What the 70:20:10 learning model means for learning and development teams

Moving to a 70:20:10 learning model requires a shift on the part of the learning and development team. Traditionally, learning and development teams have been involved in:

1. the direct facilitation and delivery of training, or

2. organisation and development of face-to-face programs.

But moving towards a 70:20:10 model often means the team needs to change the way they work.

From training needs analysis to performance needs analysis

One of the core activities of traditional learning and development teams is training needs analysis. Understanding the business problem and context becomes even more important with the move to integrated 70:20:10 solutions. The process shifts from training needs to performance needs. A performance needs analysis is focused on what the employee needs to do and what are the barriers to their achieving that. It’s about looking for barriers that might be more than just a lack of skills or knowledge. Asking broader questions at the analysis stage means better integrated solutions can be designed.  

From service centres to consultants

Learning and development teams who focus on organising learning programs are typically seen by organisations as service centres. Moving to a 70:20:10 learning model often requires that when a section of an organisation requests training (the 10) the learning and development team needs to challenge them, working more like a consultant to identify what is really needed. Making this transition is not easy, and takes radically different influencing skills plus a shift in mindset.

Learning ecosystems

70:20:10 learning models often mean learning and development professionals move towards designing a ‘learning ecosystem’. A learning ecosystem will look different in each organisation, but it is always more than just a series of face-to-face or online courses. A learning ecosystem means learners have support from their managers for learning, they have access to the information in formats that are right for them, and there are systems in place that allow them to share and articulate knowledge. In this type of environment learning and development people often find themselves developing performance supports and job aids, making suggestions about process and helping to redesign systems. Learning and development people who develop ecosystems become more focused on how to improve productivity for employees beyond just formal training.      

Learning and development team members who once focused on organising training programs shift to being learning designers. Team members who were involved in direct delivery shift to roles of community manager or content curator. These shifts are often natural progressions and happen quite easily because many of the core skills of being a great face-to-face facilitator are the same as those needed to be a great community manager. But the move to becoming a learning designer is more difficult. It used to be that the external provider (who might be responsible for face-to-face delivery or developing an online module) did all the learning design. The 70:20:10 approach often means that the learning and development team designs the overall architecture and what the blend of mediums might be. They therefore need a richer understanding of how people learn.

Designing the ecosystem

Learning and development has traditionally worked with the analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation (ADDIE) model for the design of programs. ADDIE is perfect for designing courses but doesn’t allow for the design of a holistic ecosystem. What learning and development needs is a holistic process that takes in the complexity of the multiple elements and their coordination. The solution lies in ‘design thinking’.

Design thinking is about taking hybrid creative and analytical approaches that designers (e.g. product designers) use and applying them to any problem. It is a process that enables learning professionals to rethink, redesign and rebuild how learning works in their organisation. Sprout Labs has put together a Learning While Working Framework that is a combination of principles for designing 70:20:10-based learning programs and a guide to using design thinking in learning programs.

70:20:10 learning programs are all about implementation

Project managing a learning program that is based on the 70:20:10 model is more complex than just running a course. They have more moving parts, are more than just one-off events, and learning and development operational people often find the increased complexity difficult, at least in the beginning. Running a 70:20:10 learning program is more like running an advertising campaign than running an event. Detailed plans about the program need to be part of the overall design process.    

Be the change you want to see in the world

Learning and development teams can create a hothouse for new ways of working and learning. Since the shift to a 70:20:10 learning model and the increased use of technologies in learning means that members of the team often need to reskill, the performance gap provides an opportunity to role model how the 70:20:10 model works. It’s often hard for managers and employees to grasp exactly what continuous learning looks like. They need examples. If a learning and development team reduces the number of courses and conferences they go to and increases the amount of informal learning they do, this provides a powerful reference model for the rest of the organisation.

Useful questions to ask are:

• How could you be using peer learning in your team?

• What happens if we stop going to conferences?

• How could your team embed and role model the practice of working out loud?

This is blog post is an extract from our ebook on Planting the seeds of a 70:20:10 learning model in your organisation.