Expertise-Driven Development Plans

Stop guessing your next move—let a Personal Development Plan guide your progress. A while back, I mentored a professional named Rahul, who felt he was being repeatedly overlooked for promotions. We conducted a competency mapping session and discovered a key gap in his ability to work cross-functionally and lead diverse teams. 🧩 Rather than feeling discouraged, Rahul saw this as an opportunity. We built a Personal Development Plan (PDP) to close those gaps. By enrolling in relevant courses and taking on cross-departmental projects, Rahul not only improved his skills but also earned the promotion he had been aiming for. 👉 What is a Personal Development Plan (PDP)? A PDP is a roadmap for your career growth, detailing the specific skills you need to develop to advance in your role. Here are the Key Sections every PDP should include: 💢Self-Assessment: Identify your current strengths and areas for improvement based on feedback or a competency mapping session. 💢Goal Setting: Set clear, measurable goals for what you want to achieve in your career (e.g., leadership skills, cross-functional collaboration). 💢Action Plan: Outline the steps you’ll take to close the gaps, such as enrolling in courses, seeking mentorship, or participating in projects. 💢Timeline: Assign deadlines to each action item to track your progress and stay on course. 💢Evaluation: Regularly assess your progress through self-reflection or feedback from peers and supervisors. 💡 Key Action Points: ⚜️Use competency mapping to identify specific skill gaps. ⚜️Develop a Personal Development Plan to close those gaps. ⚜️Engage in practical experiences like cross-functional projects or targeted training. Feeling stuck in your career? Start building your personal development plan today and tackle those skill gaps head-on! #CareerDevelopment #SkillGaps #PersonalDevelopmentPlan #LeadershipSkills #CompetencyMapping #ProfessionalGrowth

Anyone else find themselves typing the same background info into AI tools over and over? I got tired of explaining my job every time, so I built my personal AI assistant with Claude Projects:   ✨ Step 1: Define your context - added my role description, objectives, and domains of expertise I want to bring to my role directly into project instructions. ✨ Step 2: Make it commercial - told Claude I need to be outcome-oriented and data-driven - this ensures every response aligns with business impact. ✨ Step 3: Include development focus - uploaded my performance review so Claude helps with my specific growth areas. ✨ Step 4: Add your voice - incorporated tone of voice guidance so outputs match how I want to write.   The result? No more writing lengthy context explanations every time. Claude now understands my role, goals, and how I need to work and responses actually feel tailored to what I'm trying to achieve rather than generic advice.   Pro tip from a colleague: Add "Tools I use" to your project instructions - Claude then references specific tools when breaking down tasks.   If you want to try this yourself, here are a few prompts to try:   🔧 EFFICIENCY PROMPTS: "Based on my role and objectives, what are 3 specific processes where AI could help me be more efficient and impactful?" "Draft a brief project plan for [specific initiative] including which tools I should use at each step." 📈 DEVELOPMENT PROMPTS: "Suggest a development plan aligned with my recent performance review and goals." "What metrics should I be tracking to demonstrate progress on my objectives?" "What are 2-3 concrete actions I could take this month to address my development areas?"   Anyone tried something similar? I'm always looking for ways to make this even better!   #ClaudeProjects #TalentDevelopment #Productivity #AIAssistant

My experience creating a 3-year personal development roadmap with ChatGPT I believe long-term planning only makes sense when you’re truly ready for it. Not because it’s the start of a new year. Not because everyone around you is working on their next vision board. But because something shifts internally, and you realize it’s time to set a direction, see the full picture, and connect the dots. That’s where I am now. I’ve decided to build a three-year development strategy. With a focus on education, rethinking my current roles, and understanding how it all shapes my positioning and future work. To help structure this process, I turned to ChatGPT — as a partner for systematizing input and modeling scenarios. I recently shared this approach in a private conversation, and was asked to make it public. So if you’re thinking about your own strategy — especially in connection with personal growth and learning — I hope this might be helpful. Here’s how I approached it: Step 1: Preparing the inputs I started by uploading as much context as possible: • My LinkedIn profile and website • A list of my current roles and projects (around 8) • Directions and ideas I want to explore • Personality assessments — DISC, CliftonStrengths, Vertical Development, MBTI, and others • Constraints — personal and professional: areas I’m not interested in, formats I want to avoid, paths I’ve ruled out Step 2: Setting the task I asked ChatGPT to build a structured 3-year roadmap, including: • A sequence of international education programs • Estimated duration and cost of each step • Expected outcomes from each learning block • Suggestions for which personal projects or books to work on in parallel • Ideas for evolving my positioning and mission over time • Intersections between all elements: how they support each other and where synergy can emerge In the monetization part, the focus wasn’t on short-term tactics. It was about how education, expertise, authorship, and visibility could reinforce each other in a long-term, coherent model. Step 3: Adjusting the output The result wasn’t final — and shouldn’t be. You need to refine it. Identify what doesn’t fit, where you want to go deeper, and which elements still need to be added or rearranged. __________ This isn’t a universal method — but it worked remarkably well for me. For the first time, I saw how my goals, ideas, constraints, and resources could be connected into a structured, long-range strategy — with logic, pace, and direction. The key is clarity: the clearer your inputs, the more helpful the process. AI won’t replace deep reflection — but it can help you structure it, surface patterns, and bring the big picture into focus.

Professional Development Plan (PDP) Being the human beings we are, every staff is unique and has their own development goals. This year, I implemented something new for our team of Engineers: Professional Development Plan. The objective is to streamline and clarify their professional goals, and as their manager, how can I play my part to assist them to improve their productivity, efficiency to contribute to the organization, and aligning their aspirations, so we can customize the plan to what fits their personal context, and identify opportunities for diversifying their careers and internal transfers. The PDP revolves three themes: Past (your experience, what you’ve done & achieved so far), Future (where are you headed? What are your goals?), and Present (what can we do now?). These are the main elements: 1. Career Aspirations / Focus Goals - What is your current trajectory? In the long run, what do you aspire to achieve (at least, at this point of time): a technical professional, manager, GM, VP? Go slow and steady? Or do you even feel like changing career path altogether? 2. Past experience - We don’t necessarily know everyone’s backstories. This important section acts as a summary high-level CV, to acknowledge and recognize the staff’s past history in the context of their professional experiences, especially those we might not be aware of before we joined or they joined the team and/or the company. To identify their areas of specialization (and potentially assign them as SME’s within the team), as well as development gaps (i.e. what else they may need to experience before they take up leadership roles) 3. Competency goals this year - Competency development is done via “Superior Managed Assessment” (SMA) allowing any number of assessments per year. It’s flexible, but it’s also dangerously open-ended: without clear-cut plans in place, people tend to procrastinate and leave it off until the end of the year, or cram everything last minute just for promotion. But how many SMA sessions are “enough”? Here, we outline which competency gaps you want to focus on - especially relating to your current work assignments, what competency level you need, and how many we should aim for the year as our development goals to stay on track with your career trajectory. 4. Assistance you need from the manager - Are there major obstacles preventing you from development? Would you need a special assignment or attachment? 5. Manager comments & discussion - once they filled in their PDP, we use this as the basis of career conversations. Where necessary, we can help fill in the gaps, and make suggestions to enhance them: e.g. alternative training suggestions, soft skills to develop. 6. Manager signoff - the “handshake” to seal the commitment. This is also important to establish a sense of continuity, in the event of staff or superior mobility and transfers. Any thoughts? Does your workplace have similar plans? Any suggestions on improvement?