A development plan cannot be the same for the entire team. Behind every plan, there is always a specific person, with specific strengths and weaknesses, skills, and achievements. The plan is tailored for them.
1. Choose a specific person for whom you are creating it.
A development plan cannot be the same for the entire team. Behind every plan, there is always a specific person, with specific strengths and weaknesses, skills, and achievements. The plan is tailored for them.
2. What prevents them from becoming the specialist of their dreams?
You probably have ideas about specific skills, situations, or projects where something was lacking for exceptional success. Maybe there is an example of a stronger or more successful specialist in the field that could help draw conclusions by contrast.
While directly comparing team members isn’t productive, it’s helpful to use established examples or benchmarks to get started. Think of it like creating a reference board or design inspiration mood board. Instead of comparing people to each other, consider how they measure up against well-known standards or successful designers in the industry, like Jony Ive from Apple or Don Norman from NNg. This helps you identify potential growth areas by seeing where your team member might already excel or could further develop specific skills or approaches.
If you're short on ideas, ask the team or the person themselves. After all, you're doing this for your own people.
You can also add your thoughts about their strengths and weaknesses, which you should be able to observe from the outside. But remember, strengths can be developed to a truly cosmic level, while weaknesses may only reach "solid average." People often make the mistake of focusing on weaknesses. Managers, in particular, are guilty of this in their attempts to build a flawless team.
3. Choose 3 points that could truly change the person’s life and work for the better.
No one has the time or desire to engage in something that won't yield a worthy result. So, we need something truly impactful.
It's like a task backlog: you can polish useless features, or you can create something new and genuinely cool.
I've often seen junior designers read about UX and then invest all their time in developing in that area, even though their other skills, like UI, are still relatively weak. After a year, from the team's perspective, such a designer has not grown. Their knowledge of UX is still too limited to be of serious help, and their UI skills have been left to stagnate.
Or, another common example for product designers is the notion that they need to "boost their animation skills! After Effects!" But working with animation is quite specific, takes a lot of time, and rarely fits neatly into a product designer's work.
4. Re-evaluate these 3 points.
There’s a concept that Simon Sinek (he's great) talks about a lot: "infinite games" and "finite games."
Finite games are those we're used to thinking of as games — chess, cards, etc.
Infinite games, on the other hand, are essentially development or business. The rules are constantly changing, conditions change, and winning is impossible.
Where am I going with this? You need to approach development and setting priorities from the perspective of an infinite game:
Develop not as a senior designer in this specific company, but as a designer in general in interesting directions.
Develop not as a head of the design department, but as a leader overall.
In other words, projects change, people leave companies, industries evolve, and AI takes over routine tasks. But you need to keep developing regardless of these circumstances.
5. Understand the essence of these points.
Why did they come to your mind? Why are they problematic? What are the root causes of these problems?
For example, a designer lacks confidence.
Why are they not confident? Do they lack knowledge? Do they lack psychological safety in the company? Do they lack experience appearing and presenting themselves confidently? Is everything okay in their personal life? Are they being pressured by the team or by you as a manager, which could be causing their lack of confidence?
You can keep asking yourself questions like this until it becomes clear. You’ve probably heard of the "5 Whys" framework; this is what it's about.
As a result of this exercise, the list might change, or the formulations might change, and you'll definitely have a better understanding of the core issues.
6. For each point or problem, select 3 simple activities for improvement.
Jumping straight to a course is a popular and generally effective approach, but there are many simpler ones.
Problems with presentations? A manager can create more opportunities to make them more frequently.
Issues with arguing decisions? Have them make a list of arguments, and let colleagues or you come up with questions for preparation.
Problems with creativity? Check if the designer has a creative process, if they are practicing observation, how they approach problem-solving.
We create conditions for honing specific skills in specific situations. We start with a simple level of difficulty and gradually increase it. If you find the proper beginning steps that lead to the desired outcome, a person will be rewarded with success and motivated for the next steps.
7. Periodically check how things are going.
Once a month is enough. Maybe something needs to be clarified to avoid procrastination. Or perhaps a tactic needs to be changed because it's not working. New ideas will certainly emerge during this time. This is where the iterations come in.
There are a lot of words, but all of this can be resolved in 30 minutes for the first iteration. And it could look like an A5 sheet with 3 points and 3 activities for each one. No need to make complex artifacts.