One of the questions that came out of my presentation on Flow-based Leadership to the Atlanta Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication was about training. I was asked about the 70-20-10 framework of training, which many corporations have adopted. The framework breaks down training 10% Formal Training/Education, 20% Social Training (with a coach or mentor), and 70% Experiential/Experience. Corporate America has used this as an excuse to NOT train people, assuming that people can learn on their own. Hence, spending millions on systems, but not paying for the training. People then jerry-rig the systems to get their jobs done. As a result, data is compromised and reports are skewed, which, ultimately, impacts decision making.
The fire service uses this model, too. However, the 70% is actually experiential training. Captain Todd Freeman, Cobb County FD, was sitting in on my presentation. I asked him what he and his crew had been doing all day. He reported that they were were in training doing something he had been doing on the job for 27 years--learning how to vent. They were on top of a building with chain saws cutting holes in the roof--over and over. They destroyed dozens of pieces of plywood over the course of the day. They were getting better and better at this task, so that when the time came to actually vent a roof in a fire, they would be able to execute safely, effectively, and efficiently.
Experiential training should be deliberate, targeted, and planned. It involves focus and guidance by an expert instructor. In the Corporate world, we would probably refer to it as a lab, where we get instruction and a specific set of monitored and measured tasks to perform. What happens now is that the bean counters assume this type of training is part of the 10%. Providing a system or tool with no training and telling people to go figure it out is NOT the same thing as experiential training.
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