Spending on 70:20:10

Many people have written about the 70:20:10 reference model for learning & development. I won’t try to replicate their thinking here.

What I will say is that I see a lot of organisations who state that 70:20:10 is the model they are working to. Yet often they are still to match their stated intentions with financial resources in the same proportion.

To match spending with aspiration would require a level of change within many L&D departments that is more than just tweaking around the edges. It would be truly transformative.

Let’s take a quick look at the implications…

70%

Imagine an organisation where 70% of the L&D budget is spent on working with the rest of the business to improve performance. That would be the entire focus. It would require L&D to act as performance consultants - asking hard questions, where the answer is unlikely to be a course… More often than not, it may be a change to processes and how those processes are supported.

I tend to promote the Lean approach for performance improvement, but there are others. A lean L&D team would be taking the lead in coaching the business to:

20%

In my imaginary organisation, let’s spend 20% of the L&D budget on developing managers (at all levels) by helping them to improve their capabilities in:

(This is the Manager Tools Trinity - a resource that I’ve not yet seen bettered for management development - and it’s free!)

10%

The rest of the budget, just 10%, goes towards designing, building, delivering or procuring courses - whether self-study or led, face-to-face or online - to help individuals progress beyond their current jobs.

If you'd like to discuss this article, or how I can help you, get in touch.

Posted: 01 January 2018

Tags: Coaching Content management Solution design

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