How do I write a career growth plan?

I'm often asked, "How do I write a career growth plan?" If your company has a tool for career growth plans, you should leverage it for a good head start. Chances are, it encapsulates best practices. I tend to agree with most of the recommendations in those tools. I have a few additional suggestions that I’ll point out about how to think about your objectives, set your goals, and audit progress.

Some tools recommend that your plan be forward looking, specific and actionable, collaborative, and empowering. I agree with all of that. These tools also tend to recommend that you start with career objectives looking 1-3 years out. I have a slightly different perspective. I think you should start by setting a career vision that’s 3-10 years out.

Your career vision is the future state for where you want your career to be. This is your chance to write a future chapter in your career story. What do you want it to say? What do you want to be true? Thinking about this vision more than 3 years out forces you to think about what really matters to you and what will bring you happiness and satisfaction in your job. For example, what really matters to me is helping people and improving their lives by leveraging my passion for technology and my technical expertise.

If your company's tool suggests that a career objective can be getting to the next level, I totally disagree. I think promotion as a career objective is too vague. I also don’t think promotions are necessary or sufficient to grow your career. Promotions aren’t necessary because growing in place is a fabulous way of achieving your vision. And promotions aren’t sufficient because you can be promoted into a role that doesn’t actually help you achieve your career objectives.

I intend to grow considerably at Amazon without ever getting promoted, so it's not necessary for me. I learned at a previous company that promotions aren't sufficient to achieve my vision when I was promoted and moved further away from technology and hands-on coding work. And promotions can also be incredibly frustrating for employees if we obsess over the process instead of obsessing over customers.

After setting career objectives, your company's tool will probably recommend setting career goals that align with your objectives. I agree. If you complete all your career goals, then you should be able to achieve your career objectives. I look for gaps in skills or competencies that will be necessary to succeed in my career vision and then I set goals to fill those gaps.

Your career goals don’t have to be exhaustive though. It’s quite common for us to take on business goals that deliver value to customers or achieve a business outcome without necessarily growing our careers. Those aren’t the kind of goals that need to be in your career growth plan.

Next, your company's tool probably has sections to record your strengths or super powers and growth areas. Your own self assessment of these is a start, but be sure to cross check with feedback from others to compensate for your blind spots. From feedback I've received, I learned that my super powers are earning trust, being right a lot, and hiring and developing the best. And my growth areas are learning and thinking big.

After that, tools often suggest that you identify specific activities to work on the growth areas you identified. I differ slightly on this point. I think you should first consider doubling down on your super powers to accelerate your growth and only consider shoring up your growth areas if they’re getting in your way. The fastest way to drive a car is to use the accelerator pedal a lot more than you use your brake pedal. You stand out for your super powers, not your growth areas. For me, I want to continue earning trust, but with groups of people and not just individuals.

Finally, your company's tool likely suggests regular career conversations with your manager to discuss your career growth plan. I agree. I leverage the established mechanism of annual performance feedback to remind me to update my career growth plan. I also update my career growth plan when I switch jobs or get a new manager. And then on a quarterly basis, I like to set personal goals via OKRs (objectives, key results) to track progress against my career growth plan.

So, that’s how I answer the question "How do I write a career growth plan?"

• start with your career vision 3-10 years out
• set goals for growth activities that leverage your super powers
• update annually and track progress quarterly

Hope that helps. What do you think? Do you have any other questions I can answer? Let me know in the comments!

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