Performance & metrics · Updated October 2026
The 70-20-10 model says people learn roughly 70 percent of what they need from challenging work, 20 percent from other people and 10 percent from formal courses. It began as a description of how successful executives said they had developed, and it is now used, often too literally, to plan learning and development budgets and programmes.
The roots are in the Center for Creative Leadership’s Lessons of Experience research. The 1988 book The Lessons of Experience by Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo and Ann Morrison reported what senior executives remembered as the key events in their growth: tough assignments, bosses and other people, and hardships. The numbers themselves came later. Lombardo and Robert Eichinger put the 70-20-10 split into a 1996 career-planning guide for their consultancy, Lominger.
That history explains the weak spots. The data was self-reported recall by a narrow group of successful managers, the categories are broad, and no controlled study has shown that following the ratio produces better learning. A widely read Association for Talent Development piece titled “70:20:10: Where Is the Evidence?” made this point. CCL itself now calls it a guideline rather than a formula and notes that not all experiences teach the same lessons.
The useful message is that most capability is built at work, so a programme made only of classroom days will underdeliver. The misuse is to cut formal training to 10 percent of a budget because a slide said so. A sensible design for, say, a first-time managers’ programme in a GCC:
| Share | What it looks like | Who makes it happen |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | Run the team’s sprint planning, handle one hiring decision, own a difficult conversation | The new manager’s own boss |
| Other people | Monthly mentor, peer circle, a 360 feedback round at month six | HR and senior managers |
| Formal | Short modules on feedback, labour law basics and appraisals, timed just before each experience | L&D, built with the ADDIE model |
Notice that the 70 is the hardest part to deliver, because it depends on managers handing over real work and debriefing it. The formal 10 often makes the rest stick.
No. It is a rule of thumb drawn from interviews and surveys of executives. Treat the percentages as a reminder of proportion, not as measured values that apply to every role.
The original work studied managers. A machine operator learning a safety procedure needs far more structured instruction than 10 percent; a senior engineer might learn mostly on projects.
Record stretch assignments, mentoring and shadowing as actions in each individual development plan, and review them at mid-year, alongside any courses logged in the LMS.
For the leaders you are preparing for bigger roles, connect this to succession planning so the stretch assignments are deliberate.