Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Building a learning strategy for a company undergoing M&A

When two organisations come together, combining systems, payroll and brand identity is only the surface. The quieter task is helping employees figure out how to do their jobs under a new banner. In Australia, where mergers cut across mining in Perth, banking in Sydney and retail in Melbourne, the learning function often becomes the unsung backbone of integration.

A learning strategy built for a steady-state business is not enough. The merged workforce may span engineers on fly-in fly-out rosters, contact centre teams in Adelaide, and senior leaders who only meet quarterly in a CBD tower. Each group needs a different bridge from the old operating model to the new one.

The most successful deals treat learning as a critical workstream, planned from the first due-diligence week. The goal is twofold: protect capability that already works, and build the new muscles the merged business will need within twelve to twenty-four months.

This article walks through the practical shape of a learning strategy for a company undergoing merger or acquisition, drawing on the realities of the Australian market.

The Australian M&A landscape and its learning pressure points

Australia's M&A market has its own rhythm. Activity clusters around the resources sector in Western Australia, the big-four banks and ASX-listed services in Sydney, and mid-market firms across Melbourne and Brisbane. The Fair Work Act 2009 shapes how quickly roles can shift, so learning teams cannot roll out a global programme without checking local modern award coverage.

A mining deal combining two Pilbara operators will face site-based safety inductions a corporate merger never will. A fintech acquisition in Sydney's inner suburbs may need to reconcile differing approaches to the Australian Privacy Principles when customer data flows across the new entity.

Dimension	Pre-Merger State	Post-Merger Priority
Role clarity	Defined within current entity	Required across the combined business
Systems access	Single ERP, LMS, payroll	Two of everything until consolidation
Compliance training	Mapped to current obligations	Refreshed for the new legal entity
Leadership pipeline	Internal succession focus	Cross-organisation identification

Each row points to a different workstream, and each workstream needs its own diagnostic step before any design work begins.

Diagnosing both organisations before designing anything

Before any module is drafted, the learning function needs a clear diagnostic of capability, culture and compliance across both sides of the deal. This means reviewing completion data in the LMS, running focus groups from Parramatta to Perth, and interviewing line managers about day-to-day gaps.

A capability heat-map that compares the two organisations against a shared framework shows where the merged business will inherit duplicated skills, where one side holds a clear lead, and where a new skill category is needed altogether. A good learning strategy treats culture as a learnable set of behaviours, not an abstract value statement.

Aligning the learning architecture across two systems

Once the diagnostic is in hand, the next step is to align the learning architecture. In most Australian mergers this means reconciling two learning management systems, two compliance calendars, and two sets of onboarding journeys. The temptation is to migrate everyone to the bigger platform, but that often wipes out the most usable content on the smaller side.

A cleaner approach is to map the content inventory first, then decide what to keep, rewrite, retire or rebuild. Short learning bursts fit neatly between meetings and travel days, and custom instructional design tends to outperform off-the-shelf packages because the merged business has its own vocabulary and risk profile.

Leadership development earns a clear seat here. Senior leaders across both organisations set the tone for how the new operating model is understood, so a focused stream aimed at the top two layers is often the highest-leverage investment in year one.

Measuring adoption and forecasting impact

Adoption is where most M&A learning strategies quietly fail. A programme can be beautifully designed and still ignored if the new workflow it supports is unclear or if managers fail to reinforce it on the floor. Predictive Evaluation offers a way to forecast and measure training adoption, impact and return on investment, giving the integration steering committee a leading indicator rather than a lagging report.

The methodology also answers questions that local boards care about. They want to know whether a $4 million integration learning budget is producing measurable shifts in safety incident rates on a Western Australian mine site, or in customer resolution times at a Melbourne contact centre. The result is a learning function that contributes to commercial conversations rather than fighting for leftover budget.

Embedding learning into the new operating model

The final stage is the point at which learning stops being a project and becomes part of the operating model. This means wiring learning into the new performance management cycle and the regular rhythms of the business. It is the difference between running a two-day induction at kick-off and ensuring that every quarter of the first year has a learning touchpoint tied to a business outcome.

A national retail chain that merged two banners built a quarterly capability review into the new leadership cadence, drawing on completion data and manager observations. A financial services group in Sydney folded compliance refresher modules into its existing continuous learning calendar, so the merger produced a single compliance rhythm rather than two parallel ones.

Practical recommendations for integration teams

Treat the learning workstream as a peer of finance, IT and legal from the first steering meeting.
Run a capability diagnostic across both organisations before any design work begins.
Map the content inventory of both learning management systems before deciding what to keep.
Use short learning bursts for systems training and fast-moving process changes.
Invest in focused leadership development for the top two layers of the combined business.
Adopt Predictive Evaluation so adoption and impact are visible early, with forecasting training impact built into the measurement plan.
Review the merged learning architecture at six, twelve and twenty-four months.

The next step for any integration leader reading this is to commission a short diagnostic of the two learning functions, with the explicit brief that findings will be presented to the integration steering committee within thirty days, so capability planning starts on the same footing as financial and operational planning.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.