Individual Career Development Plans

Individual Career Development Plans are prioritised lists of improvement opportunities designed collaboratively by an employee and their manager, which will help the employee to achieve their career goals and the organisation to meet its objectives.

Purpose

The purpose of a career development plan is to take proactive action to support the career growth of employees within an organisation. It is a structured approach to aligning the aspirations and skills of employees with the strategic goals of the organisation.

Format

A career development plan can use the same format as an opportunity solution tree and a kanban board. The plan starts with the outcomes that the employee wants to achieve and then we can identify multiple potential opportunities and multiple potential solutions for each opportunity. The rationale is that improvement opportunities are assumptions, just like the ones that we make in product development, so we should avoid committing to a single solution until we have validated that it is the best one.

Anti-patterns

• Lack of Specificity: Vague goals and action steps can render the plan ineffective and demotivating.

• Assuming assumptions are facts: The plan should be treated as a hypothesis that needs to be validated through experiments. Just like product development.