I must have the worst elevator speech because when I tell people that I work at a training firm, they immediately assume that we know how a company’s employees can do their jobs better. There is an assumption – founded or not – that in order to learn, the knowledge must come from the outside.

We take the exact opposite approach. You hire good people, don’t you? Smart people who can do their jobs pretty well. And if Bob doesn’t do skill A very well, I’ll bet Sue down the hall does that skill pretty well and can teach Bob – or better yet, the organization (or us) can work with Sue to develop a training program around that knowledge in order to raise Bob’s and all other employee’s performance up to hers. I contend you can take this approach for 80% of your company’s development and performance issues.

Some people call it knowledge sharing. We take it one step further and call it D.I.Y. training. Organization, heal thyself – if you allow the reference.

It may seem like I am talking my company out of work, but many organizations don’t have the expertise, time or manpower to be able to find the knowledge that exists in people like Sue, extract it and build an effective training program to disseminate it to the proper audience using the best delivery method.

What do you think?