The 70:20:10 Model, popularized by Charles Jennings, among others, makes intuitive sense. That is probably why it has been widely embraced even though there is little empirical evidence to support it. Some learning professionals are discouraged by the suggestion that only about 10% of what people need to know to do their jobs is the result of formal training.

The low percentage is incorrectly interpreted to mean that formal training is relatively unimportant. What’s missing from the discussion is the criticality of the learning. For example, learning to read occupied a tiny fraction of the time you spent in school, yet it has been prerequisite to everything else. Without formal training, you would probably not have learned to read and would not have achieved your current level of success. The right training makes a real difference.