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

Creating a Feedback Loop Between Training Designers and Business Units

In boardrooms from Sydney to Perth, learning and development teams routinely deliver programs only to discover that frontline managers in Brisbane or Adelaide saw little change in behaviour. The gap between instructional design and operational reality is not unique to Australia, but the country's vast distances, skills shortages, and reliance on mining, healthcare, and hospitality make it costly.

A feedback loop offers a remedy. Rather than treating training as a one-way broadcast, organisations can engineer a continuous exchange where business units report what is needed, designers respond, and performance data validates the result. Done well, learning becomes an operational reflex rather than a periodic event.

Australian legislation reinforces the case. Under the Fair Work Act and WHS regulations, employers carry obligations to ensure workers are competent for the roles they perform. When the gap between training and job reality widens, those obligations become harder to meet. A tight feedback loop helps learning teams demonstrate that their programs are not just well-designed, but actually working.

This piece explores how to build that loop in practice, drawing on Australian workplace conditions and the operational realities that shape it.

Mapping the structural gap between designers and the business

Most capability problems surface in operations: a shift supervisor on a remote Pilbara site notices that new operators cannot diagnose a fault they were trained on; a sales lead in Melbourne flags that the negotiation module has little overlap with how the team runs a deal. Designers, often working from Sydney, might not hear these reports. The pattern is familiar to anyone whose career, like the one described in Dave's story, has spanned operational and learning roles.

The first step is acknowledging that designers and business units operate on different clocks. Designers plan around course calendars and accreditation cycles. Business units respond to quarterly KPIs, seasonal demand, and the day-to-day pressure of hitting targets. Without a bridge, the two rhythms drift apart.

A useful diagnostic is to ask, for any recent program, who in the business unit was involved in its design, who signed off on its relevance, and what data they expect to see afterwards. If those answers are unclear, the gap is already wider than it appears.

Traditional training approach	Feedback-loop approach
Annual needs analysis	Continuous signal from operational data
Post-course satisfaction surveys	Pre, during, and post behaviour measurement
Designer-driven content updates	Co-design with business unit representatives
ROI calculated months later	Leading indicators tracked in real time
Learning reported in completion rates	Learning reported in business KPIs

Building the listening infrastructure

A feedback loop is only as good as the channels that feed it. In Australian organisations, this often means combining formal touchpoints with the informal habits people already use. Chat channels, weekly stand-ups between the L&D partner and a regional manager, and quarterly capability reviews all have a role.

Geography matters. A business unit in Cairns may not surface the same concerns as one in Hobart, and remote operations often have distinct needs driven by FIFO rosters or seasonal labour cycles. The infrastructure must reach metropolitan offices and regional sites without a one-size-fits-all approach.

Custom learning design programmes work best when a liaison sits inside the business unit, not just as a visitor during project kick-offs. That presence turns feedback from an occasional survey into a continuous flow, and gives designers the context to adjust effectively.

Designing instruments that capture useful signal

Surveys at the end of a course rarely tell designers what they need to know. Completion rates and smile-sheet scores are easy to collect but poor predictors of on-the-job behaviour change. Better instruments capture signal before, during, and long after the workshop.

Pre-programme, designers should ask business unit leaders what success looks like operationally. During the program, pulse checks surface friction in real time. Post-programme, the focus shifts to behaviour: what are people doing differently six to eight weeks later?

In Australian workplaces, this often means aligning measurement language with how the business already reports. A retail chain in Melbourne may track conversion and average transaction value; a logistics operator in Western Australia may track safety incidents and on-time delivery. Learning designers who speak those languages earn a seat at the table.

Closing the loop with rapid iteration

Capturing feedback is only half the work. The other half is acting on it visibly. When designers receive a report that a module is misaligned with how a team works, the response should be a revised version within weeks, not a place on a future roadmap.

This kind of iteration depends on modular content. Programmes built from short, independently updateable units can be changed without scrapping the whole course. Microlearning alternatives are useful here, because they let designers test a new approach with one team before rolling it out more broadly.

Speed also builds trust. When the mining operator in the Hunter Valley sees that a specific scenario they raised has been incorporated into the next refresher, the next piece of feedback is more likely to arrive quickly and honestly.

Embedding measurement that business leaders respect

Business leaders in Australia are pragmatic. They want training that moves the needle on the metrics they already report to the board. Predictive Evaluation gives learning teams a structured way to forecast and measure adoption, impact, and return on investment, and feeds the feedback loop by specifying the data points that must be collected before, during, and after the programme.

When learning teams report in the language of operational leaders, the conversation shifts from justifying training spend to discussing business outcomes. A regional sales director in Adelaide is more likely to engage with a report framed around win rates and pipeline velocity than one focused on course completions. The same applies to safety metrics in heavy industry or patient outcomes in healthcare.

Practical recommendations for getting started

Appoint a learning partner embedded in each major business unit, with protected time for feedback conversations.
Replace the annual training survey with a lightweight pulse check tied to existing team rituals.
Build learning content in small modules so feedback can drive change within weeks.
Agree, in writing, which business KPI each programme is intended to influence before design begins.
Use Predictive Evaluation to set a forecast, collect agreed measures, and report variances to the business unit.

The next concrete step is to schedule a thirty-minute conversation this week between the head of learning and one operational leader, asking what behaviour change they most need from their team, and what evidence they would accept as proof that training has delivered it.

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.