Yeah, but if you have a personal goal of something like "implement some machine learning" and a year goes by where there's no applicable use case for machine learning, then you're SOL. It can be worthwhile to mention this as a personal goal, but if you make it a goal post for career advancement, you're likely to fail.
If your goal is to make a move away from your team then you won't get a lot of help I agree. Usually there are mutually beneficial goals to you and your boss. Those are the sorts of things you can expect help with.
