New people take too long to get up to speed.
Onboarding varies by manager, and essential knowledge is hard to find.
Performance & learning consulting
Find what's getting in the way of performance.
McFadden Consulting helps nonprofits, mission-driven organizations, and growing teams diagnose performance barriers and build practical learning and performance-support solutions. Start with the work. Choose the right response.
A practical path from performance challenge to working solution.
Better performance starts here
01 / DiagnoseUnderstand the barrier.02 / BuildChoose the right response.Make it repeatable.03 / MeasureCheck what changed.
The answer is not always training.Follow a performance investigation
Founder experience
10+ years building learning & enablement
Master’s degree in Instructional Design
Start with the real problem
The symptoms are familiar. The cause deserves a closer look.
The same errors keep coming back.
People complete training but still struggle to apply it in the flow of work.
The current approach won't scale.
Materials are fragmented, updates are difficult, and too much depends on individual expertise.
Inside the Performance Atlas
Same symptom.
Different work to do.
Follow a recurring-error problem through McFadden’s approach. Open an observation to see how the evidence changes the response.
01 / Performance problem
The same errors keep coming back.
Another course is one possible response. First, find out what is getting in the way.
Illustrative paths, not a diagnosis of your team or a client case study. Real work can involve more than one barrier.
What might investigation reveal?
They can do the task. The guidance is hard to find.
- 02 / Investigate
Observe the task and trace where people look for help.
- 03 / Working diagnosis
A point-of-work support gap may be the barrier.
- 04 / Appropriate intervention
Put a usable job aid where the decision happens. Test it in the workflow.
- 05 / Measure change
Compare recurring errors and time spent finding guidance before and after the change.
If performance does not improve, revisit the diagnosis.
They know the steps. The handoff is unclear.
- 02 / Investigate
Follow the work across roles. Check ownership, access, and conflicting instructions.
- 03 / Working diagnosis
The conditions around the work may be causing the errors.
- 04 / Appropriate intervention
Clarify the handoff and maintain one shared source of guidance before adding a course.
- 05 / Measure change
Compare missed handoffs and rework against an agreed baseline.
If performance does not improve, revisit the diagnosis.
They have the guidance. They cannot yet apply it.
- 02 / Investigate
Watch a realistic task attempt and ask the person to explain the decision.
- 03 / Working diagnosis
A knowledge or skill gap may need focused learning.
- 04 / Appropriate intervention
Build relevant practice and feedback, supported by resources people can use on the job.
- 05 / Measure change
Check performance on the task, then whether it transfers to everyday work—not just course completion.
If performance does not improve, revisit the diagnosis.
The evidence chooses the intervention.
Training is one possibility, not the starting assumption.
The right support for the work
Learning is one part of the solution.
Bring strategy, learning design, performance support, and training systems together around what people need to do.
Performance & training diagnostics
A clearer decision about what to address first.
Learning strategy, instructional design & eLearning
Learning connected to real tasks and decisions.
Job aids & performance support
Useful support at the point of need.
Scalable training systems & LMS consulting
A training approach your team can maintain and grow.
A practical approach
From a clearer diagnosis to a solution you can use.
Diagnose the challenge. Solve the right problem. Build for scale. Measure what changes.
Diagnose
Understand what's getting in the way.
Look at the work, the people, and the conditions around them. Identify where performance breaks down before choosing a solution.
Solve
Build the right support.
Match the response to the problem: clearer learning, a practical job aid, or a better way to organize and share knowledge.
Scale
Make it work beyond one person.
Create a consistent approach your team can deliver, maintain, and use as the organization grows.
Measure
Check whether it helped.
Define what better performance looks like and plan how to assess progress beyond course completion.
Founder experience
Experienced in learning.
Grounded in the work.
Bryce McFadden brings 10+ years of experience building training, eLearning, and enablement solutions across complex organizations.
His foundation includes a master’s degree in Instructional Design, with capabilities spanning performance support, learning systems, and learning operations.
Meet Bryce McFaddenIn others' words
Feedback on Bryce's work.
These comments describe Bryce's learning and instructional design work.
Read more feedbackBryce is an outstanding instructional designer who brings a rare combination of technical expertise and creative learning design. He’s always ready to mentor others, share best practices, and elevate the team’s quality standards. His insights on learning experience design have made a measurable impact on our projects.
A useful next step
What's making the work harder than it needs to be?
Tell me what your team is experiencing and what you want to change. We'll start there.