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

How to create a leadership pipeline without a formal academy

A leadership pipeline does not require a campus, a large learning team or a catalogue of lengthy courses. It requires a deliberate way to identify emerging leaders, give them relevant practice and measure whether their behaviour is improving business performance.

For Australian organisations, this approach can be especially useful when teams are spread across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and regional locations. A single academy may struggle to serve office-based employees, FIFO workers, frontline crews and hybrid teams in the same way.

The practical alternative is to build leadership development into everyday work. Short learning bursts, manager coaching, project assignments and clear promotion evidence can create a reliable succession system while keeping learning close to operational priorities.

Start with business-critical leadership roles

Begin by identifying the roles that have the greatest effect on safety, customer outcomes, productivity and workforce stability. These might include site supervisors in mining, clinical team leaders in health services, branch managers in retail or delivery managers in professional services.

Avoid designing a generic programme around broad labels such as “high potential”. Define the leadership moments that matter: handling a difficult performance conversation, allocating scarce resources, responding to a safety incident or leading a team through a system change.

Interview senior leaders, current role holders and employees who report to them. Their combined view will reveal where leadership capability is genuinely weak and which behaviours distinguish effective managers from technically strong individual contributors.

Build a visible pathway from readiness to responsibility

A pipeline becomes credible when employees can see how they move from potential to responsibility. Create stages such as emerging leader, first-time manager, experienced people leader and enterprise leader, then describe the evidence expected at each stage.

That evidence should include observed behaviours, work outcomes and feedback from relevant stakeholders. A candidate might need to lead a cross-functional project, improve a team metric, coach a colleague and demonstrate sound judgement under pressure before entering a larger role.

This approach also supports fairer internal mobility. Employees in regional Queensland or Western Australia should have a comparable opportunity to demonstrate readiness as colleagues in a head office. Evidence-based progression reduces dependence on visibility, informal networks or assumptions about who “looks like” a leader.

Turn real work into the learning experience

Formal courses can provide useful concepts, but capability develops when people apply those concepts to live challenges. Give participants structured assignments connected to business priorities, such as reducing rework, improving rostering, lifting customer retention or strengthening pre-start safety conversations.

Short workshops can introduce a practical tool, followed by manager observation and peer discussion. For technical teams, blended approaches are often more useful than a purely classroom-based model; these training delivery methods can help connect instruction with hands-on performance.

A leadership pathway might therefore run through six-week cycles: learn one method, use it at work, receive feedback and report the result. This rhythm suits busy Australian operations, including teams where travel, seasonal demand or roster patterns make attendance at a central academy difficult.

Pipeline element	Practical alternative to an academy	Evidence of progress
Core knowledge	Learning bursts, guides and facilitated discussions	Knowledge checks and manager observation
Leadership practice	Stretch assignments and team projects	Quality of decisions and project outcomes
Coaching	Monthly manager conversations and peer circles	Feedback themes and agreed actions
Readiness	Behavioural demonstrations in live work	Consistent performance across situations
Business impact	Measures linked to safety, productivity or retention	Trend data and stakeholder results

Measure intent, adoption and impact

Attendance is a weak indicator of leadership development. A stronger measurement system follows the chain from intention to application and business effect. Ask whether participants intended to use the skill, whether they used it, how often they used it and what changed afterwards.

An intention evaluation can identify likely adoption before a programme is fully deployed. If managers are interested but lack time, authority or reinforcement, the organisation can adjust the design before investing heavily.

Use a small scorecard for each pathway stage. Measures may include internal promotion rates, time to proficiency, regrettable turnover, safety conversations completed, team engagement or customer complaints. Combine quantitative data with short interviews so the numbers retain operational meaning.

Make managers responsible for transfer

The direct manager is the most important part of a leadership pipeline because they control opportunities to practise. Every participant should have a manager who agrees on a workplace assignment, observes progress and provides specific feedback.

Senior leaders should sponsor projects, remove barriers and review outcomes, rather than simply opening a programme with a speech. In a large Australian organisation, this might involve a regional general manager supporting a supervisor in Newcastle while a national function leader backs a participant in Perth.

The financial case should be framed in operational terms. Improved adoption may reduce rework, shorten ramp-up time or prevent avoidable turnover. A clear method for forecasting training savings helps leaders compare development investment with expected cost reductions.

Keep the system simple and repeatable

A sustainable pipeline needs a small set of routines that leaders can maintain during busy periods. It should not depend on one enthusiastic facilitator, an annual offsite or an expensive learning platform.

Use a consistent process for nominations, development plans, assignments, feedback and readiness reviews. Include culturally safe participation practices and make room for different communication styles, including employees who may be more comfortable demonstrating capability through work than speaking in a workshop.

Useful design choices include:

Define leadership behaviours in plain, observable language.
Give every participant a live assignment with a measurable outcome.
Train managers to coach, observe and document progress.
Offer short digital resources alongside facilitated practice.
Review pipeline data quarterly by role, location and employee group.
Refresh assignments when business priorities or operating risks change.

The result is a leadership pipeline that grows through the organisation rather than sitting apart from it. Employees learn by handling meaningful responsibility, managers build confidence in succession decisions, and executives can see whether capability is translating into better results.

For a practical starting point, select one critical role, define three readiness behaviours, assign a real business challenge and review the evidence after six weeks. That small cycle can become the operating model for leadership development across the wider organisation.

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.