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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools.
- [00:03]
B
This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
- [00:05]
A
Today's podcast, Development plans are dumb.
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Part 1 of 1 this cast answers these questions. Should I create development plans for my directs? Why don't development plans work? And how can I develop my team without development plans?
- [00:23]
A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Are you ready to build confidence and capability for your year ahead? Well, Manager Tools offers comprehensive training that helps you communicate clearly, collaborate more effectively and stand out in your organization. Join us at an upcoming virtual or in person effective communicator conference. Register now@manager-tools.com training. So Mark is it is our first Manager Tools podcast of the new year. Happy New Year.
- [00:56]
B
It is. Happy New Year everybody.
- [00:59]
A
And I feel like because we're, we're starting this new year, this is a really timely cast in that one of the most commonly recommended managerial efforts at the beginning of every essentially new year is that managers create development plans for each of their directs. Now, it's especially talked about when we're talking early stage professionals, right? Younger individuals, individual contributor type roles as opposed to executives, directors, things like that. And sometimes it's recommended as a generational tool because of the fact that it's recommended for, for individuals who are newer in their career. So younger people like Gen Z for example, they're, they're expecting them.
- [01:43]
B
Yeah, but I'll tell you something about that, Sarah, if I can interject here regarding that whole Gen Z thing. Thirty years ago, before generational management was a thing and it's still not a thing, it just happens. There are some people whose livelihoods depend upon it and so they sh for it all the time. Generations are no different, haven't been any different. Humanity hasn't changed in 10,000 years. The workplace has changed a little. But as I said before, all 40 year olds think all 20 year olds are stupid because 40 year olds forgot how stupid they were when they were 20. But when people make this a generational thing, all they're doing is saying the latest generation to come into the workforce is this. They don't have any data that says Gen Z or Gen Y or Gen X or whatever did X, Y or Z compared to somebody else. They don't. I often joke that I tell people, hey, when it comes to generational management, I bet you've heard these things about Gen Z and they'd say, what are they? I said, well, they want more work, family, balance, definitely they want that. They want their work to fulfill them personally, not just professionally or monetarily. And they want their Work to be aligned with their values. Oh, yes, definitely. So it's too bad for you because those three lines come straight off the front page, the wiki Wikipedia page for the baby boom generation. So when we said, when Sarah said Gen Z there, guys, don't, please don't write us mail. That's what other people say because they're talking about gen zers who happen to be the youngest in the workforce right now in 2025. 2026.
- [03:21]
A
Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. And, and folks, unfortunately, most professionals don't know the history of development plans. This kind of reminds me of the fact that we don't know the original reason for the history behind performance reviews, for example. This is just another one of those instances. And most of us don't know that development plans are incredibly time consuming and have no history of working.
- [03:45]
B
No history.
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A
And if you're new to the workforce, you're, you're unaware of any of these things, so your expectation of them doesn't match the, the reality of, of them occurring in today's workplaces.
- [03:58]
B
Yeah, I almost titled this cast Development Plans Don't Work, but I just thought I'd do a little clickbait and say development plans are dumb people. Because they are. Because they don't work. And we're all so busy we don't have time to do stuff that don't work. And if you do it and it doesn't work and you don't know any better, then we've got to stop that. So that's why manager tools exist. So, okay, what's our outline? First, we're going to talk about the theory. So development plans are great, depending upon who you ask. In theory. Unfortunately, number two is development plans are terrible in practice. And number three, regular development assignments are the answer without some big master plan.
- [04:40]
A
Yeah. So let's start with the theory piece of it. Development plans. I mean, they do sound great in theory, right? So much so that everyone who doesn't have to create the actual development plan is over there recommending the development plan. Right? Look online, folks. Look online. Everyone will tell you development plans are the way to go. New professionals love them. Your HR team probably recommends them. I mean, all of these people are telling you to do them. Why wouldn't you believe they're great?
- [05:10]
B
Yeah, and my favorite, by the way, about new professionals is why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't my boss do all that for me? Because in theory, they are great. I mean, the idea behind them makes total sense. Everybody gets a detailed Plan of how they're going to progress, how they're going to get promoted, what they need to work on, and by the way, a couple of years in advance. They also get the belief that following the plan will bring them guaranteed rewards, which we've had many people write us about over the years. Hey, how come I didn't get promoted? I did everything my dad plan anyway. And for younger professionals, particularly, who don't have enough context about the work world and professional life and being a manager and so on, the assumption for them is if they follow a plan, they'll get promoted.
