Why the Standard Corporate Development Plan Doesn't Work

About a week from now, I will be speaking at That Conference in Wisconsin Dells on the topic of personal learning and becoming a lifelong learner.  I have an interest in this topic for a couple of reasons.  First, as a Pluralsight author, I have a natural interest in helping others learn and helping them learn more effectively.

Second, I have done just about every job in an IT department, and this includes time where I have been an IT manager, that is, I had staff that reported to me.  One of the things that I learned is that while we encourage people to actively learn new topics and keep their skills up to date, many individuals are at a loss how to put together a personal development plan and then execute on that plan to acquire the skills they need.  For this reason, I decided to put together a talk that I will deliver at That Conference and hopefully other code camps in the area to help others learn how they can put together a development plan for themselves.  I'll also be posting much of the same information as blog posts so that attendees or any other interested party can view additional information on the topic.

The Standard Corporate Development Plan

If you work for any mid-size to large company, you probably go through an annual goal setting and review process.  Often as part of this process or as a compliment process, you will sit down with your manager and define a personal development plan for the year, and that plan will be a document that looks something like this.

I've went through this process both as an employee and as a manager working with my direct reports to complete this form.  You go through at the beginning of the year listing out all of the things that you want to improve upon in the coming year.  Acronyms like setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives get thrown around (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time bound) and all of this is done with the very best of intentions.

The problem is that from what I have seen, this rarely works.  Too often we put a lot of effort in creating this document in January only to see it forgotten by March.  And that is a real shame, because all of us, no matter who we are, have skills we need to improve on.  Setting up learning goals is a good idea, and so is writing them down.  So where did we go wrong here, and more importantly, what needs to change about this process to make sure that we are getting the personal development we need.

Where the Above Process Goes Wrong

From my experience, there are two primary places this process breaks down.  They are as follows:

The Time Frame Is Too Long
Typically, the time frame for such a document is one year.  This is too long.  The problem is that when we have a very long time to do something, most of us tend to procrastinate to at least some degree.  After all, we have a year.  I can get going on that next month.  Since we have a year to complete all of these items, they don't seem urgent, certainly not compared to the other responsibilities we have at work.  So we end up working on our more "urgent" day to day priorities rather than our "important" personal development objectives.

At some point, we realize that we don't have all year any more but only a month or two left to meet these objectives, to which there is usually one of three outcomes.

The first outcome is that we try to cram all of our learning into a short time period.  Yes, I know I should have been watching Pluralsight videos all year, but instead I'll binge watch all Friday and Saturday and I'll "complete" the courses I was supposed to.  The problem is this isn't a very effective way to learn.  Yes, you may have completed the videos, but watching 20 hours of videos over two days doesn't give you time to really digest and retain the content you just watched.  Just like most of us learned in college, we needed to keep up with our assignments in a course and study throughout the semester, not just cram at finals time.  So this is really not a good outcome.

The second possible outcome is that rather than spending a significant amount of time on each objective and really getting to depth with the topic, we instead have to choose a shallower approach to learning the topic.  For example, you may have intended to read a book on time management skills for busy professionals, but since you don't have time for that, now you decide to just read a couple of articles online.  So instead reading a book over 5 or 6 hours where you have time to digest the information and see different perspectives and techniques that you could use, you are spending 30 minutes to read a couple of quick articles so you can basically check something off of your list. The problem here is that we aren't really getting to depth with our topic and our personal development need at this point, so likely, this topic will remain something we have to work on.

The third possible outcome is that we simple just don't complete some or even all of our goals.  And of course if this is the outcome, then we have to ask why these were goals in the first place.


Too Many Objectives
The second issue with the standard template and process most companies use is that it compels us to list too many different objectives.  The template I created above has six lines.  Upon being handed that template, most of use would feel compelled to put down 5 or 6 different development objectives for the year.  After all, if we only put down two, that would really look awkward.

