✦Career · 15 recordsProfessional development plan

Most development plans are a list of courses agreed in a review and never opened again. This picks two things that would actually change your next year, decides what proof of each would look like, and books the check-ins that stop it going back in the drawer.

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✦ Everything it creates

The whole plan, before you install it

Goal

Two skills I can prove, by the next review Month 6

Evidence, not attendance. A course finished is not a skill shown.

Choose the two Week 3

Picked against the role I want next, not the courses on offer.

  • Write down the role I want in two yearsDo firstDay 3
  • List what that role needs that I cannot yet showDo firstDay 7
  • Keep two, and write what proof of each would look likeDo firstDay 12
  • Agree the two with my managerWeek 3

Practise in the real job Month 6

Stretch work, not just study. The job is where the evidence comes from.

  • Ask for one piece of work that uses the first skillDo firstWeek 4
  • Find somebody already good at it and ask for an hourWeek 6
  • Quarterly check-in: what can I show now?Do firstMonth 3
  • Write up the evidence for the reviewDo firstMonth 6

Routines

  • Deliberate practice on one of the twoweekly
  • Note one thing I did that shows progressweekly
Skills
  • The first development skillBeginner → Intermediate

    Rename this to the skill. Log practice here so the review has hours and examples behind it rather than a recollection.

✦ It comes with a note

Proof, not attendance

A development plan that lists courses measures attendance. The question at the next review is what you can now do that you could not before, and that needs examples written down as they happen.

Two skills, not ten. Each one competes with the actual job for the same hours.

✦ Questions

Professional development plan, answered.

The skills you are building, why they matter for the role you want next, how you will practise them, and what evidence would show they have improved. The last part is the one most plans leave out, and without it the plan cannot tell you whether it worked.
Two, and rarely more than three. Every skill on the list competes with the actual job for the same hours, and a plan with eight items is quietly a plan with none.
Yes. IDP is the name many employers use for the same document. If yours comes with a form, this plan produces everything it asks for, plus the practice and check-ins that make the form true by the next review.
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