IDP: INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN OR INSTITUTIONAL DOMESTICATION PLAN?

When you receive your IDP for the first time, it comes in that elegant folder, with your name printed on the cover. Technical competencies on one side, behavioral ones on the other. A spider chart showing where you are. And, more importantly, where you should be. There is something intimate about that document. You feel it’s about you. Your potential. Your future. Your gaps. But it’s not. That is not a map of your development. It’s a mold for your fit. It’s the blueprint for the professional the structure needs you to become. And from that moment on, without you noticing, your trajectory ceases to be yours. It begins to be managed by a grammar you did not write but will learn to speak fluently.
What we call organizational development rarely develops people. It develops functional versions of people. It produces profiles. Manufactures fittings. Trains behaviors that serve the structure, not the individual. And it does this with impressive sophistication: it convinces you that you are growing when, in fact, you are adjusting. It makes you believe you are evolving when you are merely conforming. The illusion is so well-constructed that many spend entire careers without realizing they never developed—they just excelled at fitting in.
There is a double bind operating here, invisible and efficient. Organizations individualize and totalize you at the same time. They tell you you are unique, that you have special talent, differentiated potential. They invest in you. Place you in exclusive programs. Make you feel chosen. But this singular potential can only be expressed within values that are not yours, within competencies defined before you arrived, within a culture that was already in place when you entered. Your uniqueness is celebrated, as long as it fits the org chart. Your authenticity is encouraged, as long as it doesn’t disturb systemic harmony. You can be yourself, provided this “yourself” is compatible with what the structure needs.
THE CORPORATE DOUBLE BIND
Observe the trainee programs in large corporations. They claim to seek disruptive minds, talents who think differently, people who challenge the status quo. The selection processes are long, complex, meticulously designed to identify who has that differentiating spark. And they find them. Brilliant, restless, creative young people. Then something curious happens. They all go through the same training. Same development tracks. Same corporate values. Same competencies to be developed. Same leadership models. The disruption encouraged is the kind that fits the corporate PowerPoint. The creativity valued is the kind that generates measurable profitability. Different thinking is welcome, as long as it arrives at the same conclusions the board has already validated.
The 360-degree assessment operates on the same register. You receive feedback from twelve different people. Peers, superiors, subordinates. They all say slightly different things, but there is a strange convergence. They all point out that you need to develop strategic communication. Or systemic vision. Or emotional intelligence. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s that they have all been trained by the same programs to recognize the same competencies as valuable. They learned the same grammar to name what is good and what needs improvement. You are not receiving feedback from reality—you are receiving the mirror of organizational culture reflected in twelve different voices.
Leadership development programs are even more revealing. “Develop your authentic leadership style,” they say. But when you look at the content, you discover there are only five leadership models available. Situational. Transformational. Servant. Coaching. Inspirational. You can choose. Your authenticity comes with a manual. Your unique style must fit into some pre-approved taxonomy. And if you lead in a way that isn’t mapped? If your way of guiding people doesn’t resemble any of the models? Then you haven’t developed an authentic style—you are feedback-resistant.
The consequences of this are profound and rarely named. Professionals who believe they are developing when they are conforming. People who invest years honing competencies they never questioned if they made sense for them. The anguish of “not fitting in” is lived as a personal failure, never as a structural incompatibility. And entire careers are built responding to expectations that were never interrogated. The most tragic part is that many of these professionals are competent, dedicated, hardworking. They are just playing a game whose rules were written by others. And winning that game masterfully, without ever asking if they wanted to be playing.
THE INVISIBLE GRAMMAR OF THE DESIRABLE PROFESSIONAL
Every organization creates the language that defines what it means to be a good professional. It’s not an explicit language, although it appears in official documents. It’s a silent grammar, learned by observing who gets promoted and who stagnates, who is called for strategic projects and who remains in operations, who has a voice in board meetings and who merely executes. This grammar does not describe technical competencies. It describes a type of person.