In Jim Collins book "Good to Great" he remarks "If you have more than three priorities, then you don't have any".  This certainly applies to creating a personal development plan.  Having five, six or even more objectives almost assures that our efforts will be unfocused.  We'll end just scratching the surface of many of the objectives we have outlined for ourselves rather than really getting the the depth we need.  And without getting to that depth, it is difficult to see how we can really improve.

A Better Way

Fortunately, there is a solution here, and it is very easy.  We need to do the following:

• Define our learning goals on a shorter time frame, preferably 2 months or less
• Limit ourselves to a maximum of two objectives at any one time

What we are trying to do here is focus.  Rather than take on a large number of goals over a long time frame, we want to focus on just a couple of goals over a short period of time.  We want to make sure that we are focus on these goals so we become proficient in what we are trying to learn.  We don't want to dabble in 10 things.  We want to master a couple of topic areas, and then at the end of this 4-8 week period, evaluate what our next set of goals are and repeat this process again.

If you have been involved in any sort of Agile project management, this thinking is really no different.  In an Agile project environment, we define a couple of critical items that we need to get done in the next iteration, and we focus all of our energy on completing those items.  What we don't do is get distracted by other items not in the iteration, not because those items aren't important, but because we know the best way to make progress is to focus on just a couple of items at a time and get those knocked out.  It is the same with the development plan.  We are defining a shorter time period and keeping our goals very focused for that time period.

What I will do is take the document above and modify it slightly so that there are only two rows for goals.  And that is on purpose.  If there are only two rows, then you can only put two goals.  My document looks like this:

We have a lot of the same columns as before, but I have added one additional column:  Total Estimated Time.  This is an estimate, it doesn't have to be exact.  If you are taking Pluralsight courses, add up the time for the courses and then add in another 50-100% for time to do some exercises with the technology and get some hands on experience.  If you are reading a book, figure out how many pages you can read an hour and estimate the time to read the book.

The reason for this column is that if we come up with a skill that lets say we estimate will take 60 total hours to learn, then we want to break this into smaller pieces and do several iterations over these pieces.  Again, this is just like agile project management where we want to break these really big tasks down into smaller more consumable ones.  So in this case I would advise someone to identify the first 15-20 hours of training and some goals around those, and do that in the first iteration of the plan (the first 6-8 weeks, depending how many hours they are spending on development per week).  Then, in the second one of these documents, you handle the second part of the plan an so on.

Breaking Things Down Even Further

For myself, the above breakdown is usually sufficient.  Sometimes though, it is helpful to break your plan down even further like so.

All I have done here is create a simple Word document and then take the individual tasks I am going to do to learn the topic and break them down by what I am going to do on a week to week basis.  In this case, There is a Pluralsight course I am going to watch roughly a module a week from and then I am also allocating some time where I'll apply what I learned in a simple demonstration website I am going to create.

The main goal of breaking the tasks down by week is to make sure that I am not underloading or overloading a week.  And it continues to give detail and structure to what I am trying to accomplish.  Now I know exactly what I do to stay on track.  This just helps break things down into some smaller hurdles I have each week, so it is more like "learn this concept".  OK, now learn this concept.  So if this further breakdown helps you, it might be something you want to do.

But Wait, My Company Makes Me Do an Annual Development Plan

At many companies, you are going to be required to do an annual development plan and you will be required to use the standard template for your company.

In this case, go ahead and complete the standard company template.  But then, break these goals down into smaller pieces such that you can focus on 1-2 goals at a time in 4-8 week periods like was talked about above.  Once you start working on a couple of goals, keep your focus there and don't worry about all the other goals that are on the standard development plan document.  All you are really doing here is breaking those big goals down into smaller chunks.

Summary

The main point here is focus.  Focus one on or two items at a time, and focus the amount of time you spend on these items so there is a short, well defined period where you work on these topics and master them.  The real goal of having a development plan is so that you acquire new skills and improve in areas that you need to.  We are trying to achieve depth and mastery.  What I have found is focused effort is a much better way to achieve this mastery than a large number of goals that end up not really being time bound because of the period they are planned over.