When most people think about learning and development, they think about training.
A workshop. A lunch and learn. A leadership session.
Basically, a formal program with a nice agenda, some slides and maybe a decent lunch option if we’re lucky.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a good workshop. Don’t even get me started on my love for a great workbook. However, if we’re talking about how people actually learn, formal training is only a small piece of the puzzle.
The 70-20-10 principle tells us that roughly:
- 70% of learning comes from experience
- 20% comes from social learning
- 10% comes from formal training
When you look at it this way most companies spend the majority of their time thinking about the smallest piece of the pie.
Client’s often ask, “What training should we send them to?” or “What workshop will fix this?”
While we love these questions, we need to ensure we follow up with another one.
“How intentional are you being with everything that happens after the workshop?”
That’s where most learning actually happens. So, what’s the 70%?
- It can look like colleagues sharing stories about how the company’s values showed up in a specific situation, so those values become more than words on a wall.
- It can look like structured shadowing before someone steps into a new role.
- It can look like stretch projects with clear expectations instead of tossing someone into the deep end and yelling, “You’ve got this!” from the pool deck.
- It looks like creating feedback loops before the mistake becomes a pattern.
- It looks like debriefing projects, so the lesson does not disappear the second the job is done.
- It looks like teaching managers how to coach in the moment, not just correct after the fact.
- It looks like asking, “What do we want this person to learn from this experience?” before the experience happens.
The big point I’m trying to make here is to be INTENTIONAL. If you’re not, people are still going to learn, they just might not learn what you hoped they would. Instead, they might end up learning the shortcut rather than the process, or that asking questions makes them look weak.
Oof. That stings.
The formal workshop is still important (think of it as the spark) but it shouldn’t be the whole strategy.
The real growth happens afterwards in the experiences, conversations, feedback, coaching, repetition, and systems that make the right behaviors easier to repeat.
Your people are already learning. So, I challenge you to ask yourself, are you being intentional about what they are learning?
