The 70-20-10 model explained: 70% experiential, 20% social, 10% formal, what each looks like, and how an owned platform supports all three.
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How to deliver learning in the flow of work for frontline and operational teams without pulling them off the line.
How to mix instructor-led, virtual, and self-paced training for operational teams, and let one owned platform schedule and track all of it.
What adaptive learning really is, where personalized paths help versus where uniform compliance content is required, and how an owned platform delivers both.
The 70-20-10 model is a simple way to describe where workplace learning actually comes from: roughly 70 percent from doing the job, 20 percent from other people, and 10 percent from formal training. For L&D leaders it is a useful corrective, because most training budgets and most LMS platforms are built almost entirely around that 10 percent slice while the other 90 percent goes unsupported.
This guide explains what each part of the 70-20-10 model looks like in practice, how a learning platform can support all three rather than just formal courses, and the honest critique of treating the ratios as gospel. It connects directly to the idea of learning in the flow of work, to designing a sound blended learning mix, and to adaptive learning that meets people where they are.
The 70-20-10 model comes from research at the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s, based on surveys of managers about how they believed they had learned to do their jobs. The finding, popularized by Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Robert Eichinger, was that development came mostly from challenging assignments, substantially from relationships, and only a little from formal coursework.
That produced the memorable ratio: about 70 percent of learning from on-the-job experience, about 20 percent from interactions with other people, and about 10 percent from formal education and training. It is worth being clear about what the model is and is not. It is a useful description of where learning tends to originate. It is not a precise measurement or a budgeting formula, a point we return to below.
The largest share of workplace capability comes from the work itself: stretch assignments, real problems, recovering from mistakes, and reaching for help at the moment a task demands it. This is experiential learning, and it is where most skill actually forms.
The trap is assuming that because the 70 happens on the job, it needs no support. It needs a different kind of support. Instead of a course, the 70 is served by resources that show up at the point of need: a two-minute how-to video, a job aid, a checklist, a searchable reference, a quick-answer guide next to the task. This is the heart of learning in the flow of work: the goal is not to pull someone out of their job into a course, but to put the right answer inside the job.
In practice the 70 looks like:
The next share comes from people: coaching from a manager, feedback, mentoring, watching a peer, asking the person who has done it before. This social learning is how tacit knowledge, the stuff that never makes it into a manual, actually moves through an organization.
Formal L&D often treats the 20 as out of scope because it feels unstructured. But a platform can support it deliberately:
The 20 is where an owned, configurable platform pulls ahead of a rigid course-catalog tool, because these formats often need to be shaped to how your teams and sites actually communicate.
The smallest share, but not the least important, is formal training: courses, certifications, structured programs. This is the slice every LMS does well, and the one compliance and onboarding depend on. Formal learning is where you establish a baseline, prove someone met a standard, and create the audit-ready record that regulated work requires.
The mistake is not investing in the 10. It is investing only in the 10, and then wondering why a well-built course did not change behavior on the floor. The 10 sets the foundation; the 20 and 70 are where it becomes capability. A good blended learning design deliberately spans all three rather than stopping at the course.
The 70-20-10 model deserves a caveat, because it is often quoted with more precision than it can bear. The original numbers came from managers' self-reported recollections, not controlled measurement, and they described a specific population. The exact split varies enormously by role, by task, and by how novel the work is. A brand-new nuclear operator needs a great deal more formal training before any on-the-job learning is safe; a seasoned salesperson may learn almost entirely from doing and from peers.
So use the model as a reminder, not a rule. Its enduring value is the prompt it gives L&D: if you are spending all your effort on the 10, you are ignoring where most learning happens. Do not, however, chase a literal 70-20-10 budget allocation or measure your programs against those exact percentages. The point is proportion and attention, not arithmetic.
Serving all of 70-20-10 requires a platform that hosts more than courses. It has to hold a growing library of job aids and resources, support social and coaching structures, and let you add both without a per-item or per-tier cost. This is where owning the platform, rather than renting a per-seat SaaS course catalog, changes what is feasible.
On a rented platform, the resource library, the community features, and the coaching workflows are frequently premium add-ons, and every new short video or job aid can bump you against a storage or content limit. That quietly pushes teams back toward the 10, because the course is the only thing the tool was priced to hold. When you own the platform, adding a hundred job aids, a mentoring workflow, or a searchable knowledge base for the flow of work is just using the system you already paid for. The economics stop fighting the model. Pairing that with adaptive learning lets the platform route each person to the right blend of formal, social, and on-the-job resource for where they actually are.
Yes, as a framing device. The specific ratios are dated and imprecise, but the underlying insight, that most workplace learning happens outside formal courses, holds up and is more actionable than ever now that platforms can support the flow of work. Treat it as a lens, not a metric.
No. The split shifts with role, risk, and how much prior experience the learner has. Highly regulated or safety-critical roles justify far more formal training before on-the-job learning is appropriate. Use the model to check that you are not neglecting the experiential and social sources, not to enforce a precise allocation.
Blended learning is usually about mixing delivery formats within the formal slice, self-paced and instructor-led, for example. The 70-20-10 model is broader: it spans formal, social, and experiential learning altogether. A strong program design uses blended methods for the 10 and then deliberately extends into the 20 and 70.