There's (still) no such thing as formal learning.

Six years ago I wrote a piece entitled ‘there’s no such thing as formal learning’ which - frankly - I thought was just stating the blindingly obvious, and there was a bit of debate and the world moved on.

I still hear people talking about 70/20/10 and I have used the model myself, because it’s something people recognise and it’s basically a good way to say: ‘look, stop focussing on courses and start thinking about resources and experiences that line managers can support’. It’s certainly a short-cut over explaining how people learn, and I have often used the diagram below in support of that*.

But the other day I heard someone use the model to justify the creation of formal course-type learning and I thought ‘Oh. This might actually be dangerous.’ So I thought it might be worth revisiting the debate.

Broadly speaking the argument I heard was: 'the formal learning part might be a small component, but in certain situations (such as when you are a novice) it’s essential to have formal structure - so we should still be building courses.'

So let’s unpick the model again. Firstly, 70/20/10 is not about different kinds of learning, but the contexts in which people are learning. There aren’t different ‘kinds’ of learning in this sense.

Imagine that you did a study on digestion and found that around 5% of calories are consumed at garages, and around 5% in restaurants.

A restaurant is a formal setting. But it would be really silly to coin the expression ‘formal digestion’ as if you were doing a different kind of digestion when you were sitting in a restaurant.

Equally silly would be saying ‘around 5% of digestion ought to happen at garages’ just because, historically this has happened. Garages might actually be a terrible way to consume stuff. Charles Jennings makes this point frequently: pointing out that 70/20/10 is descriptive, not prescriptive (put simply: 70/20/10 refers to a body of research that shows that, historically, a small percentage of our learning comes from traditional training courses).

But the speaker I was listening to was making a more subtle point - he was saying that there are times when we might benefit from more structured learning.

Now this is probably true - it just doesn’t lead to courses.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that people learn and that there are two classes of activity (push and pull) which broadly correspond to experiences and performance support. Are there times when more structure would help? Yes!

When, for example, a person joins an organisation it is super-helpful if all the resources you need are available (and in an order that makes sense) and there is someone on hand to help. I know this because I have interviewed hundreds of new starters regarding their early experience.

It is also true that a novice could do ok with just performance support alone - after all this is generally what we are doing today: a formal ‘induction course’ rarely kicks in in the first few weeks’ of a new starter’s time (typically for logistical reasons) so in the majority of cases we are just leaving people with resources (documents and people) and letting them figure it out. Also true for leadership, and many technical roles.

But it could be better: we should structure resources and experiences in a way which accelerates competence and supports confidence - and indeed a lot of my work at PA is about doing just this. Just leaving people to 'figure it out' is inefficient and can lead to mistakes and damage confidence. Instead (for example) we are building chatbots that both respond to your needs, and nudge you with the right stuff at the right time.

My point is: at no point does this become an argument for courses. Just because people consume food at a gas station, doesn’t mean this is something we should encourage. In fact it may be a bad thing. As an example, a GPS device is a form of (structured) performance support that is super-helpful if you are visiting a new city - say Montreal - for the first time. But it’s not a course. If you are plumbing for the first time, it would be great to have a chance to try things out in a practice environment. Or just have someone who knows what they are doing on hand to help. But if we start calling these kinds of experience a 'course' all kinds of terrible, ritualised, knowledge dump-y things start to happen (the term 'course' is toxic, in other words).

So yes - by all means give some thought to the structure of performance support and experiences that novices receive. But let’s just drop the ‘formal learning/course’ stuff - it was only ever Morris dancing after all.

*based on what I have said, you might wonder why I have the LMS delivering the digital/event-based formal stuff at all in this diagram. That's because it's really compliance stuff. Which isn't learning, but often is important.

P.S. this is not intended as an attack on Morris dancing which is a lovely quaint ritual, which the dancers seems to enjoy, and which I am happy to watch, say - once a year.