on which Coné has built Dell University. He calls it "on-demand learning": "The ideal 'learning event' at Dell has a class size of one, lasts 5 to 10 minutes, and takes place within 10 minutes of when someone recognizes that he or she needs to know something. Our challenge is to reduce learning to its smallest, most-useful increments and to put the learner in charge of the entire process."

It's an ambitious goal -- and one that draws inspiration from Dell's direct-to-customer business model. Indeed, one of the first items on the curriculum for new Dell employees is the business model itself. Whether you're a salesperson, an engineer, or a factory-floor manager, Coné believes you will make it at the company only by understanding how Dell does business. "The Dell business model is key to our success," he says. "It's unique to our company -- something that none of our competitors can deliver. If you want to succeed here, you have to understand the model."

That doesn't mean that new employees have to spend their first week at the company locked in a classroom, listening to lectures given by executives. Dell University has created an online course that explains the history of the Dell business model and how it works. "The first thing you do is to take a test and find out if you understand the model," Coné says. "If you pass, you're done. If you don't, you can take courses to learn about just the areas that you don't understand. We don't need to send everyone off to a five-day course on the Dell business model."

That's been the guiding philosophy behind Dell University since Coné arrived at the firm's Round Rock, Texas headquarters in July 1995. Dell University offers at least a hundred "classes" -- on topics ranging from quality to finance to writing software, and more than 40% of this material is delivered in nontraditional formats (that is, not in classrooms). Coné's goal is for nontraditional learning to account for 70% of how Dell teaches.

"Nontraditional" also is an apt description of Dell University itself. "Dell University is not an actual, physical place," Coné says. "Sure, we have classrooms in almost every building where Dell operates. But the university is really a virtual place. We are not a brick-and-mortar operation. That is a model from a different era. Ivy doesn't grow on a rolling stone. We've got no ivy here."