Personal development plan” (PDP) are words that inspire fear and loathing in many middle-aged managers. Resistance generally comes from two different types: on the one hand, the often brilliant but Asperger-touched high-tech executives, who react badly to being told to be touchy-feely; on the other, those in finance, who may find the cost horrifying and the whole activity pointless. And many people don’t want to be developed — especially by “airheads”.
Some organizations are hotter on development than others, and this is often cultural. The Americans, for example, are the most keen. They seem to believe that development, like the pursuit of happiness, is not only an inalienable right, but also a necessity. You can and should teach old dogs new tricks. It’s good for them.
Personal development is about soft skills, about becoming more aware and more open to change. But how do you develop your managers? Send them on a mini (but very expensive) four-week MBA course at a top business school? Give them a foreign assignment with a subsidiary in a developing country?
Assign them a personal coach for a year? Organize a job swap for three months with a peer in a different part of the organization? Or what about external development courses? Companies frequently make these choices based on preference and cost, and very rarely on any sort of data. But we all know we like to learn in different ways, so why not let individuals design their own development plan — and give them an incentive to do so?
Imagine the following: the company offers all managers at or above a certain level a budget of €5,000 and a time frame of one month for a PDP plan of their own choice.
They can be left to design their own plan. Or they can be given guidelines: describe the plan, explain the process, justify the cost and so on. But nothing is out of bounds. They can propose a yachting adventure around Cape Horn, a master-of-wine course, working in a Romanian orphanage or doing four short PDP courses. PDP is a gift, albeit one that needs to be approved.
But how should a proposal be evaluated? First, it must describe what the individual will gain through the activity — knowledge, insight, experience — and a realistic understanding of how this will occur. But it is also an investment for the company, so it must outline the benefits for the organization. Of course, it is only the clever ones who will realize that writing the plan is itself a developmental activity.