Hi Reader,

When I started my career in L&D, the approach to people development was pretty straightforward. Everyone gets the same leadership course and the same online library. I remember scrolling through Harvard courses, tailor-made company courses of a variety of topics, and thought - how do people know what's really worth their time?

Back then, I knew that real development is personal. The challenge was that personal is almost impossible to scale. Building a tailored growth plan for every person on a team takes more time than any of us has.

That's the part AI can take off your plate. Here's how.

Role-First Mapping

In the latest Built by People Leaders episode, I talk with Dom Dib, Head of HR at 'Maplewave', about how to use AI to build personalized development plans without drowning in the work.

The move is to start with the role. His team sits down with the leaders who own each role and maps what it requires: the key skills, competencies, and abilities. That role map becomes the input. AI then works against it: recommending specific training and learning paths, flagging gaps and what the next step up looks like. A human makes the final call on what each person does.

It took almost a year to build out, but the strategy is clear: map the role, let AI suggest the path, keep yourself in the decision.

Why it works

Two reasons. First, it scales. AI does the heavy mapping that a person couldn't do by hand for everyone on the team, so personalized development stops being a luxury you only offer to your top few.

Second, because the plan is built from what the role requires, it keeps you clear of the privacy and bias risks that come with pointing AI at people's personal files. AI proposes the path. You decide.

Try it this week

Pick one role on your team, ideally one you're hiring for or growing someone into.

List 5–7 skills or competencies the role requires. Then hand that to your AI tool:

"Here is a role and its core competencies: [paste]. For each one, suggest 2–3 specific learning resources or development activities to help someone grow toward proficiency."

Read what comes back. You'll have the start of a real plan in fifteen minutes — and a feel for where this could take the rest of your team.

One line worth keeping

"It's great for processing information and providing recommendations. But at the end of the day, it needs human intelligence behind the decision-making." — Dom Dib

The full episode has the rest: how Dom's team runs onboarding check-ins at 30, 90, and 180 days, what they screen for against their core values, and the one problem he swears no AI will ever fix. (It's payroll. It's always payroll.) You can listen on your favorite platform.