The 70-20-10 Learning Model: Complete Guide

For the first few years of running a company, I thought employee development meant sending people to courses. A product training workshop here, a leadership webinar there, maybe an industry conference once a year. That was "investing in people." The problem was that none of it seemed to stick. Employees attended, nodded along, and went back to doing things exactly the way they had before.

Then I came across the 70-20-10 model, and it reframed everything. The research behind it suggested that the vast majority of professional development does not happen in courses at all. It happens through experience: doing challenging work, solving real problems, making mistakes, and figuring things out. In this view, courses contribute roughly 10% of what shapes someone into a capable professional. The remaining 90% comes from the job itself and from the people around you.

This guide covers the 70-20-10 learning model in full: where it came from, what each bucket actually means, how to apply it, what the critics say, how it differs from other models, and how it works in practice at businesses of different sizes.

What Is the 70-20-10 Learning Model?

The 70-20-10 model is a framework for understanding how people develop professional skills and capabilities. It proposes that learning happens through three channels in roughly these proportions: 70% from experiential learning (hands-on work, stretch assignments, problem-solving), 20% from social learning (feedback, mentoring, observation, coaching), and 10% from formal learning (courses, workshops, reading, certifications).

The model is not prescriptive about specific activities. It describes where learning predominantly occurs, not where it should occur. An employee who spends 100% of their development time in formal training is not violating a rule. They are, according to the model, leaving 90% of their development potential untapped by not investing in experiential and social learning channels.

Understanding this distinction matters because the model is frequently misapplied. It is not a budget allocation formula ("spend 70% of your training budget on experiential learning"). It is not permission to eliminate formal training ("courses are only 10%, so cut them"). It is an observation about how effective professionals actually develop, with implications for how organizations design development programs.

Where the 70-20-10 Model Came From

The 70-20-10 model originated from research conducted at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Greensboro, North Carolina. Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Ann Morrison surveyed 191 successful executives drawn from six large US corporations and asked them to identify the key experiences, relationships, and events that had shaped their professional development.

The findings were published in McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison's 1988 book "The Lessons of Experience." The executives attributed their development primarily to challenging job assignments (such as leading a turnaround, managing a cross-functional project, or handling a high-stakes negotiation), secondarily to other people (bosses, mentors, role models), and lastly to formal training programs.

The three numbers came later. Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger attached the 70-20-10 proportions to that body of research in their 1996 book "The Career Architect Development Planner," and the shorthand spread through the learning and development (L&D) industry from there. That gap between the study and the ratio is worth holding on to, because it explains why the numbers feel more precise than the evidence behind them.

The model was later popularized by Charles Jennings, who co-founded the 70:20:10 Institute and advocated for its adoption across corporate learning organizations. Jennings emphasized that the ratios were not rigid rules but a "reference model" for designing learning strategies that match how development actually happens.

It is worth noting what the original research was and was not. It was a study of executive development at six large corporations in the 1980s, built on what those executives recalled about their own careers, not a controlled experiment measuring learning across all roles and industries. The general finding, that experience and relationships matter more than formal training, is widely accepted. The exact 70-20-10 ratio has not held up.

The Three Buckets Explained

Each bucket in the 70-20-10 model represents a different channel through which professional learning occurs. Understanding what each bucket contains, and equally what it does not contain, is essential for applying the model effectively.

70%: Experiential Learning in Detail

Experiential learning is the largest bucket because it is where skill application meets real consequences. Reading about customer objections in a training manual is formal learning. Handling a customer objection in a live sales call is experiential learning. The difference is stakes: experiential learning involves real outcomes that matter, and that is why it produces the deepest skill development.

The CCL research identifies a short list of assignments that do most of the developing: stretch assignments (tasks that reach beyond what someone can already do but stay achievable with effort), cross-functional work (exposure to functions outside the role someone normally works in), turnaround situations (fixing something broken), start-from-scratch projects (building something new), and increased scope of responsibility.

Federal regulators reach a similar conclusion inside their own subject matter. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes recommended practices for safety and health programs. They state that effective training and education can be provided outside a formal classroom setting. They also say that peer-to-peer training, on-the-job training, and worksite demonstrations can be effective in conveying safety concepts, hazards and their controls, and good work practices. That is a safety-specific finding rather than a general learning one, but it comes from an agency with nothing to sell.

The critical nuance: experience alone does not equal learning. A person can have 10 years of experience and repeat the same year 10 times. Experiential learning becomes developmental when it includes reflection (what happened and why), feedback (how others perceived the performance), and application (consciously doing something differently next time). Without these elements, experience creates habits, not growth.

20%: Social Learning in Detail

Social learning is the most underinvested bucket in most organizations because it is the hardest to formalize. You can buy a course (formal learning). You can assign a project (experiential learning). But you cannot simply purchase a mentoring relationship or schedule trust-building. Social learning happens through human interaction, and human interaction requires infrastructure, not just intent.

