In this YouTube presentation, Bill Kennedy (the 80/20 CEO) explains how the 70‑20‑10 learning model can be used to act on the insights provided by the 80/20 principle when managing people. He first reminds viewers that 80/20 helps identify the 20 % of employees who deliver 80 % of critical results, but it only supplies diagnostic data. To turn that data into development action, he introduces the 70‑20‑10 framework: 70 % of learning comes from on‑the‑job experience and self‑reflection (self‑coached OJT), 20 % from working with others through mentorship and collaborative assignments, and 10 % from formal education such as courses and seminars. Kennedy outlines the practical meaning of each component in a workplace context, cites the model’s origin—a 1996 informal survey of about 200 executives reported by Lombardo and Edinger—and acknowledges the limited empirical validation. He emphasizes that the combination of self‑coached OJT and feedback/mentoring (the 70 % + 20 %) is the critical driver of talent development, while formal instruction plays a supportive but non‑essential role. The talk concludes with a call to apply this blended approach to hiring, promotion, and talent cultivation within the 80/20 operating system.
Chapters
Hello everyone. I'm Bill Kennedy, the 80/20 CEO, and it's great to be with you today. Today I thought we'd talk about 70/20/10. I know I talk a lot about 80/20, and you've got to be thinking I'm throwing a new ratio at you. And in fact, not 2 but 3 numbers. What the heck? Well, relax. 80/20 is not going away. But 70-20-10 is also important, and it will help you to apply the benefits of 80/20 to how your company manages your human assets, your people, how you cultivate and promote that talent, and how you make hiring decisions. But before we get to 70-20-10, let's go back to 80/20. 80/20 will enable you to more accurately identify the 20% of employees who perform 80% of the most vital work in your organization. 80/20 is a diagnostic. It will give you data, but it won't tell you what to do with it. This is where 70/20/10 comes in. The basic assumption of 70/20/10 breakdowns this way: 70% of learning comes from experience, self-reflection. In the context of workplace, this means that 70% of learning as a job comes from doing the job, trying different ways to approach it, and reflecting on the results. We call this self-coaching OJT. 20% of learning comes from working with others. Now, this is OJT that is coached by mentors or colleagues willing or delegated to show you, the novice, the ropes. Collaborative assignments, especially working under a senior employee, also provide great opportunities for learning from others. A mere 10% of learning comes from formal education such as coursework, classroom instruction, lectures, seminars, instructional readings, and Other planned learning sessions. 70-20-10 has many passionate advocates who insist, and with good reason, that this is one of those rules of thumb that are simply valid. They're true because pragmatically they're useful. Critics respond that there are few formal studies to validate the assumption that 70-20-10 is even a thing, and they're not wrong. The origin of 70-20-10 is a single survey of about 200 executives who were asked to self-report how they learned to become an executive. The result of the survey was reported by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert Edinger in their 1996 book called The Career Architect Development Planner. Indeed, the authors did not present a formal report of the survey, but just an informal conclusion. The odds are that development will be about 70% from on-the-job experience working with tasks and problems, about 20% from feedback and Working around good and bad examples of the need, and 10% from courses and reading. The critical message of 70-20-10 is less that people learn the most from being thrown into the deep end of the pool and thus either sink or swim, but that they learn their jobs from a combination of self-coached OJT and getting and using the feedback produced by working with others. In short, it is the sum of 70% plus the 20% that is most important, whereas the formal instruction provides a useful but not necessarily critical learning component. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about PGOS, the 80/20 operating system, and remember, together we will fly. Together we will fly.
