Don’t Think Training First for Employee Development

Here’s a quick question. Where did you have your most impactful learning experience? 

A. In a class or a course
B. In a meeting
C. At a conference or in a workshop
D. In your work, completing a project or task

Did you answer D? I’ve asked this same question numerous times to organizational managers, leaders, and at presentations that I’ve given, and the responses are always the same. The vast majority (around 80 percent) agree that their greatest learning experience happened while doing actual work — solving a problem, completing a task, and/or collaborating with others. Interesting too is that this high response rate reinforces some research initially done at the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1990s. It was here that the 70-20-10 principle was born. If you’re not familiar with this principle, these numbers loosely represent the percentages of how people learn in an organization.

- Most learning (the 70 percent) happens in the work being done, through experiences

- Some learning (the 20 percent) happens through our social interactions — collaborating, sharing, and story-telling

- Far less learning (the 10 percent) happens through training, courses, and classes

Of course, the exact percentages are not important and can vary depending on your context (for example: a new employee, or novice, may learn more in a formal on-boarding program). However, as people grow in experience and knowledge, they need less training and more opportunities to connect and reflect. Are we doing enough of this — or are we trapped in the 20th century’s training-first paradigm?

If you’re a small to mid-sized business, it’s time to look forward, not back. The learning and performance landscape of the 21st century is very different than the landscape of the 20th century that created the likes of IBM, HP, Blockbuster Video, and Kodak. 

Change happens quickly, so both employers and employees need to consider supporting faster ways of learning. For employers, a workforce that can continually learn, improve, connect, and collaborate is more responsive to change. Similarly, workers who have a strong network and can find what they need right when they need it gain skills faster than through a traditional academic course model. (Source: https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/)

Today’s organizations need to better support all the learning that’s happening. If it’s not apparent, here are more reasons why creating a framework to encourage and enable 70:20:10 is necessary.

It’s the answer to complexity
The world of work, markets, and technology are changing constantly. Adopting permanent approaches, structures, and tools makes no sense as the lifespan is short and technology is expensive. Best principles, not practices, are needed today, and agility and speed win. The 70:20:10 approach reduces friction on the workflow by allowing learning and work to be more closely tied.

It’s simple
Adopting 70:20:10 requires no new software, training, or infrastructural changes. It’s a mindset shift from compliance, completion, attendance, and direction to support, enablement, guidance, and modeling. We need to let go of industrial-era approaches to performance improvement which often create unnecessary layers of work upon the actual work. The 70:20:10 mindset is about paving the cow path not creating new roads.

It’s about doing, not learning
If you go by the numbers, about 90 percent of 70:20:10 is in and around doing actual work. The 70:20:10 plan is about work getting done better, faster, and more efficiently by making work more visible and encouraging people to connect and collaborate. It’s about reflecting on the work being done to bring forth new ideas and being conscious of the insights gained through doing the work.

It’s about autonomy
In a world of ever-change, a 70:20:10 framework doesn’t dismiss the importance of hiring right but it adds the understanding that new hires need less hand-holding. As adults, if offered freedom to explore, connect, question, and contribute, they will. The 70:20:10 approach isn’t anti-training, rather it ensures that training — with all its baggage around control and futile efforts at measurement of learning — is not the default response to performance-improvement efforts.

A few things you should ponder about the 70:20:10 framework include the following. 

• About 90 percent of learning budgets are allocated to 10 percent of where real learning happens.
• People are more apt to reach out to a colleague or “Google it” before they access content in a learning-management system. 
• Learning happens constantly and continuously, but in most organizations it’s unsupported and left to chance.

What should businesses be considering then?
First, culture. Most small to mid-sized organizations inherently have a more cooperative and collaborative culture. Look around. Are your employees continuously seeking innovative approaches and new ideas to inform their practices? Do they openly reach out for assistance and are willing to share insights? Do they have easy access to various content sources inside and outside the organization such as Intranet and Internet? If you don’t trust the people you hired to make good decisions for themselves and the organization, why did you hire them?

Second, management. If you have a management layer, are your people focused on deadlines and deliverables and reporting out as well as communicating down? This is traditional thinking. Not that it’s not important to meet work demands and communication, but if the organization is to be more open, managers need to become coaches and mentors and focus more on reducing barriers to getting work done.

Finally, technology. Most work today involves technology to complete critical tasks; this can include project-management tools to file structures and data aggregation. All serve to help get today’s work done. 

However, what about preparing for tomorrow’s work? What’s on the horizon is no longer decades away. Collaborative technology or enterprise social networks are superior to email to ensure ongoing conversations, sharing, and community building across the organization. Social tools help not only improve communication, but also increase the opportunity for collaboration through diverse opinions where innovative ideas are often born. 

Your company’s newest solution or service resides not in a single individual but between people, in their conversations. Social technology may be the single greatest tool to help your company to remain a positive, productive culture.

Today, the need for organizations to remain responsive is critical. Circumstances can change quickly from new technology adoption to market shifts. Disruption is more the norm than the exception, and the ability of your employees to be aware and respond is now necessary. Training was the ideal primary solution when conditions were more stable and it still has its place when done well and for the right reasons such as when learning something for the first time. However, training ultimately helps to solve the problems we know. Collaboration, cooperation, and experimentation help to solve the problems yet to come.                       

Mark Britz is a workforce-performance strategist who has launched ThruWork (ThruWork.com), a talent-development consultancy for small to mid-sized businesses. The company specializes in solving organizational performance problems and focuses on non-training approaches to scale employee performance. He has a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Oswego and a master’s degree from Syracuse University. Contact Britz at (315) 552-0538 or email: mark@thruwork.com