- [05:57]
A
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I just heard recently, Mark, at one of the clients that I was working with, Gallo a girl talk about the fact that, hey, I'm worried that if they meet all their development plan criteria, they are going to think they will get promoted. Which we all know doesn't always happen, unfortunately. But again, there's that expectation. Even managers are worried that their directs might think they will immediately get promotion if they do all of the things. So it happens. It happens. And folks, now we're not trying to beat down on human resources. No, we're really, really not. But they also love them. They're usually the people that are responsible for all employee development.
- [06:39]
B
Yeah. When in fact, what's interesting is managers are, but senior executives trying to federalize that, give it to hr. And HR is unfairly tasked with trying to develop all the employees in the organization. Hr, I feel for you. There's no way you can do it. It's a manager's job.
- [06:58]
A
That's absolutely it. And we've talked about this about a million times. Managers are not trained on how to do their jobs. And therefore it seems natural to everyone in HR that they should require every manager who, let's face it, hasn't been trained on how to do this, to have a development plan for every direct. And it's often the case that HR goes to the chief executive and makes the case that development plans are the way to go. And who are they to disagree? And thus often it is agreed to. But folks, the idea for HR is that they can check on development against a plan and provide oversight to managers on how those directs are developing. Which again, in theory, this entire thing makes complete sense. Yeah, total sense.
- [07:49]
B
And it sounds great. I mean, it sounds great to the organization too. Every manager will have a detailed plan for everyone. This is like succession planning on steroids. It's fantastic. Everyone is getting developed. The idea behind a plan is if. If the manager went through all the trouble getting this plan done, then surely they're following through on it, right? So everybody is getting developed, which is definitely what the organization wants. They want that because if everyone gets better at their, there'll be more people ready to promote. But more importantly, if everyone has higher performance, the organization won't have to hire as many, as many new employees. So it's cheaper.
- [08:29]
A
It's absolutely cheaper. Folks, hiring is expensive. We've said it so many times before. Your CEO does not want you to reflexively, without even thinking about it, hire more people. When workload goes up or as your organization grows. What they want is for you to be developing your people so that the organization's total productivity increases. And productivity is closely related to profitability. Thus profitability also increases. And the thing is, if we're always hiring more people, hiring takes time, it takes energy, it takes all of this away from the productivity of the people who have to be involved in that, that hiring engine. Not only that, but new hires are generally more expensive, in part due to rising employee salaries and the fact that it takes so much time to train them to get them to the same level as any person they would have replaced. I think about that all the time. I mean, new employees know almost nothing. They're not even useful when it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's the end of the day. It's a really, really important project. We need this thing done. It's super important. What do you do? You push the new person out of the way and you find someone who's been here a long time because they know so all that to say, simply filling a role with a new person does not get you the same productivity as the person that they replaced or even their team members. And that's due to, again, training time and their lack of, of institutional memory and lack of relationships enabling them to make more work happen quickly. And all of it makes sense. Development plans make sense.
- [10:20]
B
Yeah.
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A
In theory.
- [10:21]
B
In theory. Unfortunately, to our second point, development plans are terrible in practice because making sense and making a difference are two different things. Folks, here's the bottom line. Development plans do not work. They never have. We'd be surprised right now if out of all of the hundreds of thousands, probably millions of managers who are part of the manager tools community, out of all of those, there are even 100, just 100, who had been required to development plan, had it blessed by HR and then used it completely, leading to a successful development of one of their directs. Yes, it is that bad.
- [11:14]
A
And that is also the problem with virtually all management Guidance Development plans are a concept that lack both an understanding of the basic principles underlying modern management behaviors. Not only that, but in addition, there's no data to support their use. I mean, as it pertains to the lack of data. We have asked for years for data from clients and HR experts about development plans efficacy and we have never gotten any data. The fact is, the usual response is what for? Everyone knows they make sense.
- [11:58]
B
Yeah, literally they make sense.
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A
Everyone does them. So I don't know why you're questioning it.
- [12:04]
B
In theory, it's great. And look folks, the quote everyone knows it makes sense idea is dangerous ground in management. Without data, no one actually does. No, there are too many discarded ideas in management and also in hr because HR has got too big a job and there is not enough studying done and there's not enough resources to help human resources. There are too many of these discarded ideas and usually it's due to the bandwagon effect where one company starts doing it, they get some press and then they something else happens, other people start doing it and they have never borne any fruit at all. Gamification pipette. Three quarters of the people who are listening right now don't even remember gamification. That was a big deal. Ooh, technology allows us to do that. Engagement. Total hogwash. Formal mentoring programs. I'm not saying not don't get a mentor, guys. I'm not saying don't mentor people, but formal mentoring programs that are mandated by organizations. No data that they work. Zero. I would be willing to bet not only is there no data that they work, there's data that they don't work. Video resumes. Really Bringing pets to work. Really? All these things. Lavish at work benefits. Right? Like breakfast, lunch and dinner and stuff like that. Foosball tables, panel interviews. These things all made sense to someone.