The social learning bucket includes feedback from managers and peers (both formal reviews and informal comments), mentoring and coaching relationships (both assigned and organic), observation and shadowing (watching how a skilled person handles a situation), peer discussions and collaborative problem-solving, and network building (learning from people outside your immediate team or organization).

For growing businesses, the social learning challenge is structural. Enterprise organizations can create formal mentoring programs, leadership development cohorts, and executive coaching engagements. A small company has none of these. Social learning at smaller scale happens through scheduled manager check-ins, buddy systems for new hires, cross-functional shadowing, and a culture where asking questions is normal rather than a sign of weakness.

The federal Registered Apprenticeship program is built on the same idea. The Department of Labor describes a registered program as structured on-the-job learning with mentorship, pairing on-the-job learning with instruction from an experienced mentor.

Registered apprenticeship is the 70-20-10 shape in a regulated form: apprentices learn through the work, through a journeyworker who watches them do it, and through related technical instruction alongside.

Peer Learning and How to Set It Up

Peer learning, also called peer-to-peer learning, is skill transfer between people at a similar level with no trainer in the room. It is the cheapest thing in the 20% bucket and the one that gets scheduled last, because everyone assumes colleagues will teach each other whenever the need comes up.

Three formats work at small scale. Pair two people on one task for a week and let the less experienced one drive. Ask whoever just solved a hard problem to walk the team through it for ten minutes. Rotate a recurring duty so a second person can run it before the first takes vacation.

What makes any of it stick is a named owner and a date. Peer learning that runs on goodwill produces a burst of enthusiasm and then nothing, while a shadowing session on the calendar actually happens. The person teaching usually gains as much as the person learning, which is a good reason to assign it to someone you want to grow.

10%: Formal Learning in Detail

Formal learning is the smallest bucket by proportion but the most visible. It is what most people picture when they hear "training": a course, a workshop, a certification program, a webinar, a training video. It is the bucket where organizations spend the most money and track the most metrics, even though the model suggests it contributes the least to overall development.

This does not mean formal learning is unimportant. The 10% provides the foundation that makes the other 90% productive. Formal learning delivers structured knowledge transfer (teaching someone what they need to know before they can learn from experience), compliance requirements (training mandated by law or regulation), baseline competency (ensuring everyone starts from the same knowledge floor), and credentials and certifications (proof of knowledge for regulated roles).

The practical takeaway is not to reduce formal training but to right-size it. If your company spends 80% of its development effort on formal training, the 70-20-10 model suggests rebalancing: invest more in creating structured experiences and social learning opportunities, not less in the formal training that supports them.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment of training and development managers is projected to grow 6 percent from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations.

What Counts as Formal Training

Formal training is any learning somebody designed in advance. It has an objective, a defined structure, an instructor or a module, and almost always a record that it was completed. A compliance course, a certification program, a scheduled workshop, and a recorded product walkthrough all qualify, whatever their length.

The defining feature is intent, not venue. Two people talking through a problem at a desk is informal, even when a great deal gets learned. Schedule that same conversation, give it an agenda, and record who attended, and it has become formal. That record is why compliance topics almost always live in this bucket.

Informal Learning: The Other 90%

Informal learning is everything that develops a person outside a designed program: doing the work, asking a colleague, watching how someone else handles a difficult call, fixing a mistake. In this model it is the 70% and the 20% combined, which is the whole reason the 10% looks so small next to it.

The trap is reading the invisible column as free. Informal learning spends the time of everyone who gets interrupted, and it produces bad habits as reliably as good ones when nobody checks the work. The 10% is what gives the other 90% something correct to build on.

Enterprise vs Small Business: Same Model, Different Execution

The 70-20-10 model was built by studying executives at large corporations. Applying it at a growing business requires translation because the activities that fill each bucket look completely different at a small business versus a large enterprise.

The irony is that growing businesses often practice 70-20-10 more naturally than enterprises do. At a small company, employees handle diverse tasks from day one (70%), learn by watching colleagues in the same room (20%), and take compliance training when required (10%). They just do not call it 70-20-10. The model gives a name and intentionality to what already happens informally.

Where the model adds the most value at smaller scale is in the 20% bucket. Experiential learning happens whether you plan it or not because people do their jobs. Formal learning happens because compliance requires it.

Social learning, the feedback, mentoring, and coaching that accelerates skill development, often gets squeezed out when the manager is also the founder, the salesperson, and the customer service lead. Scheduling the 20% is the highest-leverage intervention for growing teams.

How to Apply the 70-20-10 Model

Applying 70-20-10 does not require an L&D department, a learning management system, or a formal development program. It requires intentionality about three things: what experiences you assign, what relationships you facilitate, and what formal training you provide.

