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

Spotting the gaps that actually matter in a learning needs analysis

Most learning needs analyses get stuck in a comfortable trap: they catalogue what employees say they want, write it up neatly, and ship it off to a training coordinator. The result is a deck full of topics that feel productive but rarely move the needle for the business. A sharper approach treats the analysis as a diagnostic, not a wish list.

In Australia's mid-sized and enterprise market, the pressure is sharp. Boards in Sydney and Melbourne want learning spend tied to capability that shows up in a bank's customer satisfaction scores, a mining contractor's safety record, or a Coles-anchored retail operation's service metrics. Senior leaders will tell you straight: hours delivered no longer count as value. The conversation has shifted to what changed in the work.

This article walks through the practical moves that turn a learning needs analysis into a tool for surfacing business-critical gaps, the ones that hold back revenue, safety, retention, or compliance, and the ones that justify real investment.

Framing the analysis around business outcomes

A diagnostic starts by naming the destination. Before any survey is drafted, the L&D leader needs a short statement of the business outcome to influence. A regional manager at a financial services business in Sydney might frame it as reducing preventable complaints in the first 90 days of a customer relationship. A learning lead at a Perth-based mining services firm might frame it as lifting the rate at which new operators reach safe, unsupervised shifts on a remote site.

When the outcome is defined tightly, every data point collected later can be judged against it. Requests for Excel shortcuts or refresher sessions on a legacy platform fall away, because they do not move the business measure. The framing also makes stakeholder conversations easier. Executives in Brisbane and Adelaide are far more willing to spend time on an analysis that names a revenue or risk number than on one that begins with a list of soft skills.

Collecting signals from more than survey data

Surveys alone are lazy. A learning needs analysis that identifies the gaps which actually matter pulls from at least four signal sources. Operational data tells you where performance is breaking down: error rates, rework volumes, time-to-proficiency, customer complaint themes, and safety incident patterns. A Melbourne-based aged care provider, for instance, can pull ACQSC quality indicator data alongside training completion records and see whether low completion correlates with poorer resident outcomes.

Structured conversations add the second layer. A 30-minute interview with a handful of high performers, a few recent hires, and one or two customers often surfaces more insight than a 200-respondent survey. Workplace observations, like ride-alongs on a Sydney contact centre floor, expose informal workarounds that never make it into a process document. Document review of role descriptions and audit findings rounds out the picture.

Sorting noise from business-critical gaps

Raw findings always arrive in a long, scattershot list. The job now is to triage. A useful filter asks three questions. Does the gap link to a measurable business outcome? Is the gap concentrated in a specific role, team, or location? Can a learning intervention plausibly close it, or is the real cause a process, system, or tooling problem? The third question is the one most often skipped, and it is where learning teams waste the most budget.

This is where a methodology like predictive evaluation methodology earns its keep. By forecasting likely adoption and impact before programs are built, the team can rank gaps by expected ROI rather than by how loudly they were raised in interviews. Gaps linked to a high-cost, high-frequency failure, such as a compliance breach inside an ASX-listed environment, jump to the top. Gaps with thin data and unclear ownership drop away.

Translating findings into an actionable learning plan

The final report should not be a thesis. It should be a one-page summary per business-critical gap, naming the business cost of inaction, the target audience, the observable behaviours that signal the gap, and the recommended response. The recommended response can be learning, but it can equally be a process redesign, a manager coaching routine, or a hire. Calling out non-learning actions openly builds trust with finance and operations, because it shows the L&D function is solving business problems rather than protecting its own budget.

When the recommendation is learning, the next decision is build, buy, or borrow. For highly specific capability, custom design often wins. For commodified skills, an off-the-shelf module from a registered training organisation can be faster and cheaper. The table below is a starting filter rather than a final answer.

Approach	Best for	Watch out for	Typical lead time
Build custom	Niche, role-specific, IP-sensitive capability	Scope creep, SME availability, rework	8 to 16 weeks
Buy off-the-shelf	Commodity skills, compliance refreshers	Low engagement if not contextualised	1 to 4 weeks
Borrow and adapt	New frameworks or methodologies	Licensing terms, fit to local context	3 to 6 weeks
Internal capability uplift	Future-readiness, leadership pipeline	Requires senior leader sponsorship	12 to 24 weeks

The hidden costs of custom design deserve a clear-eyed view before any contract is signed, and the chosen approach should be pressure-tested with the business owner who will live with the consequences.

Recommendations to keep the analysis honest

Anchor every gap to a named business outcome and a measurable baseline.
Use a mix of operational data, interviews, observation, and document review.
Drop gaps that learning alone cannot close and be explicit about why.
Forecast adoption and ROI before committing to a design phase.
Pressure-test findings with the executive who owns the metric, not just the HR partner.
Keep the final report short enough for a senior leader to read in ten minutes.
Schedule a six-month review to confirm which gaps were real and which were noise.

The next concrete step is to book a 45-minute session with one senior business owner this week, whether they sit in head office or out in the regions, and ask them to name the single capability gap that, if closed, would most improve their next quarter's number. That conversation is where a real learning needs analysis begins.

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.