The Learning Stack of the Future: LLMs and Push Learning

Senior sales leaders report that it takes their teams 2–4 weeks to build, deploy, and get adoption for “quick hit enablement” content. Meanwhile, without reinforcement, most people forget most new information within days—a phenomenon well-documented in cognitive psychology research. This disconnect between training speed and knowledge retention isn’t just inefficient—it’s a competitive disadvantage.

In a world where a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature or supply chain disruption happens every two days, the traditional enablement tech stack is struggling to keep pace. The fundamental question isn’t whether organizations need to evolve their training approach, but how quickly they can adapt in a world where speed has become the forgotten metric in enablement.

Speed: The Critical Enablement Metric No One Measures

When evaluating enablement success, most organizations focus on course completion rates, engagement scores, or satisfaction surveys. Yet, they’re overlooking what may be the most critical metric of all: speed to proficiency—the time from initial need identified to 90 percent proficiency.

Speed isn’t just one metric among many—it’s the defining factor that separates effective enablement from initiatives that look good on paper but fail to drive results. When a competitor launches a new product, or market conditions dramatically shift, waiting weeks to get your team up to speed isn’t just inefficient—it’s potentially devastating.

“It’s between the email and the live session where everything falls apart,” as one senior sales leader put it. The highest impact enablement content—that critical negotiation tip, update on a new competitor, or tactical refresher—loses its value when it can’t be deployed and absorbed right before someone jumps into a sales call and puts it into practice.

Today’s enablement teams are trapped between two ineffective options:

1. Send an email or one-off message that few read or quickly mark as “done.”

2. Schedule a live training session that might take weeks to organize and execute.

This gap—the absence of something between the email and the live session—is precisely where modern enablement is failing. The most valuable knowledge isn’t reaching employees when and where they need it most.

The Learning Stack of 2030: Push, Pull, and Practice Systems

The future of learning relies on an integrated ecosystem of specialized tools that work together to drive rapid knowledge acquisition, retention, and application:

Push Systems: Delivering Critical Knowledge When and Where It’s Needed

Push systems actively deliver bite-size, highly relevant information directly to employees through the channels they already use daily. Unlike traditional learning management systems that require employees to seek out information, push systems bring learning right to people.

These systems recognize a fundamental truth: The average employee checks a website with tons of content every six weeks, but checks their “flow-of-work” tools—SMS, Slack, MS Teams—every six minutes. That’s a 2,000 times attention difference, just by meeting people where they already are. By leveraging existing engagement tools, push learning ensures critical information reaches employees at the precise moment of need.

Effective push systems break complex topics into digestible, focused lessons and often leverage techniques like spaced repetition to reinforce key ideas over time. Research in cognitive psychology suggests that spacing out learning—rather than cramming it all at once—can significantly improve retention and help employees apply new knowledge more confidently and quickly.

Pull Systems: Knowledge On-Demand Through LLMs

While push systems excel at delivering core knowledge, employees still need access to specific information when facing unique challenges or questions. This is where pull systems—powered by Large Language Models (LLMs)—become invaluable.

Pull systems act as intelligent knowledge repositories that employees can query when they know what they need to know and go find it somewhere. Companies are already using AI to generate content incredibly quickly—building courses in minutes instead of weeks—but simply having content available doesn’t solve the fundamental speed problem if employees can’t find or engage with it.

Unlike traditional content libraries where employees need to search through lengthy documents or videos, LLM-powered pull systems allow natural language questions and provide contextually relevant answers from across multiple data sources.

Practice Systems: Simulation and Coaching at Scale

Knowledge acquisition only matters if it translates to improved performance. Practice systems bridge this gap by allowing employees to apply what they’ve learned in realistic scenarios with immediate feedback.

AI-powered simulations have transformed what was once a high-touch, manager-led process into something that can scale across entire organizations. These systems provide personalized, judgment-free environments where employees can practice difficult conversations, test new skills, and receive immediate feedback—all without risking actual customer relationships or waiting for manager availability.

The Integrated Learning Journey

The most effective enablement strategies strategically deploy all three systems based on the context and urgency of the knowledge required:

Push systems deliver high-frequency, foundational knowledge like product updates and competitive positioning directly to employees. Pull systems provide on-demand answers to specific questions when employees need detailed information. Practice systems build confidence and mastery through safe repetition and feedback.

This integrated approach transforms learning from a one-time event to a continuous process that delivers knowledge exactly when and where it’s needed, at a speed that matches today’s business environment.

Fast-Tracking Your Future: First Steps Toward Speed

Transforming your enablement tech stack doesn’t happen overnight, but organizations can begin accelerating today by following these steps:

1. Measure speed to proficiency as your primary enablement metric.

2. Identify high-frequency, critical knowledge that would benefit most from push delivery.

3. Build rapid response capabilities for time-sensitive updates like competitor launches or market shifts.

4. Leverage AI content creation tools to generate training materials in minutes instead of days.

5. Start pushing content through channels your team already uses and checks most frequently.

Organizations that move fast will gain a significant competitive advantage in rapidly evolving markets. When a competitor launches a new product or feature, the ability to train your entire team within hours—not weeks—becomes the defining factor in market response.

In an environment where AI is enabling product cycles to compress from years to months or even days, the ability to rapidly upskill your workforce isn’t just an enablement strategy; it’s necessary for business survival.