Executive Development Plans

Purposeful Purpose

An Executive Development Plan (EDP) is a tailored action plan created by a leader to lay out their personal and professional goals. It is often created in collaboration with their executive coach and informed by various assessments, feedback, and experiences.

The key to a successful action plan is that it focuses on the individual’s true/authentic priorities. In other words, if these outcomes are important to you, then you will take the necessary steps to achieve them – no matter how many times you must start again. Conversely, if you don’t value the outcomes – or someone else insisted they be in your plan –then you will not apply sufficient energy and little or no progress will be made – at this time or possibly ever.

Often, I get asked about the “correct” format or form to use. My advice is to capture your plan in whatever form/format that works for you. What will inspire you to consult it regularly, track your progress, and make adjustments, including adding new objectives?

For colleagues and clients, I have seen them use a Word or Excel chart to document their plans. At the top level are the ultimate goals, the second level contains the objectives, the third level has the outputs, and the fourth level the activities that produce the outputs that meet the objectives and achieve the goals. Sometimes, it is helpful to identify your current and desired proficiency levels for your goals and objectives to guide your path forward along with identifying resources required, critical friends to advise, exercises/experiments to conduct, and corporate strategies to align to.

In a more contemporary form, you might consider the principles of agile development or DevOps and adapt them to your personal situation. At the highest level are themes followed by initiatives, epics, user stories, and tasks. For example, one of my themes this year is “Healthy Living”. My initiatives are: “Improve My Physical Fitness” and “Eating Healthier”. Diving into my physical fitness, my epics include: “See Myself as a Runner as well as a Walker”. To realize that epic, I developed user stories that are outcome oriented and describe an end condition. Since my husband and sons are runners, I want to run a 5K with them this fall (in 6 months). Tasks include following the day-by-day beginner 5K schedule outlined by Runner’s World.

To capture this plan, I have two dedicated journals. One is pre-populated with inspirational quotes that call for action. I use this one to jot down ideas, the results of my brainstorming on how I might tackle an epic, and notes from books, videos, articles, classes, coaching, etc. It is a little more creative, free-form, and unrestricted. The other notebook is more “professional” and where I outline my themes, initiatives, epics, user stories, and tasks in a more formal structure but not quite as detailed as a team project.

Source: ©Atlassian: Atlassian Agile Coach.

Regardless of the form your plan takes, it must support, guide, and motivate you to take action and improve yourself through your achievements and the journey along the way. As you learn, you progress, and you adjust and stretch your plan for the near-, mid- and longer-term.

Best wishes on finding your true stories and making them epic.

“Nothing is impossible; the word itself says ‘I’m possible!’” – Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian