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The 70-20-10 Framework: Options for Impact

Alan Abbott and Rachel Hutchinson

We’ve all been there. You spent months coming up with a well-structured, engaging instructor-led class. Everybody passes the assessment and the post-course evaluations are positive.

But then you follow up a few months later and find you’ve made almost no measurable impact on employee performance. When you set up a focus group or send out surveys to see what happened, the participants confess that they either forgot all the material or never found a way to apply it to their jobs.

One solution to this scenario is the 70-20-10 framework. It takes formal training initiatives and supports them with robust on-the-job support and opportunities to learn from peers. As a result, learning is extended and reinforced, and participants are better able to apply their new knowledge to the job.

The origin of the 70-20-10 framework can be traced back to research conducted in the 1990s by Morgan McCall, Robert W. Eichinger, and Michael M. Lombardo when they were colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. Responses to a survey sent to successful executives indicated that they learned 70 percent from challenging work, 20 percent from supportive relationships, and 10 percent from formal education. The three men then published their findings in the third edition of The Career Architect Development Planner (Lombardo and Eichinger 2000).

Over the course of the succeeding years, the 70-20-10 framework came to embody an approach to learning and development that deemphasized classrooms and coursework in favor of on-the-job and social learning in the form of self-evaluation, reflection, on-the-job support, group projects, mentoring, and discussion groups.

The framework has become popular in learning and development to foster and apply new skills and close performance gaps. The 70:20:10 Institute was created to meet the demand for consultation on the framework, and many global companies have adopted 70-20-10 approaches.

As the influence of 70-20-10 has grown, criticisms have also emerged:

• In the original research, the sample size was small (about 200 people).

• Self-reported data can be undermined by personal biases and blind spots.

• Formal learning, the longtime standard for developing employees, seems overly deemphasized in the model.

• The presentation of the findings as 70-20-10 seems to betray a round number bias—the economic concept that people tend to pay special attention to numbers that are “round” in some way.

However, talent professionals who use the 70-20-10 approach rarely attempt to follow that equation exactly. The 70:20:10 Institute writes:

The 70-20-10 framework is similar to the Pareto Principle, which states that roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. The Pareto Principle is not absolute, and many exceptions can be found. What is important is that it helps you realize that the majority of effects come from a minority of causes. With the 70-20-10 framework, most of what we learn happens when we are trying to do tasks (perform). As learning professionals, we need to be advocates and help learners in every area and any way we can. Traditionally, L&D has spent the majority of its resources on formal learning.

To be sure, formal learning remains a critical component of the talent development repertoire. For example, would you want your pilot or doctor to learn only through practice or peer exchange? Probably not. But deliberate practice with feedback and coaching is what makes your pilot able to make a split-second decision when needed. A prime example is Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s safe landing on the Hudson River in 2009 after the jet’s engines were disabled. This event is now remembered as the Miracle on the Hudson.

You likely can think of other examples in your own life where expert intuition used by highly skilled and experienced individuals led to success. Experts can walk into a situation and quickly “see” a fix for the problem because the conditions remind them of other situations. Many of us can do this when we assess an organizational problem. Of course, most of us won’t have to react to a life-threatening experience, but we do have smaller day-to-day instances where our experiences affect our decisions. It could be as simple as how you react when a videoconference call is not connecting—a decade ago you would have called IT. Today you’d do some trial and error or search the Internet for solutions. Formal training cannot anticipate every single variable, and even if it could, your brain still couldn’t retain that much information. These examples show that focusing only on the 10 percent has a huge potential impact on your ability to add value to the organization and the ability of all learners to add value.

L&D has a unique opportunity to influence people within an organization, which means that what we focus on can positively—or negatively—affect business outcomes. When we limit our role to formal learning, we may:

• Prevent learning opportunities from being made available to our team members.

• Design solutions in a way that does not encourage learning from one another.

• Limit 70 to 90 percent of on-the-job, real-world, in-the-moment learning to only external, invalidated sources such as Internet searches.

People will always search for information and exchange ideas and practices with others. If you don’t get in front of that or support it by providing structure and relevance, you will surrender your influence and undermine your effectiveness.

Additionally, research continues to validate the fundamental assertion of 70-20-10—developing complex workplace skills usually requires learning from outside the classroom and incorporates evidence-based social and experiential learning activities. Deemphasizing, but not eliminating, formal learning (such as lectures, e-learning programs, and workshops) and supplementing it with activities like group projects, rotational assignments, coaching, and discussion groups isn’t just being done by organizations that follow 70-20-10; it’s also being done by secondary and postsecondary schools throughout the United States.

