70-20-10 learning and managers
Posted by
Most organisations subscribe to the idea that 70% of learning should be by undertaking stretching work carried out on-the-job, 20% should be learning from people, and 10% via courses and reading.
Are you equipping your managers to manage the 70%?
The 70-20-10 model can’t be successful without this essential ingredient.
The origin of the 70-20-10 model of learning lies in a survey of high-performing managers carried out by McCall, Lombardo and Eichinger at the Center for Creative Leadership. They found out that 70% of the learning was self-driven – from tough jobs that forced rapid learning (including by failure), from people (mostly their boss) and from courses and reading.
“Development generally begins with a realization of current or future need and the motivation to do something about it. This might come from feedback, a mistake, watching other people’s reactions, failing or not being up to a task – in other words, from experience. The odds are that development will be about 70% from on-the-job experiences, working on tasks and problems; about 20% from feedback and working around good and bad examples of the need, and 10% from courses and reading.” – Lombardo & Eichinger
In most organisations, talent teams and HR experts support a tiny minority of high potentials to get rapid learning from stretching workplace challenges. People who are lucky enough to be in Talent Pools can hope to get supported stretch via individually designed secondments, projects or assignments – and to be mentored by a Director. This might be available to perhaps 50 people out of an organisation of 8,000 people – around 0.6% of the population.
The vast majority of people in your organisation will be reporting to a manager who doesn’t think in terms of designing stretching assignments for each individual, in order to drive feedback and growth in their skills and capacities. Most managers – and employees – have been conditioned by their schooling to think of learning as an out-of-work activity requiring a classroom and a teacher. Learning need = training course. The quality of many PDPs is testament to this lack of understanding of how to drive workplace learning.
Some organisations support the 20% – by training managers to be coaches, and senior managers to be mentors. But this still doesn’t address the findings of the original research. This found that the most successful performers don’t need a teacher or a facilitator – they take the initiative. They volunteer for stretch assignments. Then they source their own experts and mentors (including at their own or junior levels), and actively apprentice themselves to these people in order to learn fast and rise to the challenge they have taken on.
In a fast-moving 21st century organisation, you need more self-driven learners like this. Skilling people up in workplace learning should be our overriding L&D priority.
Do you have anything in your core training, that develops managers’ or individuals’ ability to create fantastic workplace learning?
Or is the 70% unsupported?
We’ve been experimenting with developing people’s ability to design and carry out top quality workplace learning – without a formally appointed mentor or facilitator. We don’t just want to create great workplace learning – for example by facilitated action-learning sets – this essentially replicates the idea that you need a ‘teacher’ of some kind.
We want to skill managers and individuals up as workplace learning designers. We believe that all organisations need to provide this as part of their core management development. That’s the only way to ensure that everyone gets an impressive PDP.
Early results are encouraging. We’ve already introduced high flier learning into emerging talent programmes for potential leaders, with great results – management observed a 32% increase in self-directed learning, and a complete shift in culture.
An example was a group of 8 people charged to develop their ability to influence without authority. The group interviewed the Director in charge of their facility and found out the names of 4 people he thought were particularly good at influencing without authority. They probed to find out what he’d seen them do that impressed him, and how their approach differed from that of less effective people. Then in pairs they went to interview each of the 4 Influencers to get a blow-by-blow account of how they had approached tough influencing challenges. They also asked for the names of first line leaders who were good influencers – and interviewed those people. In some cases they were able to observe these team leaders in meetings where they needed to influence others. They consolidated all their findings into a model of influencing. Finally, to build up their skills as well as their understanding, they roped in HR and a high performing manager, and did a series of influencing role-plays and sought feedback on their personal strengths and weaknesses. Everything was organised by themselves, on their own initiative, without any input from an expert.
The great thing is, that when these high potentials become managers, they will create great PDPs by getting their own staff to drive workplace learning – because they know how effective it is.
We’ve now developed a complete new Talent Manager module for line managers, called Think Development – equipping them to design excellent workplace learning that team members drive themselves.
If you want to develop your managers’ skills in driving 70% of the learning, key learning from our experience is:
- Equip managers with the principles of what really accelerates learning – for example, assigning a stretch task will make learning urgent; and what happens if you leave 48 hours before consolidating the learning.
- Give them tools that make it quick and easy to support their team to undertake a piece of self-directed learning. For example, what are all the stages a high-flier learner would go through to set up an opportunity to shadow, and how would they extract maximum benefit from it? Our solution to this is a set of self-directed learning plans covering key learning actions, which can be given to a team member. The team member will then set up their own self-directed learning, discuss this with the manager, and report on outcomes.
- You can’t master self-directed learning without experiencing it yourself. Set up a driver that gets managers using the plans for personal learning. Once a manager has carried out a plan, it will stick, and be a resource for life.
If you really take the 70-20-10 model seriously – you have to equip managers with great skills and tools for tackling the 70%.