Return on Learning

Learning with the End in Mind

For more than three decades, Accenture ran a 100-acre training campus in Illinois. By the late 1990s, about 1,000 employees per week received training there. Each employee took a core suite of courses, designed to standardize service and teach routine applications. In 2001, this extensive training program cost the company more than $700 million. As computer-based training and Internet course delivery mechanisms became more feasible, Accenture’s management began to question the philosophy of uniform, centralized training. The tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the resulting limits on business travel effectively shuttered the campus. Accenture moved toward having each internal division deliver its own training.

At the same time, the company was growing rapidly, with a burst of new products and increasing demand for new services, which also made expensive universal training harder to justify. Co-author Donald Vanthournout, the executive in charge of training, told Accenture’s partners that training had changed since they had learned the business. He described a cost-effective reinvention of training, rather than a return to old methods...