In 2013, myself and ABSTRACT were invited to become research partners with the Financial Times on the topic of Women in Business.

We were given the following exam question to answer:

"Why are there so few women in the C-Suite of FTSE 100 businesses?"

We conducted a series of structured interviews with multiple senior women in business.

Simultaneously, we also conducted a small cross section of men in business as a control group.

We soon realised that most people either in or aspiring to those C-Suite positions, whether Male or Female, were expected to be...

Strong and Ruthless

This was supported by the current incumbent’s behaviour; City Analysts and Head-Hunting Recruitment Specialists being the system that was supporting the system.

What we wanted to create, was a future where most people in C-Suite positions were acting as...

Strong and Considerate !

We knew that this would take some time…

This is where the ACCELERATE Programme was born.

Financial Times Pilot Programme

Key Learnings

• Initially, we rolled the ACCELERATE programme out mainly to women which was quite controversial as it didn’t feel particularly inclusive.
  We discovered that once the female cohorts began, the delegates bonded very quickly, and a sense of vulnerability and psychological safety was being achieved by the first break.

• We also ran mixed female and male cohorts. We noticed that it took much longer for the delegates to relax, and it was only halfway through the programme that a sense of psychological safety was formed, although total vulnerability was perhaps never achieved.

• For business areas such as HR, we ran cohorts exclusively for men. It would be fair to say that these cohorts rarely achieved psychological safety status or any form of vulnerability within the context of the ACCELERATE programme.

As we celebrate 10 years of delivering the ACCELERATE programme across the world, we are proud to have made a significant difference by helping to make the corporate world a fairer and better place.

We have also been instrumental in fundamentally helping to change people's lives along the way!