What is 70-20-10 Learning Model?
The 70-20-10 model is a rule of thumb for workplace development. It suggests that about 70 percent of learning comes from challenging experience on the job, 20 percent from other people through coaching, feedback and observation, and 10 percent from formal courses. The numbers are a reminder of proportions, not a measured law.
How Personal Academy handles it
Personal Academy supports the social and on-the-job parts with a community feed and spaces for peer learning and manager observations of work, alongside formal courses.
A worked example
Suppose a 300-person engineering firm develops new project leads. The formal part is a short course on planning and risk. The social part is a space where new leads post questions and experienced leads answer, plus monthly mentoring. The experience part is leading a small project, with a senior manager observing two key meetings using a checklist and giving feedback afterwards.
The model is usually traced to research at the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s, where Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger asked successful executives what had shaped their development. Most named challenging assignments, then other people, then courses. The proportions were later popularised as 70-20-10.
The numbers come from a particular group, senior managers, asked to recall key events. They were never intended as a precise measurement for all roles, and researchers have criticised treating them as such. Their value is as a prompt: if almost all of a learning budget goes to courses, the organisation is ignoring where most development happens.
Experience-based learning includes stretch assignments, projects, rotations, solving real problems and reflecting on results. Designers support it by defining practice tasks, giving checklists or job aids, and creating moments to reflect on what happened.
Social learning includes coaching, mentoring, feedback, communities of practice and learning by watching colleagues. Designers support it with structured feedback from managers, observation tools, peer forums and channels where people can ask questions.
Formal learning includes courses, workshops, eLearning and reading. In a 70-20-10 approach, formal learning is designed to connect with the other two: a course sets up a practice assignment, and a manager observation checks that the new behaviour appears at work.
Using the model well means planning all three together for a given capability, and measuring outcomes such as behaviour change, not only course completion. A manager conversation before and after a course is often the cheapest way to connect the formal part with the other two.