70/20/10 is not an excuse

In Culture Hacks, I wrote about the 70/20/10 model: the 1980s framework from the Centre for Creative Leadership that splits employee development across on-the-job experience, social learning and formal training. It's elegant, it's cited endlessly, and in most organisations it's ignored.

Organisations love invoking 70/20/10 to justify not paying for training. ‘You'll learn most on the job anyway’ they say, confidently, having done absolutely nothing to structure that learning.

Having seen it work really well, here's what that deliberate structure looks like: each employee has a written development plan that maps specific experiences, named mentors (who are regularly available to them) and scheduled learning moments against actual goals they can achieve. Not vague aspirations but achievable goals so that progress can be felt, seen and measured.

The 70/20/10 model works. The laziness with which it’s often applied doesn’t.