Step 1: Audit Your Current Mix

Ask yourself: how do employees currently develop skills at your company? If the honest answer is "they figure it out" (unstructured 70%) plus "they take compliance training" (minimal 10%) with no social learning in between, the 20% is your gap. If the answer is "we send them to courses" (heavy 10%) without assigning challenging work or facilitating feedback, the 70% is your gap.

Step 2: Design the 70% Deliberately

Identify the tasks and projects that develop specific skills. Instead of training someone on project management through a course, assign them a real project with a defined scope, budget, and deadline. Instead of training someone on customer communication through role-plays, have them handle three customer calls with a debrief after each one.

Step 3: Build the 20% Infrastructure

Schedule what you want to happen. Weekly manager 1:1s. Buddy assignments for new hires. Monthly cross-functional shadowing sessions. Quarterly skip-level conversations. Social learning requires time, proximity (physical or virtual), and permission to engage. Without scheduled touchpoints, it gets deprioritized under the weight of daily operations.

Step 4: Right-Size the 10%

Focus formal training on three categories: compliance (legally required), foundation (knowledge the person cannot acquire through experience alone), and gap-filling (targeted training for specific identified skill gaps). Everything else, including most of what traditionally fills corporate training catalogs, is better learned through experience and social interaction.

The 90-Day 70-20-10 Framework

The 70-20-10 ratios are not static. During a new hire's first 90 days, the mix shifts from formal-heavy in week one to experience-heavy by month three. This progression makes intuitive sense: you cannot learn from experience until you have enough context to understand what you are experiencing.

The framework illustrates a principle that applies beyond onboarding: the right ratio depends on the person's stage. Someone new to a role, a company, or an industry needs more formal and social learning. Someone experienced in the role needs more experiential learning through stretch assignments and increased responsibility.

Criticism and Limitations of the 70-20-10 Model

The 70-20-10 model has legitimate critics, and their objections are worth understanding before adopting the framework. Honest engagement with criticism makes the model more useful, not less.

The Evidence Base Is Thin

The original CCL research was a qualitative survey of 191 executives, not a controlled experiment. Academic reviewers say so plainly: a London Business School analysis of the framework concludes that "the problem with the concept, however, is that it has little empirical validation." The numbers became industry shorthand despite lacking the scientific foundation that the precision of "70-20-10" implies.

The same analysis put its own survey data through the model and found that 40/40/20 would be a more accurate estimate of the three proportions than 70/20/10. Its authors then add the more useful point: what matters is not how the three activities work in isolation but how they are combined.

A review of the wider literature reached a similar verdict. According to Alan Clardy (Human Resource Development Review, 2018), it is widely accepted that informal learning plays a critical role in workplace learning, yet the evidence that 70% or more of it happens informally is weak. Informal learning clearly matters. How large a share it makes up is not settled.

The Sample Was Narrow

The research subjects were 191 successful and high-potential executives at six large US corporations in the 1980s. Whether the same ratios apply to entry-level employees, frontline workers, technical specialists, or people in different cultural contexts is unknown. The model may accurately describe how executives develop while poorly describing how a warehouse team lead, a customer service representative, or a software engineer develops.

The Model Can Be Weaponized Against Formal Training

Organizations have used the "10% formal" finding to justify cutting training budgets. This is a misapplication. The model describes where learning occurs, not where investment should be allocated. Formal training often requires the most investment per hour precisely because it involves structured content, qualified instructors, and dedicated time away from work. Cutting formal training because "it is only 10%" ignores that the 10% provides the foundation for the other 90%.

It Assumes Access to Good Experiences and Good People

The 70% assumes the person has access to challenging, developmental experiences. The 20% assumes they have access to skilled colleagues, effective managers, and mentoring relationships. In workplaces with poor management, limited task variety, or toxic cultures, the 70% and 20% may reinforce bad habits rather than develop good skills. The model works best in environments that are already reasonably functional. It is not a cure for dysfunctional workplaces.

70-20-10 vs Other Learning Frameworks

The 70-20-10 model is one of several frameworks used in learning and development. Understanding how it relates to others helps you choose the right lens for different situations.

The 70-20-10 model is unique in that it focuses on the source of learning rather than the process of designing, delivering, or evaluating it. Other frameworks tell you how to build effective training. The 70-20-10 model tells you that training alone is not enough, regardless of how well it is designed.

Practical Examples by Role

How the 70-20-10 model plays out depends entirely on the role. Here are four examples showing what each bucket looks like in practice for different job functions.

The pattern across all four roles: the 70% is always the core job, done with intentional progression in difficulty. The 20% is always interaction with people who know more or different things. The 10% is always foundational knowledge that the person cannot reasonably acquire through experience alone.

Common Mistakes When Applying 70-20-10

Six mistakes consistently undermine organizations that adopt the 70-20-10 model. Most stem from taking the ratios too literally or applying the enterprise version without adaptation.

Frequently Asked Questions