- [13:37]
A
They did.
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Who? Yeah, they tried them. As I said before they got press coverage and the bandwagon effect began. But virtually no one can ever point to anything other than rare anecdotal evidence of any of these initiatives leading to better results and retention or productivity or therefore profitability.
- [13:58]
A
Absolutely. And folks, I know not all of you are solely stuck on the data thing. Sure Mark, there's no data, but. But there's a bigger problem. Not only is there no data to support the development plan's work, the real problem with them is even more simple than the thin theory and lack of data. Development plans are an enormous burden for managers. Managers are given little if any help whatsoever. There's no follow up. Things change way, way, way too quickly for a year long or heaven forbid, a multi year plan to still be relevant and no one ever checks in on them to provide input or insight or do a progress check or do an update because the technology has changed so wildly. It's completely different now. The idea that a manager could have enough time to go over each and every person on their team's progress and surely they would be burdened to have a tough to report to someone on that progress and then update the plan as it goes stale and the business changes and new strategies and technologies come into play. It's ludicrous. Your entire full time job as a manager would be nothing other than just reviewing and adjusting development plans all day long. And that's, that's right, only for people that have what I would call a manageable team size. I mean imagine you've got 15 people on your team. That's your job now. Development plan adjustment.
- [15:36]
B
Yeah, it's a lot we mentioned earlier about HR blessing development plans. That also virtually never happens. But to be fair, in some cases it's not due to a lack of trying, okay? The problem is span of control for HR. HR's idea in theory is great, but it doesn't work in practice because there's no way. I mean, look, it's hard enough for managers to create the development plan, okay? But for an HR business partner who cares about her work and is trying her best to then go over the hundreds of them for all their directs, all the directs in their area of the company is simply impossible. They don't know each individual and they don't know enough. And to be fair, that's not a slur against HR folks. Nobody could do it. They don't know enough about each person's specialty, career path and the area they're responsible for to provide significant input. So in theory it's great, but in practice it's dumb. There's an old joke that I think it's about economists. Economy. The study of economics is often called the. Oh, I was going to say the dire. That's not the dreaded. It's, I'm sorry, something science. And, and there's an old joke that most of us see something in theory and wonder whether or not it will work in practice. Economies see something working in practice and wonder whether or not it's supported by theory. Well, this is a case where the theory makes a lot of sense and we, we tip our hat for the.
- [17:10]
A
We agree to the theory.
- [17:11]
B
Yeah, but it doesn't actually work.
- [17:15]
A
No, it really doesn't, folks. There's an analogy to the futility of development plans. That is that a manager who really wants to coach one of their directs in a certain area and mistakenly believes that they need to map out six months worth of detailed deliverables and figure out how the manager will find time to deliver training to support coaching, put it all in writing and then sit down with the direct and start working on it. Thousands of managers have started that process and I gotta tell you, virtually all have failed. What is that quote that is on the tip of my tongue right now, Mark? No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
- [17:57]
B
Yes, everybody's got a plan. Mike Tyson translated it. Everybody's got a plan until they get hit.
- [18:01]
A
Yeah. And actually Matt Beckwith, I think it was Matt Beckwith, he told me, oh my gosh, a long time ago, he said, I learned early on in my career, never fall in love with your plans.
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B
Oh no. Yeah. Eisenhower said planning is everything, but plans are nothing.
- [18:19]
A
Yeah, that's the thing. Too many people are out there creating long term plans and when you've spent that kind of time, energy, blood, sweat and tears on your plan, you want your plan to work out.
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B
Yes, you do.
- [18:33]
A
But when you look at the stack of file folders on the back of managers desks, we guarantee you there are going to be some very well intentioned, burdensome to create development plans that have been started to coach one of their directs and now said folder or said folders are sitting there gathering dust and which is of course due to the misapprehension of how to coach and this need to or this desire to lay out a really long term plan, assuming in any form or fashion it would at all be useful, which it never is. So folks, we encourage you to listen to or read if you're a licensee, our guidance on the manager tools coaching model. It's a much better way for you to plan out, if you will, this development but do so in a sustainable way, a way that's a week at a time. Exactly. It's not. I've created a six month plan that took me five hours to create and now one week in, I'm off plan.
