Return on Learning: Training for High Performance at Accenture Book

In 2001, Accenture faced a number of major challenges that are best revealed and discussed within the narrative, in context. The fact remains that, led by Donald Vanthournout, Accenture's Capability Development team began a "journey" that had to take those challenges into full account. What they learned provides the most valuable material in this book. The story of their journey is a business story: about how one company - Accenture - advanced toward high performance through learning, knowledge management and the transformation of its workforce. By extension, however, it is about how other organizations can do the same."

Vanthournout and the members of his team shared a business-centric perspective. They were determined to link human capital investments to business benefits, both for Accenture and for each of its clients; to put in place the governance and leadership structures that increase a learning program's chances of success; to ensure that the actual classroom and electronic training create what the team characterized as "phenomenal" learning experiences; and to maximize the operational efficiency of learning. According to Vanthournout, he selected members to comprise a team that "was more of a team focused more on corporate education than it was an education team trying to have a business impact."

Readers will appreciate the fact that the co-authors share dozens of key lessons they learning during the course of their collaboration, many of which were a complete surprise to them or at least forced them to reconsider many of their previous assumptions about how people learn, what can help to stimulate self-motivation, how to quantify the impact of formal training on the performance of both individuals and teams, and the interdependence of formal and informal learning.

It is worth noting that, as a result of the efforts of the Capability Development team, working closely with senior management and countless other associates throughout the firm, "for every dollar Accenture invests in learning, the company receives that dollar back plus an additional $3.25 in measurable value to its bottom line. - in other words, a 353 percent return on learning." Literally, ROL = ROI. To repeat, Return on Learning is also about "how other organizations can do the same." Or how they can at least "use learning programs for major business impact, and can run learning as a business."