From the Information Age to the Age of Skills

The Forgetting Curve: Why Most Corporate Training Fails to Stick

We don´t need to get informed, we already have all the information in our pockets.

So it's time to get skilled – finally.

A famous provider of online training material just mentioned in an interview that according to his own data only 15% of his buyers of learning materials look at it after they made the purchase.

The percentage of customers who will be so lucky to implement the knowledge into their daily life will be significantly less.

95% percent of all knowledge that is presented will be forgotten after two weeks which is the result of a study done by the US national training laboratories. Or how much do you remember of a speech from a year ago? If you did not apply it afterward with a lot of initiative, it will be less than 1%.

Neuroscience of Learning: Working With the Brain to Increase Retention

Our brain doesn´t work like an empty bucket that can be filled with information.

Only if learners use their own words to digest the information 90% of it will be remembered long term.

But how can a workshop be organized so that all participants have the room to establish the information in their own words?

If there are 30 participants and they all take only two minutes for questions, it would total 60 minutes of extra time. If instead, in those 60 minutes these 30 participants elaborate on the subject in pairs, the active time individually for each participant is increased 15 times from two to 30 minutes each.

For your internal training, you use three didactical elements: speech, individual work, and pair work. In order to scale your own workshop product offline and online you use the same three elements – structure them in a clear minute-by-minute plan, test it, improve it, until it works perfectly, and then scale it.

Summary: Scaling Impact Through Active Learning Frameworks

The transition from passive information consumption to active skill acquisition is the only way to beat the 95% forgetting rate. By moving away from the "empty bucket" model and utilizing structured individual and pair work, workshop leaders can increase individual engagement time by up to 15x. To scale these results, founders and trainers must treat their workshop structure like a product: define the didactical pillars, test the timing, and optimize for long-term retention.