Start with the job description. What seems like a neutral description of a position is, in fact, a prescription of subjectivity. “We seek a proactive, resilient professional, results-oriented, who works well under pressure, people and process-oriented.” These are not technical requirements. They are existential demands. It’s not about what you know how to do—it’s about who you need to be. Proactive means anticipating demands no one asked for, always being one step ahead, never waiting for instructions. Resilient means handling pressure without complaining, absorbing frustrations without questioning, remaining productive even when conditions are unsustainable. Results-oriented means the process doesn’t matter, only the delivery, and that you are willing to sacrifice balance, health, personal relationships if necessary to hit the target.
Organizational culture operates on the same logic. Those values hanging on the reception wall—Innovation, Collaboration, Excellence—are not abstract aspirations. They are behavioral codes. Collaboration rarely means genuine cooperation. It means not questioning decisions in public, not creating unnecessary friction, knowing when to yield. Innovation is not free experimentation. It is bringing ideas that generate revenue, that are scalable, that do not threaten the current business model. Excellence is working beyond hours without anyone needing to ask, delivering beyond what was agreed, demonstrating commitment through permanent availability.
And then come the performative feedbacks. “You have great potential, but you need to be more visible.” Translation: your technical competence is insufficient if you don’t perform the correct corporate persona. You need to be in the right meetings, even if you add nothing. You need to speak at the right times, even if you don’t have much to say. You need to gesture the approved emotions—measured enthusiasm, strategic concern, calculated empathy. There are technically brilliant professionals who don’t advance because they don’t master this social grammar. It’s not incompetence. It’s a refusal, even if unconscious, to perform a persona that doesn’t fit them.
The exhaustion of maintaining this persona is real and underestimated. There is a cognitive and emotional cost to being, for eight hours a day, someone slightly different from who you are. To modulating your vocabulary, your opinions, your reactions. To smiling at the right times, staying silent at strategic moments, demonstrating engagement in projects that bore you deeply. This fatigue doesn’t appear in organizational climate reports. It appears in the burnout the company attributes to your lack of resilience. It appears in the diffuse feeling of emptiness you feel on Sunday nights. It appears in the question you avoid asking: “Who have I become?”
The problem is not inadequate people. The problem is that the very notion of adequacy is a control device. When a structure defines what is adequate, it defines who can exist fully within it and who will need to compress themselves. And it calls this process development.
DEVELOPMENT OR DOMESTICATION?
Here is the hardest conceptual pill to swallow: what if what we call people development in organizations is, to a large extent, a sophisticated process of domestication? What if the programs, the tracks, the assessments, the feedback, the succession plans—all of this that seems like investment in growth—are, in fact, technologies of adjustment?
Mentoring programs illustrate this with disturbing clarity. Ambitious young professional, full of ideas, meets senior mentor. Is enchanted by the advice: “Learn to play the game,” “Choose your battles,” “Be strategic with your opinions,” “Not every war needs to be fought.” These are practical, well-intentioned tips. And they work. Those who follow them climb the hierarchy. But observe what is being taught. It’s not how to grow—it’s how not to bother while growing. It’s not how to develop potential—it’s how to modulate that potential so it doesn’t threaten anyone. The mentor is not preparing the mentee to be more themselves. They are preparing them to be a palatable version of themselves.
Performance evaluations make this even more explicit. Imagine: you are in a board meeting. Someone proposes a visibly misguided strategic decision. You have data, analysis, solid arguments against it. You speak. Politely, but firmly. You present the risks. The decision is made anyway. Three months later, in your performance review, you receive a low score in “cultural alignment.” The feedback: “You need to understand that it’s not always the time to question.” Consequence: in the next board meeting, when another problematic decision is proposed, you stay silent. The organization celebrates this as “professional maturity.” You were developed. Developed to be less you.
Succession plans operate on the same logic of replication. The company identifies high potentials. Who are they? Technically, they are the professionals with the best performance and highest growth potential. Practically, they are those who most resemble those already at the top. Same background. Same references. Same way of speaking. Same way of dressing. Same way of reasoning. It’s not meritocracy. It’s managerial cloning. Diversity is celebrated in speeches, but those promoted are always slight variations of the same archetype. The invisible criterion is: who can replicate the dominant profile without questioning it?
And here is the cruelest paradox: the more you develop within this logic, the further you get from developing as a singular subject. Each competency you hone according to organizational criteria is a possibility of yourself that you abandon. Each time you adjust your communication to be more strategic, you are silencing something authentic in you. Each time you develop resilience according to the corporate handbook, you are learning to tolerate the intolerable. Each time you become more aligned with the culture, you are less aligned with yourself.
