Career Development Planning

This is my approach to doing Career Development Planning (CDP). It is largely derived from conversations with Peter Karpas, and then refined over time. It tends to be a pretty structured approach to CDP. I've talked about this approach with other senior leaders that I respect and some of them say it would never work for them. Too structured. If that is the case for you, we'll want to work on finding something that aligns better to how you like to work. Then I'll update the document. Or, you can submit a pull request.

Career velocity

Let's talk about physics, because that spices up any great writing.

One difference between people who are really successful and those who are merely good is their career velocity. That is, how often are they changing roles and moving up versus their peers. We've all seen those people and wondered how they do it. There are a number of reasons, but one of them is because when they get to a new role, they are already good at it!

So, that should be your goal as well. Figure out what skills you need and already have them when you change roles.

Setting a long term goal

The first thing that we need to do is set a long term goal. Often you'll hear about a "Five Year Plan", but I think that is too long. In five years I can't tell you what a computer is even going to look like, much less what the heck is going to happening in my life, so I've narrowed it down to three years.

What do you want to be doing in 3 years?

This is a deceptively simple question. The tendency is to describe what you want to be doing by title.

"I want to be a <director, architect, senior developer> in three years."

This is not what we're looking for. By focusing on a title or a position you are not thinking deeply enough about the 'what' portion of the question. It is a useful place to start though. Take that position and start asking questions:

• What are the activities that people do in that position that I want to do?
• Who do I know in those positions and what do I see that they do well or poorly? and finally...
• What do I find emotionally satisfying?

This last one really requires you to think. There are reasons that things make you want to do them. Perhaps you've never thought of the reasons behind why. Perhaps it's helping people, or seeing an end result, but the why of something being emotionally satisfying isn't that important. Recognizing the piece that makes it emotionally satisfying is critical, because then you can figure out how to do things that produce that result for you in your work life.

Really think about these things and start writing down your answers.

Personal example

It probably helps to give an example, so here is the one I use the most.

I get emotional satisfaction out of doing things that I think other people could do if they were just willing to do the hard and boring work, but I know they're not.

There are a bunch of caveats around this, but this shows up in many ways in my life. I enjoy endurance sports (e.g. running, triathlon) even though I'm not particularly good at them, precisely because of this. I think almost anyone could do them, but they don't. (The other lessons I take from this are covered in a bit more depth in The Conceit of Speed ).

This same thing is true in work. I love the projects that solve a structural problem that isn't "sexy" but is important. Other people don't want to do it, because it will require tenacity and a certain amount of tenacity and grit that others avoid. An example of this is spending weeks writing code to eliminate a system that no one is complaining about but has occasional errors and could save people 2-3 minutes a time. Over the course of years, it's a huge savings that brings me satisfaction.

Or maybe it's a system that always has problems because it is so complex. Setting it as an organizational goal to go fix it and untangle it, is normally a long process and you have to be able to explain to people with passion and reason why it's important. I enjoy those projects and wins.

Why do we do this?

It is important to have a longer term plan so that you make sure that you're going in a direction strategically that makes sense.

Peter provided a great example where he had his three year plan and was offered a promotion that he turned down because it didn't align with his strategic plan. Six months later there was an opportunity that did align that he was able to take. If he had taken the first position he would not have been able to take advantage of a position that did make sense.

Setting short term goals

Great, you now have an inventory of what it is you want to do long term and what are the attributes that make someone successful at them.
Now write down:

• What are you good at?
• What are the skills gaps between where you want to be and where you are?

Once you have this list as complete as you think you can get, see how it aligns with where you want to grow to.

Development Plan

Finally, 500 words in we're actually talking about a development plan.

Take your work from above and identify three-ish (can be more or less, but in that area) things you want to get better at and focus on for this year.

Take these three items and write them down, and then identify what you will to do to get better at them. We will call these "Year Long Goals" and then what we do about them. This will look like:

• Year Long Goal: I need to get better at automation
• Specific Action: I will complete training in Python and then implement that in my daily work. There is a python class on February 25th that I would like to attend to work on my python skills.

Go over these with your manager to ensure that you can get budget funding and management support for these.

Non-work related improvement

It could be that how you want to grow doesn't involve Acme Inc (purveyors of the world's finest flying anvils) or even technology. That is still a valid development plan, but different managers may have different levels of support for that. From my perspective (Jot) my goal is to provide you the best support I can in growth, regardless as to it's direct correlation to what you do now. It would be great if they do, but it's not necessary.

Interlude

One thing that is natural for people to do is to focus on what they think they are bad at and how can you fix that? Although that is important, I'd ask you to also think at:

• What am I good at and how can I get even better at it?

At some point in your past, probably after you stopped eating glue in elementary school, your personality and attributes were pretty set. There are things that you are going to be good at and things that you're going to struggle at. If you work to become awesome at the things that you are good at you will probably find that you are going to be more successful.

• "But Jot, I have to improve my deficiencies or I'm never going to be successful!"

Ok, that is true, but there is only so much you can bend a sword before it breaks. So definitely work on getting better, but also think about how you can mask your deficiencies or have someone with skills in that place cover for you.

Let me give you an example. I noticed a few years ago that for some reasons, I caused more churn and actually caused myself problems at a higher frequency in meetings that happened on Friday afternoon. It's because by the end of the week my ability to mitigate my natural abrasiveness had been worn down. There is no way for me to suddenly become more patient and accommodating at the end of the week. So what I did instead is largely reserve my Friday afternoons so that I could dedicate that time to cleanup all of the tasks I haven't been able to complete through the week. So, in a career development context, this is me working to mitigate or hide a weakness.