What is 70:20:10?
Following my recent webinar on ‘Moving beyond 70:20:10’ for
the Learning and Skills Group, I wanted to delve a bit deeper into this high
profile model.
Some L&D professionals build impassioned cases around it,
in a desire to support informal and social learning, whilst others view it as a
dangerous over simplification.
So I wanted to reflect on its usefulness in more detail.
I’m sure if you’re reading this that you’re familiar with
the concept of the 70:20:10 model but just in case, Charles Jennings provides
us with a great explanation:
“About 70 per cent of
organisational learning takes place on the job, through solving problems and
through special assignments and other day-to-day activities. Another 20 per
cent occurs through drawing on the knowledge of others in the workplace, from
informal learning, from coaching and mentoring, and from support and direction
from managers and colleagues. Only 10 per cent occurs through formal learning,
whether classroom, workshop or, more recently, e-learning.”
Miss-used and Abused?
Now, the model is a very useful lens to think about what
Learning really means in organisations.
But as much as the model is useful, it can be abused and
it’s mis-use has a number of risks:
- How much does it create the expectation that you
should be doing less formal training? And is it used as an excuse to reduce
training headcount?
- How well does it directly translate into all
corporate learning contexts – all of the time
- Is learning on the job an option if you need
people to be proficient from day one of a new process, product or systems
launch?
It can be used to assume the
answer before you have even asked the question!
What are the Key Factors for the Best Learning Mix?
To prescribe learning solutions
without taking into account the specific context or requirements is far from
ideal. So it’s at this point I like to take a step back and think about what factors drive the best mix of
learning delivery?
I asked this during the webinar
session and the attendees provided their insights such as:
- The needs of the business or customer
- Audience profile
- Learning styles of the group
- Learning needs, characteristics of target group,
the 'logic' of the content, culture
- Practical elements such as geographical spread,
audience demographics, technological constraints
- The immediacy of results required by the
business tends to drive the mix
- Transfer of knowledge into work
- Knowledge transfer vs. skills. Are you passing on information, or building
skills/practices in the workplace?
This, it seems, it what really matters to learning and
development professionals, more than any kind of model. It is about finding
what works best for learners in a particular situation. The absolutes of
70:20:10 should never be taken as hard and fast parameters. The
combinations need to flex and potentially flex considerably if they are to fit
what’s really needed. And that’s why we need to retain the uniqueness of
each project we support from organisation to organisation, between business
units and, role by role. Project by project not all of the answers are
found it 70:20:10.
CONTEXT is KING… and we
surrender this to any model at our peril.
So, why is 70:20:10
important?
What is the Power of 70:20:10?
The power of the model is it helps remind us that learning is a
process. That is it not bound to a single channel. It happens over
time, from a variety of sources and is supported by real world experience,
motivation and feedback.
What learning and
development practitioners all too often deliver is a single event,
whether that’s face to face, or online 70:20:10 enables us to lift
our focus out from short term events out to how we support learning back in day
to day working life. And that’s really important because this is where learning
becomes performance. And that is what we are really all about -
Performance Development.
A performance
development view has to embrace a full mix of the components: workplace
learning, formal learning and collaborative learning. And
using these labels are potentially much, much, much more useful that quoting
70:20:10.
If we think about learning
in those terms then we can start to picture the extent to which learning is
really supported in organisations. Not an ideal and in appropriate set of
percentages.
Often the split of effort
across organisational learning currently looks like this:
However, if we want
learning to be really effective in improving performance, we need to be moving
towards a more even split in our efforts, resources and investment to support
ALL learning.
Only by investigating how we can
address, formal, workplace and collaborative learning, for critical roles in
our organisations, can we start to piece together how we should be investing in
our learning approach to drive real impact.
And as we start to look in detail
at the opportunities to support learning and we can start to see that the learning
armoury, the wealth of tools, platforms and channels can be much more complete,
than formal delivery alone.
Moving Beyond 70:20:10?
This is what I mean by
‘moving beyond 70:20:10’.
We’re starting to transcend
any perceived boundaries of a model and broaden our thinking beyond merely splitting learning
across formal instructor-led sessions, a bit of e-learning and a spot of
performance support.
We’re thinking more about the big picture for the
organisation as a whole and how we can choose from different types of learning
to best support an overall vision and strategy. We start to look at
our technology choices and infrastructure in a way that drives real value and
makes ordinary working lives better. Not because they were trained but
because they were given the support to really learn.
As one participant in the
webinar put it, we can ‘develop a pick and mix approach to suit each context as
one size will not fit all’. For different learning requirements we need to ask
key questions such as:
- What channels are appropriate in this context?
- How do they add value?
- What is technically feasible?
The spirit of the 70:20:10
model is incredibly useful in helping us to think about incorporating different
channels in our L&D strategy. It can really help our learners by providing
different learning opportunities, but ultimately it seems that context is king
and we need to build some flex into how we apply 70:20:10 as we move L&D
into the future.
Only by thinking about and
acting to support all learning, be that workplace, formal and collaboration,
will L&D really be able to really say they are driving tangible improvements in
performance. Without it L&D are just another cost. And
costs eventually get cut.
