Cisco's Quick Study

Overcoming this antilearning bias also allows the training operation to redefine its job. "More often than not, training is a cost center that spends most of its time justifying its existence," says Kelly, who worked in training and education at Sun Microsystems and at Oracle before joining Cisco. "Consequently, the metrics of success are rooted in utilization rates: how many seats are filled, how many teachers are used, how much money is saved, whether people filled out the Friday 'smile sheets' (evaluations that ask if the hotel was good and if the cookies were fresh). The questions that are hardly ever asked are, 'Did anyone learn anything?' and 'Will what people learn have an impact on the business?' "

Another obsolete mind-set involves what learning looks like. "There's a lot of resistance, even in the high-tech community, to the idea that e-learning is really effective," says Kelly. "Most people are skeptical about learning that does not come in the form of classroom learning. You have to keep reminding them that the classroom-retention rate is only about 25% after the first week and that from then on, people drop off significantly. The main benefit of the classroom environment is human interaction -- make new friends, strengthen relationships, that sort of thing. That's enormously important. But the classroom is not about acquiring knowledge. People need to accept that and to stop clinging to a model that connects people but that doesn't teach people. Then we can figure out how to connect people in an e-learning environment, and we'll have the best of both worlds."

A third obsolete (or at least incomplete) mind-set relates to outcomes -- that is, how you actually measure results. "We all think that we understand learning," Kelly says. "We've all, to a certain extent, experienced a familiar pattern: Go to a class. Listen to a lecture. Read a book. And then take a test to validate that you know something. You may not remember it for very long, but that's how you've always learned, so it must work. But if you don't embed learning into a job and make it an invisible process, then it's always going to remain a separate thing that needs to be scheduled. When it comes down to it, learning is about one thing: the time-critical value of information."

Indeed, in a world that changes as fast as Cisco does, learning can't be only about a set curriculum or required training hours -- arbitrary rules, Kelly believes, that are used to make learning seem more businesslike. That's why at Cisco, there are no required classes or minimum training hours. Instead, sales employees take assessment tests that determine their competency and how much training they may need. "We certainly care that people can pass a test and, even more important, that they can then perform," Kelly says. "But the simple fact is, you may need 3 hours to learn something, while I may need 12 hours."

The learning model that Kelly is building at Cisco distinguishes between "structured learning" and "emergency learning," and tries to customize each form of learning to the needs of the individual. In the ideal learning environment, which Kelly believes will be in place for the Cisco sales force within 18 months, each person will be able to create a customized Web page, tentatively called My Future. The My Future page will serve as a learning portal, where people can chart a long-term, structured learning plan; get all relevant short-term updates; and automatically receive the necessary content, based on their job title, area of operation, field of interest, and learning preferences -- time-critical information for emergency-learning situations.

For example, an hour before a crucial meeting with a customer, a salesperson could download a 20-minute chunk of information describing a new product feature and then watch it on a desktop computer, or listen to it on a portable MP3 player on the way to the meeting. "If that won't get people moving faster," Kelly jokes, "nothing will." Ultimately, Kelly says, e-learning will be most effective when it no longer feels like learning -- when it's simply a natural part of how people work: "Today, people say, 'I'm working,' and what they're doing is quickly answering emails and voice mails. They don't say, 'I've got the next two hours slotted for email.' If you do things in small chunks, they become just another part of your job. We want learning to become just another part of people's jobs. E-learning will be successful when it doesn't have its own name."