How does the 70-20-10 framework work? According to Vivian Heijnen, co-author of 70:20:10 Towards 100% Performance, the process includes working your way through five phases—performance detective, performance architect, performance master builder, performance game changer, and performance tracker (Arets, Jennings, and Heijnen 2016). As repetitive as it may seem, starting each phase with the word performance is key because it keeps you aligned to the fact that you are not creating a training program or a learning solution—you are affecting the ability of people in the organization to overcome a business issue (that is, their performance).

The five phases are guided by a series of workbooks with job aids, planners, process flows, reflection opportunities, and prompting questions. It is the responsibility of a learning and development group to create, update, and train people in the use of these workbooks. Let’s take a minute to look closer at each phase:

• Performance detective. This phase includes a root cause analysis that the sponsors and talent team, and, if needed, the learners themselves, will complete. This ensures alignment with key stakeholders about the exact scope of the problem and how it is affecting the business. This phase is particularly important because the performance detective frequently uncovers obstacles that are not primarily knowledge gaps and require support from stakeholders outside learning and development.

• Performance architect. In this phase, you design a potential solution, and then move into co-creation of components of the solution. It’s important to make sure that everything is focused back on the core issue affecting the business. You already know which problems are caused by skills, knowledge, experience, processes, or systems gaps, because they were defined in the performance detective phase. If the architect phase is successful, you’ll leave with a general set of goals and a way to measure success.

• Performance master builder. The performance master builder role uses the critical tasks identified by the performance detective as a starting point, and then co-creates effective solutions based on the performance architect’s design. From that point, the process uses standard checklists to bring together resources and tasks to develop the optimal solution.

• Performance game changer. Think of this as the road map or a launch pad for the change. Here, you might be creating a series of milestones, communication plans, learning opportunities, opportunities for reflection, meetings, and so forth. You are ensuring the successful implementation of your solutions.

• Performance tracker. In this final phase, you return to the first problem definition and desired performance to determine if your solution has moved the needle on performance. If the performance architect said success was a 20 percent increase in sales, this is when you find out if you met your goal and analyze why you did or did not. If you did not meet your goal, you may consider starting the process from the beginning. Chances are, there was a failure in one of the first two phases.

This was a simplified version of the model described in 70:20:10 Towards 100% Performance. Throughout the entire process, you are always considering the business problem and then designing to reduce or eliminate it. You are never designing to increase skills; instead, you’re focusing on performance. Of course, to eliminate or reduce the problem, you will have to increase skills, change the way people work, and change their mindset. The difference is in how you approach it. You can be confident that your solution is highly relevant and highly likely to succeed because you know what you are trying to solve, what is influencing it, and what success looks like to your stakeholders, and you have a structured way to overcome the problem.

One of the reasons that L&D is often seen as outside the core business is that they use specific training language. Since 70-20-10 is so closely aligned to core performance measures, this language barrier is less of a problem than it is for other models. When following the framework, you will start using business terms, understand the core business areas, know the core tasks of your various teams, determine which other areas of the business influence that team, and become much more embedded in the organization. You will also develop a much deeper and broader network, increasing your credibility and personal brand as the organization starts to see you not only as an expert in your field but also an expert on your organization’s business. Because L&D touches so many areas of the business, you have unique opportunities to gain a far broader understanding of the organization than most people who are not in the C-suite.

So, why should you adopt the model? Why is this such a relatively new topic of conversation in L&D? As Seth Godin stated at the ATD International Conference & EXPO in May 2019, the rate of change you are experiencing today will never slow down. In fact, the hectic pace of business you experience now is the slowest it’s ever going to be. All organizations are experiencing the same pace of change, and our employees must grow, adapt, and learn quicker and quicker. Thus, we need to evolve quicker to serve them. In today’s world, employees must be able to learn in the flow of work because the work is constantly changing, and their roles are adapting even if their titles remain the same. This also means that simply continuing to do things the way they were always done is sure to fail. We need to be able to identify good practices (current and future) and apply them to new situations. Experience helps you make better decisions and exchange can change your perspective, but if no one has experienced what you are doing, you may need to supplement with formal learning on the topic. And, of course, L&D may need to curate more and foster a new organizational culture that is OK with sharing things that will become outdated and having peers point out when that happens. It is not a simple transition, but it is a highly valuable one for your L&D teams to make.

So, what does the 70-20-10 framework look like in practice? To answer that, we turn to two case studies.

Case Study: Hilti

By Rachel Hutchinson

Hilti is a multinational manufacturer and marketer of products, software, and services for the construction industry based in Lichtenstein. In 2015, the company began overhauling its entire approach to learning and development.

The L&D team cast its net broadly in the search for useful information that could help form a new learning strategy. They solicited feedback from more than 4,000 employees, created focus groups, poured through research whitepapers, and benchmarked against almost 60 organizations.

