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

Designing simulations that mirror real workplace challenges

Workplace simulations turn abstract knowledge into decisions, actions, and consequences. Instead of asking employees to recall a policy or repeat a process, they place learners inside a realistic situation where priorities compete, information is incomplete, and the quality of a response matters.

The strongest simulations are built around the moments that influence performance: a manager giving difficult feedback, a sales professional responding to an objection, a technician diagnosing a fault, or a team deciding how to handle a customer escalation. These experiences make learning practical because they resemble the work employees must perform after training ends.

Effective simulation design also connects practice with measurable business outcomes. With the right learning strategy, an organization can see whether employees adopt new behaviors, whether managers reinforce them, and whether the program contributes to improved results.

Define the workplace moment

Begin with a specific performance challenge rather than a broad topic. “Improve leadership” is too general to guide a useful simulation. “Address repeated missed deadlines while preserving trust” gives designers a clear setting, a meaningful decision, and observable behaviors.

Interview high performers, managers, subject matter experts, and employees who regularly encounter the situation. Review customer complaints, quality reports, sales records, safety incidents, or workflow data. These sources reveal the pressure points that make the challenge authentic.

Dave Basarab’s Dave’s story reflects a career focused on connecting learning with workplace performance. That perspective is valuable when selecting scenarios that deserve practice because they affect capability, adoption, and organizational results.

Translate work into simulation mechanics

A realistic scenario needs more than a believable storyline. It should contain a goal, constraints, choices, consequences, and an opportunity to try again. The learner might choose how to open a conversation, prioritize competing tasks, investigate a problem, or respond to new information.

Use branching pathways when decisions produce different outcomes. A learner who ignores a warning sign should encounter a different result from one who investigates it. These consequences should be credible and related to the original choice, rather than feeling like arbitrary rewards or punishments.

Feedback can come from a customer, colleague, manager, system alert, or operational metric. It should explain the impact of the decision and point toward a better approach. Coaching expertise, such as Dr. Brookmire’s approach, can help shape feedback that supports reflection instead of simply marking an answer right or wrong.

Build realism without unnecessary complexity

Fidelity should serve the learning objective. A high-production virtual environment is unnecessary if the real challenge is deciding what to say during a performance conversation. In that case, a branching dialogue, short video, or facilitated role-play may create better practice with less cost and maintenance.

Include the details employees use to make decisions in real life: time limits, incomplete records, competing stakeholder needs, emotional reactions, unclear authority, and changing priorities. Remove decorative details that do not influence the decision. Realism comes from relevance, pressure, and consequence.

Give learners enough freedom to apply judgment, while setting boundaries around critical requirements. Safety procedures, compliance standards, ethical rules, and customer commitments should be explicit. The simulation can still allow multiple effective responses when the work itself permits professional discretion.

Compare simulation formats

Different formats support different kinds of practice. The right choice depends on the behavior, audience, technology environment, and level of risk associated with mistakes.

Simulation format	Best suited for	Key design strength	Watch for
Branching scenario	Judgment and decision-making	Shows consequences over time	Overly obvious choices
Role-play with facilitator	Communication and leadership	Enables nuanced feedback	Inconsistent facilitation
Process simulator	Technical or operational work	Builds procedural fluency	Excessive complexity
Case-based exercise	Analysis and prioritization	Encourages discussion and reasoning	Passive participation
Virtual or immersive simulation	High-risk or spatial tasks	Creates safe repetition	Technology overshadowing learning

A blended design may be more effective than a single format. For example, learners can review a short case, make individual decisions in a digital simulation, and then practice the conversation with a facilitator. This sequence combines reflection, repetition, and social learning.

Evaluate behavior and business impact

Evaluation should be designed before development begins. Identify what successful performance looks like, how it will be observed, and which business measures may change if the behavior improves. A simulation can capture decisions, response times, confidence, quality scores, and requests for help.

Predictive Evaluation provides a useful way to forecast training adoption, impact, and return on investment before a program is fully deployed. It encourages stakeholders to test the logic connecting the learning experience to workplace behavior and business results, rather than relying on satisfaction ratings alone.

Use data at several levels. Immediate performance shows whether learners can make sound decisions in practice. Follow-up observation shows whether they use those behaviors on the job. Operational indicators—such as reduced rework, faster resolution, stronger retention, or improved customer outcomes—help determine whether the learning investment is producing value.

Turn practice into performance

A simulation becomes more powerful when the surrounding learning experience reinforces transfer. Managers should know which behaviors to observe, teams should discuss how the scenario relates to current work, and learners should receive opportunities to repeat the skill in progressively harder situations.

Build each experience around clear performance requirements:

Start with a real decision employees must make.
Use authentic constraints, language, data, and stakeholder reactions.
Provide feedback that explains consequences and supports self-correction.
Measure both simulation performance and workplace application.
Update scenarios as processes, products, risks, and customer expectations change.

Organizations can begin with one high-value workplace challenge, pilot the simulation with a representative group, and compare performance data before expanding it. Partner with learning specialists who can connect instructional design, leadership development, training delivery, and enterprise learning strategy to measurable outcomes. Build the first scenario around the behavior that matters most, then put employees into meaningful practice.

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.