The Other 90 Percent of Learning

Jay Cross - 7/30/12

The only way to keep up is to work and learn with others. People we’ve overlooked, workers with experience, have to learn every day, too.

Knowledge workers learn three to four times more from experience than interaction with bosses, coaches and mentors. And they learn about twice as much from those conversations compared to structured courses and programs.

The shorthand label for this viewpoint is 70:20:10 — 70 percent experiential, 20 percent coaching and 10 percent formal. It’s a handy framework to keep in mind, particularly when someone mistakenly thinks all learning is formal.

Like Moore’s Law that describes the growth in the performance of microchips, the 70:20:10 framework for learning is the result of observation, not something scientifically proven. Like Moore’s Law, it’s also an approximation — give or take a little depending on the context.

My partners and I at the Internet Time Alliance have talked with hundreds, if not thousands, of managers about workplace learning in general and 70:20:10 in particular. It resonates with them. They nod their heads in agreement that the numbers square with their experience.

This raises a question: Why do learning departments and CLOs spend so much time and resources on the 10 percent when there is plenty to do for the other 90 percent? It’s a legacy from an earlier time.

Training was simpler when the world was predictable, progress was slow and the task was teaching people how to do their jobs. Today’s world is a kaleidoscope, information is a tsunami and workers face novel, complex situations every day. The only way to keep up is to work and learn with others.

Learning is no longer separable from work. People need to learn on the job, not apart from it, and they need to learn in real time, not a month before. What’s important is tacit knowledge — the know-how that’s taught by experience as opposed to the know-what that is written in books or a syllabus.

Training used to be for novices, aspiring managers, leaders and technicians; certification was for compliance. Today the rate of change makes us all novices at something. People whom we’ve habitually overlooked, workers with know-how and experience, have to learn every day, too. We cannot continue to neglect them. From a talent management perspective, it’s no longer acceptable to overlook pre-hires and alumni, either.