70-20-10 Model

What the three parts mean

• 70% experience. Learning by doing the work: stretch assignments, new projects, rotations, solving real problems, covering for a manager, owning a process. It includes structured on-the-job training and the everyday trial and error of the role.
• 20% other people. Learning through relationships: feedback from a manager, mentoring, coaching, peer review, communities of practice, watching a colleague handle a hard call. This is the core of social learning.
• 10% formal. Courses, classroom sessions, e-learning, certifications, reading.

The point isn't the exact numbers. It's that formal training on its own rarely changes performance unless it's connected to practice on the job and feedback from people.

Where the numbers came from

The model traces to research at the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s. Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger asked successful executives to describe the key events that shaped their development. Their answers clustered into challenging assignments, other people (often bosses) and coursework, roughly in a 70/20/10 split. Lombardo and Eichinger later popularized the ratio in leadership development materials.

Two cautions follow. The original sample was managers and executives, not frontline staff or new hires. And the ratio came from people's recollections, not controlled measurement of skill gains. Critics rightly point out that it's a heuristic. For a new hire in a regulated role, such as a pharmacy technician or a claims adjuster, formal training is a much bigger share of early learning than 10%.

Worked example: developing a new team lead

An operations center promotes Maria, a top-performing agent, to team lead of 14 people. A 70-20-10 plan for her first six months might look like this:

• 70%: She runs daily huddles from week one, owns her team's schedule adherence, handles escalations with a senior lead nearby for the first month, and leads one improvement project, such as cutting repeat calls on a billing issue.
• 20%: Weekly one-on-ones with her manager focused on real situations from that week, a mentor from another site who was promoted from the floor, and a peer group of new team leads that meets every two weeks.
• 10%: A two-day new-manager course covering coaching conversations, attendance policy, and employment law basics, plus short modules on the workforce tools.

The formal course is still essential; she can't learn the legal side of discipline on the job. But the plan expects most of her growth to come from doing the work with support. Writing it into an individual development plan makes the 70 and 20 visible instead of assumed.

How to apply it without misusing it

Use the model as a design check: for any program, ask what happens on the job and with other people before and after the formal piece. A three-hour coaching workshop for supervisors works better when each attendee then coaches two agents that week and reviews the recordings with their manager. Without that, the 10% fades quickly.

Don't use it to cut formal training budgets on the theory that only 10% matters. Experience without structure can teach bad habits as easily as good ones, and the 70% depends on managers having time and skill to give feedback. Also, don't try to track hours against the ratio. Measure performance outcomes instead, as you would with the Kirkpatrick model.

How it differs from blended learning

Blended learning usually means mixing formal delivery formats: classroom, live virtual, e-learning, assessments. The 70-20-10 model is broader. It counts learning that isn't delivered at all, such as a stretch assignment or a hallway conversation, as part of development. A blended course can still sit entirely inside the 10%.