The team saw some emerging organizational changes that would require adaptation. For example, the normal turnover rate was increasing due to promotions and expansion, meaning a full third of the company’s leadership changed every year. Hilti’s speed of business was accelerating, and change was happening faster than the team could develop and roll out new formal training. As a result, frontline leaders were asked to be more independent and agile every year.

Demographically, Hilti was achieving greater diversity in gender, age, and educational background. Previously, it had hired heavily from a pool of candidates with a construction background, but that pool was shrinking and the skills a construction background brought were becoming less essential. In addition, it was increasingly becoming a Gen Y and Gen Z company, which meant that a majority of employees weren’t used to learning primarily through formal education. Instead, employees resoundingly stated that they wanted to learn on the go—often in noisy construction environments, inside car “offices” while on the road, or on public transportation while commuting to work.

The team had to figure out how to go from primarily offering formal learning to making it possible for the workforce to search for the information they required at the moment of need. Need to demonstrate a tool to a customer or prepare a presentation for a customer CEO? And nearly 75 percent of its workforce wanted to skip the two-week orientation and just have easily accessed step-by-step content.

The 70-20-10 approach became the backbone of the new learning strategy. Much of the formal online training was supplemented with workbooks and job aids that would guide the participant and manager through learning on the job. When the company shifted to a new digital and social learning platform, it became easier to provide easy access to bite-size, peer-created learning moments. The team didn’t try to do away with formal learning either; instead, it tried to increase what was available for the 70 and 20 parts of the model. It was able to modify an existing classroom session to start with a peer exchange, which cost nothing and allowed local facilitators to see the power of exchange.

The new approach had a number of advantages:

• It de-emphasized formal learning without eliminating it.

• It empowered the learner and manager to create solutions.

• It limited development to topics aligned with critical company goals.

• Learning became part of the flow of work and not distinct from it.

• It created a form of measurement beyond merely passing a test that may or may not reflect the participant’s ability to transfer knowledge to the workplace.

Hilti rolled out two major programs as part of the new learning strategy to help make the mindset shift from sending team members to the repair shop to helping them learn what was needed when it was needed. The first was the 70-20-10 Expert Program, which was aimed at employees at the director level and above in departments such as learning and development, Lean, and logistics, where there was high interest and they’d previously used many large-scale formal learning programs. This group would become the champions needed to support the success of the initiative.

The second program was the 70-20-10 Master Builder Program, which was for any employee responsible for developing training. To be eligible, participants had to have an ongoing project geared toward helping build a competency or improve performance. Some of these participants were instructional designers, but many were from other departments and performed part-time training.

These programs also allowed participants to learn about 70-20-10 in a 70-20-10 environment. They had a mixture of formal 70-20-10 training, a 70-20-10 project, and social support with other participants. Participants received feedback from Hilti stakeholders, peers, and the 70:20:10 Institute, all while interacting within the new digital learning platform so that they could see how it could be used to change performance.

These two programs transformed Hilti’s entire approach to developing its employees. For example, the New Leader Onboarding Journey, a six-month structured path for new management, started in 2018. During the first 90 days of the program, when participants are first adjusting to their new positions, everything is delivered and shared online. They spend this time communicating with peers, completing a self-assessment, finding on-demand support, referencing job aids, and identifying areas they need to work on during the rest of the program. Around the three-month mark, participants attend classroom training, where they receive formal training on topics such as emotional intelligence and plan out the next three months of their development. They then create a 90-day action plan for their team or department, which is then approved by the next level up. The 70-20-10 framework has successfully helped align learning and development programs to the needs of the company. Participants in the New Leader Onboarding Journey report that they have a much better perspective on expectations.

Figure 9-1 shows an example of a 70-20-10 training request. Notice that the form asks for the desired business outcome, not the subject of the training.

Figure 9-1. Training Request Example

Case Study: UPS

By Alan Abbott

UPS, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is the world’s largest package delivery company and a leading global provider of specialized transportation and logistics services. Among its many responsibilities, the talent management department creates and curates learning and development content for more than 50,000 members of management.

UPS’s talent management department is influenced by a number of training and development strategies. However, the 70-20-10 framework is central to its leadership career development guides. Sheryl Lee, a manager at UPS Talent Management, has been preaching the framework for years, calling it “the secret sauce of our development program.”

