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

When to Build vs Buy Custom Instructional Design Services

Organizations often face a familiar learning decision: develop training with internal resources or engage a custom instructional design partner. The right answer depends on more than budget. Strategic importance, subject-matter complexity, delivery speed, learner needs, and the organization’s ability to measure business impact all matter.

A standardized course may be sufficient for basic compliance or widely understood skills. However, programs tied to a new operating model, critical leadership behaviors, or measurable performance targets usually require a more deliberate design process. Custom learning development can translate business priorities into practice, reinforcement, and evidence of adoption.

The most effective decision is therefore selective rather than ideological. Internal teams and external consultants can each play an important role when responsibilities are matched to the work.

When Internal Development Makes Sense

Building internally is often practical when the organization already has capable instructional designers, reliable authoring tools, and accessible subject-matter experts. A familiar team can move efficiently through routine updates, product knowledge refreshers, policy training, and other programs with stable requirements.

Internal development also preserves institutional knowledge. Designers understand the company’s language, systems, culture, and approval processes, which can reduce discovery time. If the content is likely to change frequently, keeping production capabilities in-house may make maintenance easier and less expensive.

The strongest internal case appears when the learning need is straightforward and the consequences of mediocre design are limited. A short learning burst or job aid may not justify a large sourcing process.

When An External Partner Adds Value

External instructional design services become more valuable when the initiative is strategically important, highly visible, or difficult to define. A specialist can bring fresh analysis, tested design methods, visual storytelling, facilitation expertise, and production capacity that an internal team may lack.

Partnering is especially useful when internal staff are overloaded or when a program must launch quickly. An outside team can create the architecture, prototypes, facilitator materials, digital activities, and evaluation plan while internal leaders focus on decisions and stakeholder alignment.

Custom support is also helpful when content must influence behavior rather than simply transfer information. Sales effectiveness, operational change, leadership development, and enterprise transformation require realistic practice and reinforcement. These programs benefit from design that connects learning objectives to workplace performance, as explained in this guide to align objectives with KPIs.

The Economics Behind The Decision

Cost comparisons should include more than vendor fees or employee salaries. Calculate the cost of delayed launch, learner time, rework, weak adoption, inconsistent delivery, and missed performance gains. A low-cost course that produces little behavior change may be more expensive than a focused custom engagement.

Internal teams may appear less expensive because their salaries are already budgeted. Yet opportunity cost matters: assigning them to a major curriculum can delay other priorities. External consultants can provide temporary scale without requiring permanent headcount, especially when the project has a defined beginning and end.

Decision factor	Build internally	Buy custom support
Existing design capability	Strong and available	Limited or overextended
Speed required	Flexible timeline	Accelerated launch
Content complexity	Familiar and stable	Technical, behavioral, or strategic
Need for outside perspective	Low	High
Long-term maintenance	Frequent internal updates	Specialist handoff or retained support
Measurement requirements	Basic completion data	Adoption, impact, and ROI analysis

A Practical Decision Framework

Start by defining the business problem, the target behavior, and the evidence that would show progress. If stakeholders cannot explain what employees should do differently after training, commissioning development may be premature. The solution could be a process change, manager coaching, clearer tools, or better communication.

Next, assess internal capacity honestly. Review design expertise, subject-matter access, technology, project management, and the time available for discovery and testing. A blended model may be best: an external partner leads analysis and design while internal experts validate content and prepare for ongoing ownership.

Dave Basarab Consulting’s Predictive Evaluation methodology can strengthen this decision by forecasting training adoption, impact, and return on investment before and after delivery. That creates a clearer basis for choosing between a modest internal solution and a larger custom learning program.

Designing For Strategic Performance

Custom design should begin with performance requirements, not a list of topics. Designers need to understand the situations employees face, the decisions they must make, the barriers that affect execution, and the support managers can provide after training.

Leadership programs require particular care because broad themes such as communication or influence can become vague quickly. Before developing a curriculum, stakeholders should examine audience needs, organizational priorities, desired behaviors, and transfer conditions. These leadership curriculum questions help prevent an attractive but disconnected learning experience.

A partner should also design for reinforcement. Practice activities, manager discussions, follow-up resources, learning bursts, and performance prompts can make adoption more likely than a single event. This is where custom instructional design earns its value: it fits the work environment instead of treating every learner as if the context were identical.

Recommendations For A Confident Choice

Use the following checks before committing resources:

Define the business result and the observable behavior the program must influence.
Compare internal availability, expertise, and opportunity cost rather than salary alone.
Choose external support when speed, scale, complexity, or independent perspective is critical.
Require prototypes, stakeholder reviews, and learner testing before full production.
Build evaluation into the project so adoption and performance can be tracked.

Turning The Decision Into Results

The build-versus-buy choice should lead to a clear operating model. Establish who owns the learning strategy, content decisions, design standards, delivery, maintenance, and measurement. A written handoff plan prevents dependence on one team and protects the investment after launch.

Whether the work is built internally, purchased from a specialist, or shared across both, the goal remains the same: create learning that employees use and the business can evaluate. Dave Basarab Consulting can help organizations select the right delivery model, develop purposeful learning experiences, and connect capability building with measurable results. Reach out to assess the opportunity and define a practical path forward.

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.