How to Create a Development Framework

In 2018, we needed to set clear expectations for our team members in terms of growth opportunities and salary so we launched our first company-wide, generic level framework as well as a salary grid.

A level framework is a mapping of the skills and behaviors that are expected from employees at each level of an organization. Why create a framework in the first place? 

• It provides consistency across the board on how your organization hires, develops, and evaluates its people.
• It can help eliminate bias in performance reviews and promotions.
• It gives your employees a roadmap to get to the next level. This is critical since learning and development is the most important driver of employee engagement.

Three years later, it became quite obvious that we needed to review the framework in-depth as Blinkist had evolved so much: we had grown our headcount by 100%, changed some of our values, created leadership capabilities, etc. However, this felt like a daunting task. Where should we start? Which steps should we take?

During our research, we had found many open-source frameworks but very few resources on how to create one. This was still a complete black box for us. So, after Milica and I revamped our Development Framework, we decided that we would not only share it with the world but that we would also explain how we got there.

Here’s a 10-step guide on how to create a career framework which we followed over three months. We hope that this will demystify the whole process and help you to get started! 

10-step guide

Step 1 – Do some research

We looked at a few frameworks on progression.fyi to see how they were structured. CharlieHR’s framework especially caught our attention because the structure was similar to what we had in mind for our own. It quickly became our point of reference throughout the project and gave us a place to start so that we wouldn’t begin with a blank page.

Step 2 – Define paths and levels

This is the backbone of the framework. We outlined the paths and levels we need at Blinkist: Contributor (C), Expert (E), and Lead (L). At first, each path was broken down into three levels: C1, C2, C3, E1, E2, E3, L1, L2, L3. However, after running a few interviews (cf. step 5), we realized that we currently don’t need three levels for the Expert path and that we probably won’t need it in the future so we decided to write descriptions for E1 (Expert) and E2 (Senior Expert) only. It’s important to note that your level determines your starting salary and that the Expert and Leadership paths have the same salary range at the same levels –we strongly believe that they both contribute equally to the success of the organization in different ways.

Step 3 – Look at what you already have in place

We listed our values, leadership capabilities, and hiring competencies. We needed to make sure we had a holistic approach and would include them explicitly or implicitly in our Development Framework.

Step 4 – Define categories

We brainstormed and refined the categories we wanted to see in our framework. We ended up with: scope and autonomy, problem-solving, stakeholder management, planning and prioritization, communication, building relationships, driving vision and results, coaching, and mentoring. These are the categories that work best for Blinkist –it’s important to curate something that works for your organization as there isn’t always a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Step 5 – Run interviews

We conducted interviews with members of the leadership team (L3s) to understand what they expect from each level. It helped us to highlight the differences between each level. After that, we realized that we needed more input on the Expert path so we decided to interview a few Experts.

Step 6 – Create high-level descriptions for each level

We created high-level descriptions for each role by answering the following questions:

• What do they do?
• How do they contribute to their team and the wider organization?
• What is their scope of practice?
• How much experience do they have?

Step 7 – Create detailed descriptions for each category and level

After the backbone, the meat! This was by far the most intimidating part of the project. That’s when you start having writer’s block and second-guessing yourself. To avoid that, we organized a time-boxed working session on Miro to create the first draft together as a project team. Each person was in charge of one path and had one hour to come up with descriptions for all the levels in that path. After that, we took another hour to look at what the other had come up with and added our comments. We ended with a quick sanity check to make sure we had included our values, leadership capabilities, and hiring competencies in the framework. After about two hours, we had a solid draft that we could share with our stakeholders.

Step 8 – Ask for feedback

This part is critical to get buy-in before you even launch the framework. We refined and validated each description by getting input from a diverse panel of people across the organization.

Step 9 – Create leveling guidelines

We wrote guidelines on how to use the framework. Here again, we looked at many frameworks during our research and picked what resonated with us. We kept the guidelines simple: the descriptions are non-exhaustive and levels are cumulative. Finally, we created an FAQ for edge cases.

Step 10 – Make it beautiful

Don’t underestimate the power of good design –it can enhance the quality of the message you’re trying to convey. I personally feel like there’s nothing worse than a framework written on an EXCEL sheet… It can look so dry and uninspiring! After creating a few prototypes on Notion and G-Slides, we ended up moving our framework to Miro (thank you, Angie) as this was the only tool that would allow us to display our full framework on one page and zoom in and out. We then asked our design team to give it a look and the wonderful Gloria added her special touch to it.

To recap

If you’re only gonna take away three things…

• Take a holistic approach. Look at what you already have in place (i.e. your values) and make sure you include it.
• Don’t do it alone! Organize time-boxed working sessions with your team to draft the descriptions of the framework. 
• Continuously ask for feedback. Involve your stakeholders at the beginning and at the end of the project.

What’s next?

Here’s what we’ll be tackling in the next iteration of our Development Framework:

• We want to link the framework to learning and development which is why we called it “development framework”. We want it to support people’s development instead of creating hierarchies and ladders to climb. And, most importantly, we want people to own their development –instead of relying on their lead or the people development team. However, we don’t think that we’re there yet. “How might we make it a tool that supports people in moving from one level to another?” is the question we want to answer next.
• We would like to refine the Expert path. We have observed that this path is still misunderstood in the organization and we need to clarify expectations further.
• We want to support our leads in creating their own team-specific framework. The criticism we often get by having a generic framework is that it’s too broad and doesn’t highlight the specificities of each field. I personally find that translating it into a team-specific one should not be needed if you have a solid generic framework in the first place. However, I can also understand that for certain functions like Engineering a generic one just doesn’t do the job. Our intention is to empower our leads to create their own framework by following a simple step-by-step process just like this one.

That’s it! We hope you can replicate these steps to create your own framework. Good luck!