What About the Other 95%?

Several years ago I had the privilege of being invited to sit on a panel discussion called “The Future of the Business of Learning”. Josh Bersin was one of the other panelists and shared some interesting data that validated my passions around pursuit of a performance paradigm. Josh shared that, on average, we spend about 5% of our 2,000 hour work year in some form of formal training…that’s about 100 hours.  For some industries, that’s high…but hey…it wasn’t what Josh shared…it’s what he did not share. A little math took place in my head…and the rest is history…

Discovery @ Point-of-Work Is the Starting Point for Intentional Design

What about the Other 95%?

Seven years have come and gone since that moment and I’m still not seeing much evidence that the “Other 95%” is even on the radar in many L&D organizations. And yes, I’m still wondering why not. What’s not obvious about the importance of the Other 95%? Why are we not stepping up to support the ONLY opportunity to drive the creation of real business VALUE through sustained workforce capability? How can Training to the point of potential be enough?

No One-Trick Pony

There really is no one solution or one technology to enable the Other 95%. We are indeed moving closer to the Point-of-Work by decreasing the size of learning assets and enabling access to those assets through applying the power of mobile technology.

Yes, we are headed in the right direction. And yes, we are bringing learning opportunities closer to the Learner at the Point-of-Work. But still…I have to ask, are we really addressing the Other 95% or are we just dragging the 5% closer to the Point of Work?

The Other 95% will remain outside of our scope unless we start getting intentional with our discovery efforts and the solution design that follows.

Gary G. Wise
Workforce Performance Advocate, Coach, Speaker
gdogwise@gmail.com 
(317) 437-2555
Web: Living In Learning
LinkedIn