Lee has found that by including 70-20-10 as a reference in personal development and promoting it whenever possible, she hasn’t had to force the concepts on HR professionals. When talent managers kept coming to Lee for more information on the framework, she created a job aid that provides examples of appropriate activities for each component of 70-20-10. Education might include accessing some curated content or attending a class. Exposure might include asking for feedback from peers, obtaining a mentor, or expanding a network. Experience activities include solving real problems in a business resource group, championing a new initiative that stretches the employee’s abilities, or volunteering expertise in a new situation. The job aid, which is now available in nine languages, can be accessed at a number of places in the company LMS, and it forms the basis for two management development initiatives.

Every year, UPS’s talent management employees work with managers to create a development plan for themselves. When they enter their plans into the learning management system, they’re presented with a 70-20-10 template requiring every task to be categorized as formal education, experience, or exposure. They’re encouraged to keep the time commitment roughly proportional to 70-20-10.

New leadership at UPS participates in the supervisor learning path, which has a mixture of curated instructional content, experience documents to prompt reflections on different areas of day-to-day performance, and exposure exercises that guide learners to peers, teams, and business resource groups that could give them access to social learning.

Summary

The 70-20-10 framework is used for developing employee skills and knowledge in a way that de-emphasizes but doesn’t eliminate formal training. Instead, it places formal training within a framework that includes on-the-job training and social learning. Articles, classes, and videos are only part of a journey that also includes stretch assignments, job aids, workbooks, discussion boards, meetings, and group work.

Companies are increasingly acknowledging the need to extend learning beyond a single event, but aren’t always sure how to deliver this additional training or justify the time commitment for learners. It can also be difficult to concisely and clearly explain the goals and methodology of a training initiative. The 70-20-10 framework solves these issues and a number of other persistent challenges in training and development.

You might be wondering how 70-20-10 differs from ADDIE and SAM. The biggest difference is that ADDIE and SAM start with learning as the core component—they analyze what people need to learn, create learning objectives, develop and implement mostly formal learning solutions, and evaluate to determine if anything needs to be redesigned before the next iteration or learning solution. The 70-20-10 framework looks at the business problem. What does the business need to be more effective and reach the business goals? In the organizational ecosystem, what is affecting the current performance? What systems, processes, or behaviors need to be adapted? From there you can incorporate formal learning solutions, work with your Lean department to optimize processes, or work with IT to modify restrictive systems. L&D becomes truly integrated into the business and acts as a business partner, not a repair shop.

Even though the term is 70-20-10, the numbers are really a generalization. Each business problem may require somewhat different ratios. While there are structured phases to follow, it’s unlikely that any two solutions will be identical. You also need to remember that, like any change management effort, shifting your team’s and your stakeholders’ mindsets about the role of learning and development will take time. And it’s possible that some won’t want to come on the journey with you—not every stakeholder is going to be an early adopter of a new approach. You are responsible for communicating what is changing, why it is changing, and, above all, what benefit it has for the greater organization.

Even when you have the initial momentum, it’s important to let stakeholders know that the specific ratio of learning opportunities will vary by learner and development area. The framework is elegant and easy to understand. You could even leave the numbers out entirely and explain to your stakeholders that you’re creating a system that involves formal education, on-the-job experience, and social exposure. What matters most is that the framework provides a path to extend learning outside the classroom into evidence-based, on-the-job, and social-learning activities. This will change the way you look at and talk about performance solutions in your organization and improve your connection to the organization.

Adoption can take many forms. Hilti overhauled its entire learning and development approach, trained key stakeholders in the framework, and marketed the changes that were happening. UPS gradually expanded the framework’s influence until talent managers in other business units were asking for ways to promote it. There is no right or wrong way to start using 70-20-10. No matter how you go about it, you’ll likely be taking a multiphase, iterative journey as you further define your ecosystem for learning.

Key Takeaways

The 70-20-10 framework starts with the business problem rather than the needs of the employees.

The percentage ratios are suggestions, not rigorous standards.

The 70-20-10 framework does not eliminate formal training, and in many cases recognizes that formal training is the starting point. However, it does say that learning can take place in a variety of formats and locations, and suggests using a variety of learning modalities, such as formal learning, social learning with others, and learning from a variety of experiences.

While the framework construct uses training language, the language of business and organization can be used to make the process more appealing to executives.

Questions for Reflection and Further Action

1. How does your learning strategy ratio align with the 70-20-10 framework both specifically and in general terms, including incorporating a variety of ways to build capability? What about from a budget perspective? What about for different types of employee roles?

2. Can you incorporate ideas from this framework and the case studies to advance social learning and on-the-job training into your current development programs?

3. How might technologies, tools, and techniques enable the three types of learning to be more fluid or for the ratios to change? For example, how might adding an augmented reality experience into a formal class focus on performance and add value to the experience?

4. Does having a variety of experiences (such as work details or rotational assignments), project teams, and discussion groups guarantee capability building and performance improvement? How might you know?