Ensure these pillars are articulated clearly and understood by your team. These milestones need to feel both achievable and exciting. Focusing communicating this baseline that everyone falls under is a fabulous way to promote sustainable growth. It creates a very clear system that you can point to when it comes time to putting someone forward for a promotion.

Involve your team, especially those more junior, in the early phases of this rubric. I found it was important to get a sense of what was important to them. Ultimately, this dictates ways in which they can progress at your company. Therefore making these milestones both challenging and rewarding is the best way to retain and promote your team members.

I wish I had involved other stakeholders earlier in the conception of this rubric. It would have created more emotional involvement from the get go and would of been easier to pitch to HR having had more buy in across the org. I would also encourage you to try and standardize these pillars across teams, so as to ensure consistency within IC roles.

Jo Ash Sakula

I use this IDP format to empower designers on my team to take ownership of their careers and acquire or enhance the skills they need to level up.

Individual Development Plans - Design Career Leveling at Ledger

IDP for Product Design

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