Don Ronchi: Education Launches Success for Raytheon

Tim Sosbe - 12/1/03

On the surface, you might be pretty amazed to learn just how much is placed on Don Ronchi’s professional shoulders. In addition to being chief learning officer for Raytheon Co., Ronchi is also the vice president of Raytheon Six Sigma and supply chain, giv

Name: Don Ronchi
Title: Vice President, Raytheon Six Sigma, Supply Chain and Chief Learning Officer
Company: Raytheon Co.

Successes:

Supporting the implementation of Raytheon Six Sigma so that by the end of 2002, Raytheon’s 14,000 trained Specialists and 1,100 trained Experts generated a cumulative gross benefit of $1.8 billion in the initiative's first four years.
Introducing a unique leadership development program that emphasizes the importance of social networking among leaders, employees, customers and suppliers and that enables teams of leaders across the company to work on critical initiatives with involvement of the CEO.
Integrating Raytheon’s internal learning organization with Raytheon Professional Services, the company’s $100-million provider of commercial learning services in order to facilitate the transfer of best practices between the organizations.
Developing strategic relationships with its major customer’s key learning organizations–Defense Acquisition University and National Defense University–with whom Raytheon exchanges students, develops courseware and jointly sponsors programs that leverage its capabilities.
Launching a learning management system, and significantly upgrading it in 2003, to support Raytheon's more sophisticated development and use of organizational learning plans and to enable the company’s drive to become CMMI-certified throughout its global operations.

Learning Philosophy: “The mission of Raytheon Learning is to enhance the organizational capabilities that create value for our customers and shareholders. Investment in human capital is a part of building organizational capabilities. We also invest in social capital, capabilities generated by how people are connected across various parts of the company as well as with our customers and suppliers. Social capital is the ‘wiring’ that allows knowledge that exists anywhere in the value chain to flow to where it is most needed to help shape a customer solution. Raytheon Learning is also very much engaged in deploying capabilities where there are specific opportunities to create value. We are ‘activists’ in this sense, passionate about ensuring that learning occurs in the context of creating real value and the resulting knowledge gets embedded in organizational routines. In this way, not only do Raytheon employees learn, but Raytheon itself learns.”