5 of 10: Use the 70-20-10 approach every year

5. Every year, your plan should be filled with SMART actions you can take using the 70, the 20 and the 10 from the 70-20-10 Adult Learning Principle.

As you plan out your development actions each goal that you write down for each year should be SMART. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Relevant, and Time bound. In brief, the goals are not meant to be lofty and theoretical. Make each of your actions as tangible as possible. If you can't be clear about what the completion of the goal looks like it is not specific enough and most likely the other specifics don't fit either. How will you know you have reached the end of this development action? If it is a SMART goal you should be able to tell.

What is the 70-20-10? It is based squarely upon how you and I develop as adults. It is this, as adults we learn 70% by on the job assignments or projects targeted towards learning competencies. We learn 20% by some form of relationship-based method of feedback. We learn 10% through traditional classroom styles of training or learning.  Think about this...I graduate from college or university and get my first job out of school. I am very excited because I really think all the team projects I did at business school are going to help me navigate the corporate life.  I am going to take all this head knowledge that I have learned and try to apply it at my new place of employment. But as I try to put my knowledge into practice there is a fleshing out that I need to learn.

Your greatest source of development in the first five years and beyond of work is based upon experience, that is the 70. I had an executive recently say to me that he feels like he learned everything through on the job experience. I would argue that he learned a tremendous amount through the 20, maybe not in the mentoring that was done to him but in the mentoring he has given to others I am personally grateful he has shared his wit and wisdom with me and mentored me in ways he may never realize.

Following that is the 20 percent of development you will experience because of some type of relationship based feedback you have received. That is either a mentor, a coach or a colleague who is the local subject matter expert. The essence of the twenty is that they are going to work by my side showing me and correcting my errors as they occur. At some point in the future I will write more lessons about mentoring but I would say that you may learn as much or more as a mentor as you doing being mentored. To be a good mentor you need to be a good mentee.
Then there is the 10. This is what most people think of when they think of training. What class are you going to take? What book are you going to read? What conference are you going to attend? To get the most out of this type of development you will need to apply it right away. If the training is structured so that it follows the 70-20-10 even better, kudos to your skilled trainer. There is a real limit to the effectiveness of typical classroom training that is in a lecture format, yet where do we spend most of our training budgets?

At one point in time I had a very senior organization man look at me and say, "Matt, I don't buy this 70-20-10 garbage, do you really think it is accurate?" Here was my response, "Sir, you are an organization capability consultant for supply chain management, is that what your degree is in? How did you learn to do what you do?"

I didn't need to press my point, he responded, "Okay, I get your point."

Bottom line is you need a 70, a 20 and a 10 every year for a well rounded plan. Most people can come up with a class to take but the knowledge that is learned is rarely maintained unless it is immediately applied. If you work on one of each of these every year I believe you will have a rich and meaningful development plan that will be head and shoulders above your colleagues. Unless of course, they are taking this advice as well. :-)

Until next week...