70:20:10 Model
70:20:10 Model
What is the 70:20:10 model?
- Growth is 70% experience, 20% relationships, 10% training
- Formal training alone is not enough
- Designing work, feedback, and training together
Adopting 70:20:10 changes the training manager’s job. Planning used to start with 'Which course should we run, and for how many hours?' With this model, the first questions become 'What work does this person need to take on to grow?' and 'Who will give feedback alongside them?' In other words, the training function stops being a team that buys courses and, together with HR and the business units, starts to shape job rotations, project assignments, and 1:1 coaching. That is why HRD needs to work closely with HR as a whole.
Not every experience that counts toward the 70 is the same. What the CCL research focused on is the 'stretch assignment.' Repeating familiar work for 10 years is not a growth experience; the real learning happens in work where failure is possible, such as serving an unfamiliar customer segment, turning around a loss-making business, or opening in a new region. Likewise, the 20 for relationships is not socializing but 'corrective feedback on specific behavior.' That is why, in practice, it is common to split an IDP (Individual Development Plan) into three boxes and have people write down 'one stretch assignment to take on this year / one person to give feedback / one course to attend' together. Note that 70:20:10 is a rule of thumb based on retrospective surveys, so the ratios vary by role and tenure; for new hires and for fields where fundamentals come first, such as regulated or safety-critical work, the weight of the 10 is much larger.
The most common misconception is reading these numbers as a budget allocation table. Concluding 'training is only 10%, so let’s cut the training budget' is actually the worst outcome. Experience and relationships cost no money, but they do take managers’ time and authority over assignments; cut training without designing for those, and nothing is left. Another is the hands-off attitude of 'give people work and they’ll grow on their own.' Stretch assignments without feedback and reflection often end in burnout and turnover rather than growth.
Kyungtae KimHR expert · Organizational culture and HR strategy consultant
John KimAuthor of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum ConsultingDeveloped by Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Robert Eichinger (McCall, Lombardo & Eichinger) at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the 1980s, based on their research into how high-performing managers grow.
Let’s look at a hypothetical case. Company A, a mid-sized cosmetics distributor with 480 employees, had run the same two-day leadership course every year for 34 newly appointed store managers and team leaders. Yet while training satisfaction was 4.5 out of 5, six months later the team survey item 'My manager cares about my growth' scored only 52 out of 100. In the first half of 2024, the HRD team scrapped the course and rebuilt it as a nine-month 70:20:10 program.
- Kim, a senior manager on the HRD team, cut the existing two-day course to half a day and kept just one coaching conversation model: GROW. Kim asked the Head of Sales, "We’ll use only half a day for the lecture; the rest depends on you giving the team assignments," and got approval.
- For the experience (70) part, each of 34 store managers was assigned a 'six-month challenge to revive one product category in the bottom 20% of sales.' The task meant forming hypotheses from their own store data and working with headquarters merchandisers to change displays and promotions, so in the first two weeks several managers pushed back: "This doesn’t feel like my job."
- For the relationships (20) component, eight senior store managers with 10+ years of experience were assigned as mentors, holding 40-minute 1:1s every two weeks for nine months. The HRD team gave each mentor a one-page guide, 'Start with three questions, not advice,' and had them upload notes after each conversation, building up a total of 612 1:1 records.
- At month 3, six participants said they wanted to drop the assignment, and on checking, their mentors had skipped the 1:1 three times in a row during a busy season. Senior Manager Kim replaced two mentors and made 'mentoring completion rate' a fixed item on the division’s weekly meeting agenda to manage follow-through.
- After nine months, 29 of the 34 leaders had completed their assignments, and sales in the relevant product categories were up 11% on average. The 'My manager cares about my growth' score rose 19 points, from 52 to 71, and first-year turnover among new leaders fell from 18% to 9%.