Learning 101

Allison Rossett

Professor of educational technology
San Diego State University
San Diego, California

In the old days, training was an event. The training department earned its stripes by putting people's butts into seats in a physical space of some kind. Today, fast organizations do a lot less measuring of people and seats. Businesses want their employees to be with customers, not in classes.

So training is evolving into a system, rather than an event -- a system in which technology extends the arms of the instructor into the workplace. It's a big-tent view of training that busts through the walls of classrooms and that insinuates itself into people's lives.

Consider a safety-training class. A facilitator puts some training elements online that allow participants to assess in advance their work site and their performance. That way, they go to class with a much clearer sense of how safety-compliant their work setting is. And because the facilitator already has that data online, she can tailor her instruction accordingly. The result is a class in which the focus goes beyond just building memory. After class, the instructor's arms are longer, because everyone is connected online, and she can easily see where people still need help.

That kind of training, with its focus on improving performance, isn't just an event. Rather, it's a system that creates knowledge bases. And that kind of training isn't just interesting to trainers; corporate leaders and politicians find it riveting as well. Of course, it also represents a major change that will pose a tremendous challenge to the next generation of educators.

Allison Rossett (arossett@mail.sdsu.edu) is the author of First Things Fast: A Handbook for Performance Analysis (Pfeiffer & Co., 1998). She is also a consultant to such clients as Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

W. Earl Sasser Jr.

Chairman of the board
Harvard Business School Interactive
Boston, Massachusetts

Companies are demanding that executive education become more action-oriented. They want programs that not only change individuals but also change their organizations. So we spend a lot of time working through specific, current, real-life problems that our attendees face, and we allow them to draw upon the host of "consultants" whom they are surrounded by here -- peers and faculty members alike.

And now technology is allowing us to extend that learning into the period after people leave campus -- to create and then tap into the communities of interest that naturally form in executive-education programs. In the past, we would spend time with whatever group of executives came here for a particular program, arm-wrestling over a topic like "achieving breakthrough service," and then we would simply let that group walk out the door.

Today, thanks to the Internet, we can continue the dialogue between those executives and members of our faculty -- long after the executives leave campus. Attendees can continue their learning, and we can use their experience as a research lab that keeps us abreast of what's working and what's not working.

W. Earl Sasser Jr. (wsasser@hbs.edu) is the UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at Harvard Business School, where he has been a faculty member since 1969. Harvard Business School Interactive is a newly formed nonprofit organization owned by HBS.

Sindri Anderson

Director of organizational effectiveness
Context Integration
San Francisco, California

Businesses suffer because people have too many brief conversations. That's especially true when it comes to learning. Learning just doesn't sink in when you cut it up into small bites.

It's up to the stewards of a company to create time for learning -- by holding managers accountable for making sure that learning happens. But learning can't look the same way it always has. Not long ago, higher-ups at Levi Strauss & Co. were telling executives, "We want all of you to be a new kind of manager," but the company continued to hold training sessions in the same old windowless hotel rooms. So, of course, people stopped showing up.

Then, last year, when Levi's was shifting its business model to become a brand-management organization, it conducted training sessions in art galleries, in nightclubs, and in other venues that were right in the center of the consumer marketplace. Facilitators gave cameras to Levi's employees and told them to find examples of brand equity being built or being destroyed, to talk to consumers about products, and to bring all of that information back to the group.