I don’t really have too much of an argument with requiring high performance of everyone. I’ve often been a grunt, though (at GE we were known as “individual contributors”), and in my experience the assessment of grunts is, as Six Sigma folks say, highly variable.

If you’ve seen Bob Powers’ Instructor Excellence, a book sadly unknown in much of the training world, then you know that’s an example of how to go about doing it right.

More importantly — and in the #2 position — about giving the axe to any training where the trainer doesn’t get stellar reviews. Let me expand on the subject just a bit, to explain why I’m saying that’s a great way to save money.

While I’m an Instructional Designer, I’m also a trainer — I started teaching people how to use technology back when dinosaurs walked the earth, and we used berries to stain the whiteboards. I love trainers, I appreciate the fact that if my curriculum is awful they’ll get awful reviews.

But at the end of the day, from a strictly business standpoint, if both the training and the trainer don’t get stellar reviews that is what should get cut first. At that point, you should hire a highly shilled (or skilled) expert like me, and I’ll determine what happened.

If the content is at fault, fix the content. If the trainer is lacking skills, fix the trainer. I can — and have — done both, many times.

But if the cost-cutting axe must be swung, I stand by my assertion that trainers who are judged as not meeting high standards go first.