THE COURAGE NOT TO BE THE EXPECTED PROFESSIONAL
So what to do? Leave all organizations? Reject any structure? Live on the margins of the corporate system? No. That would just be swapping one naivety for another. Trading one script for another. The question is not to leave—it’s to stay in another way. It’s learning to inhabit these structures without being completely inhabited by them. It’s developing the capacity to play the game knowing it’s a game, without confusing the rules of the game with the rules of existence.
This begins with small, almost imperceptible gestures. Refusing corporate language, for example. Stop saying “synergy” when you mean “working together.” Stop talking about “delivering value” when you mean “doing a good job.” Stop using “agile mindset” when you mean “flexibility.” Speak with your own words. At first, it causes strangeness. People think you don’t understand the codes. But gradually, something interesting happens. Your speech gains density. People pay more attention. You emerge from the sea of jargon everyone repeats and become someone who thinks with their own head. Consequence: you may not be the most aligned, but you become the most respected.
Questioning your IDP is another possible gesture. When your manager presents that elegant document with your gaps mapped, ask the question no one asks: “What exactly is this development plan developing me for? To be more useful to the structure or to be more whole as a professional?” It’s not confrontation. It’s honest interrogation. And most managers won’t have a ready answer, because no one has ever asked. That question opens space. It doesn’t necessarily change the IDP immediately, but it changes your relationship with it. You stop being the object of development and become the subject of the conversation.
Inventing unforeseen ways to contribute is also creative resistance. There was an analyst at a multinational who decided to create a philosophy reading group. Completely out of scope. HR didn’t know where to fit that in the competency map. It didn’t generate a KPI. It had no measurable ROI. It wasn’t aligned with any strategic objective. He did it anyway. He invited colleagues. They read Seneca, Spinoza, Arendt. They talked about power, freedom, the meaning of work. That created conversations no formal leadership program could. It created bonds no team-building exercise fabricated. And slowly, those people began to think differently. To question differently. To work differently. It wasn’t disruptive in the corporate sense. It was disruptive in the real sense.
But we must be honest about the consequences. These gestures have a cost. They can cost you promotions, at least the traditional ones. They can make you seem difficult, misaligned, uncooperative. They can take you out of talent programs and fast-track paths. They can put you in a zone of permanent discomfort with the structure. You will not be the example HR uses in best practice presentations. You will not be the success case in trainee programs. You will not be the inspirational leader everyone wants to imitate.
However, there is another consequence, rarely mentioned: you may become the professional people seek when they want a real conversation. When they need someone who won’t repeat the ready-made speech. When they want to understand what’s really happening beyond the PowerPoints. When they need lucidity, not motivation. And that creates a different kind of authority. Not the authority of position. The authority of presence.
Being yourself in a structure that wants you functional is not a heroic gesture. It’s a difficult, daily, and ambiguous exercise. There are days you give in. Days you play the whole game. Days you are too exhausted to question. And that’s okay. Corporate authenticity, if such a thing exists, is not purity. It’s the capacity to recognize when you are performing and when you are being. It’s knowing the difference. And choosing, whenever possible, to be.
When you open your IDP again, after all this, it remains the same. Same competencies, same spider chart, same gaps highlighted in red. But something has changed. You are no longer trying to fill the gaps they pointed out. You are asking: gap according to whom? Development for what? And more importantly: who would I be if I stopped trying to be the professional this structure expects?
That question has no ready answer. And perhaps that is precisely why it’s worth asking.
#factoryofidentities #organizationaldevelopment #corporateculture #professionaltransformation #consciousleadership #peoplemanagement #organizationalpsychology #philosophyincorporate #humanresources #authorialcareer #selfperception #organizationalawareness #marcellodesouza #marcellodesouzaofficial #coachingandyou
This text is part of an ongoing investigation into how we become who we are within organizational structures—and how we can invent other ways of existing professionally. On my blog, you’ll find hundreds of reflections on cognitive behavioral development, organizational transformation, and conscious human relationships. Visit: marcellodesouza.com.br