Discovery → Understand the System
Quick Snapshot
Business: 120-person insurance brokerage
Problem: Inconsistent onboarding outcomes across teams and offices
What changed: Identified root causes of variation → targeted fixes instead of full rebuild
Investment: $6,500
The Situation
A 120-person insurance brokerage had invested in onboarding and internal training, but results varied widely depending on the team.
Some new hires ramped quickly and handled client interactions well. Others struggled—relying heavily on managers and creating inconsistent client experiences.
Leadership wasn’t sure whether to rebuild training or fix something deeper.
How this started
The Director of Operations scheduled a call after trying to improve onboarding internally.
They had already updated materials multiple times, but nothing seemed to stick across teams.
What came up in the conversation
As we talked through how onboarding actually worked, a few things stood out:
different offices were interpreting expectations in their own way
some managers were reinforcing standards consistently—others weren’t
onboarding content existed, but wasn’t always used in real situations
The situation could be summed up simply:
“It works when the right people are involved. It just doesn’t work the same way everywhere.”
The issue wasn’t that training didn’t exist—it was that it wasn’t consistently understood or applied.
Why this approach made sense
Jumping straight into a rebuild would have meant reworking materials without understanding what was actually causing the inconsistency.
Before changing anything, we needed to:
identify where expectations were unclear
understand where execution depended on individual interpretation
separate what was working from what wasn’t
What the work included
reviewing onboarding materials and structure
mapping role expectations across teams and offices
analyzing how work actually flows day-to-day
identifying where decisions required interpretation or clarification
What they received
Learning Infrastructure Blueprint
Executive Summary (decision-ready)
Gap & Risk Map across roles and workflows
Clear next-step recommendations (what to fix, keep, or build)
What changed
Leadership gained a clear picture of what was actually driving inconsistent results.
Instead of rebuilding everything, they were able to focus on the specific gaps causing variation—and move forward with a more targeted, effective plan.
This is often where a Discovery phase is most valuable—when systems exist, but the root cause of inconsistency isn’t fully clear.
What this prevented
rebuilding training without addressing the real source of inconsistency
continued variation across teams and offices
reliance on individual managers to “fill in the gaps”
repeated updates to materials that don’t change outcomes
wasted time and budget on misaligned solutions
Investment
$6,500 (Learning Infrastructure Discovery)
Scope included multi-role review across teams, onboarding materials, and workflow analysis.
These examples are representative scenarios based on real client work and common patterns across similar organizations. Details have been adjusted for clarity and confidentiality.