- [19:42]
B
Yeah, and if somebody can create a six month plan of detailed deliverables in five hours, I'd be impressed. Even with AI Because AI doesn't know anything about your direct and even if you fed everything in there, A.I. would just make it sound pretty. Look, I love A.I. but gee whiz. Now I want to make a caveat here folks. We probably should have put this as an Agenda item. There is one time when a development plan is reasonable and necessary, although you probably won't hear some of the people involved with it call it a development plan. And that is when one of your directs is at risk of termination. These are typically in the US anyway, called PIPs, Performance Improvement Plans. They're hated, okay, but only because yet again, the average manager doesn't know how they're supposed to work. And their design is often all too sinister. They are created in order to allow the company to terminate someone because there is now ample evidence that on repeated deliverables over short spans of time, the direct didn't do their job, your direct didn't do their job, and so you can go ahead and fire them. And this actually comes from the legal department. It doesn't come from hr, it probably comes to you from hr, but actually legal says we need to have an ironclad case against this guy. The problem with PIPs, even though they are development plans and sometimes works, is people assume, therefore the sinister side, that this is just to create a whole bunch of data record so that you can fire me. But the smart effective manager, the manager, tools manager, knows no, this is a development plan that I have to develop. You actually probably could develop it a week at a time, but you have to do it and you should implement it with the best intentions of saving the direct of giving them small enough deliverables that they can achieve them day to day, week to week and so on, and they can pull them out of, pull themselves out of their tailspin.
- [21:45]
A
It is called a performance improvement plan after all. Yeah, I mean that's not how we.
- [21:51]
B
Use it, but that is not how.
- [21:53]
A
Most really what it is for actually. Yeah. And folks, I again, going back to the amount of effort that a manager has to put forth, if you've been a manager involved in a performance improvement plan situation, you'll know the kind of time and effort it takes to be a diligent leader of that kind of process. Which I mean again, if that were, if we're the same kind of effort and diligence we applied to all of our development plans, it would be a full time job having one of these underway constantly with all of your drafts.
- [22:28]
B
And folks, if you're looking for guidance on a pip, you don't need to look any further than our coaching model and our guidance on late stage coaching, which is actually built for PIPs and development plans that are required by the organization.
- [22:42]
A
Do you need executive level clarity at your fingertips? Well, the executive tools license gives you full access to guidance on delegation, performance management, communication and strategy. Equip yourself with tools that drive results across your organization. Learn more by visiting us online today@manager-tools.com licenses. Okay, so now that we have talked about the development plan and theory and why they don't work, let's talk about regular development assignments, which are the answer to the need to constantly be growing your people. Essentially, the solution to developing your directs is not a long term one, that is things change way too quickly. They always have. Things are always changing and adapting and evolving in your line of work. Even in college, you don't have to pick all four years worth of courses to finish your degree. And we know what it takes to make a good doctor, folks. It's not like it's changing every year. We kind of have a pretty good sense of what you're going to have to learn. And even then, schools still only make you choose classes one semester at a time.
- [24:01]
B
So if you want to develop a direct, forget about development plans. Start by developing a trusting relationship with them through one on ones. Give them frequent, and by that we mean daily and weekly feedback on how they're doing. Delegate to them responsibilities that will require them to learn new skills. For most theater X, this is probably only one or two delegations a quarter. As your direct takes over your responsibility, and to be clear, you still share responsibility. You don't ever lose responsibility when you give it to one of your directs. You're just sharing it with them. Okay? As they take over, give them feedback even more frequently on this new set of tasks. Make sure to ask about it every week in your manager tools. One on ones, answer questions, give guidance. Try not to solve their problems, but help them solve those problems themselves.
- [25:02]
A
And folks, when they're handling these new responsibilities efficiently, though maybe not necessarily to the level you could give them another developmental task or another delegation, and again, same thing later on, when they're at a level where they're completing it efficiently, give them another one. It's just lather, rinse, repeat, that's all it is. And this simple short term development approach is going to keep your directs growing. It allows for flexibility to take into account things like AI and how that's changing and shaping all of our jobs. It'll help with retention without bogging down you and your team into a long term plan that's never going to work and is going to need so much adaptation to even be functional and that you don't have time for anyway.
- [25:55]
B
Okay, so I'll summarize. We'll be put the bottom line up front. Development plans don't work. That makes them dumb. They never have. They're a theory, and a good one that fails in practice. That makes them a bad theory that should have long ago been disavowed and taught as a mistake. The solution is to avoid them. Assign regular development tasks. Just one at a time, perhaps two for your top performers. Don't plan any further than that. If your direct accomplishes the growth tasks you set for them, give them more. But don't buy the common wisdom. Because of course wisdom isn't common. That planning 5 to 10 to 15 growth tasks will last past a quarter or two. You'd be wasting your time. Time we here at Manager Tools know you don't have that. People that recommend development plans don't know management. But we do.
- [26:56]
A
Yeah, we do. Thank you, Mark.
- [26:58]
B
You're welcome. Thanks Sarah.
- [26:59]
A
And thank you folks. We hope this helped you. Now help us help others. And tell your friends. And of course follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only please.
- [27:11]
B
Sam.