Behind the mission to triple the number of female CEOs by 2025

Tara Cem­lyn-Jones is a woman on a mis­sion. The for­mer invest­ment banker wants to help almost triple the num­ber of female CEOs in the UK’s largest com­pa­nies – and quick­ly. 

A quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry ago, Dame Mar­jorie Scardi­no was appoint­ed CEO of media com­pa­ny Pear­son, mak­ing her the first female CEO in the FTSE 100. Today, there are nine women lead­ing the country’s 100 biggest plcs. Cem­lyn-Jones wants that total to be 25 by 2025. 

She’s not alone. Under the umbrel­la of the 25x25 ini­tia­tive, a not-for-prof­it enter­prise that she found­ed in March 2020, she has the sup­port of a dozen blue-chip busi­ness­es, includ­ing GSK, NatWest and Unilever.

Cem­lyn-Jones argues that diver­si­ty among CEOs, as the “pub­lic face” of busi­ness, mat­ters immense­ly in set­ting expec­ta­tions and shap­ing aspi­ra­tions. If cor­po­rate lead­ers look “exclu­sive­ly male – or white or het­ero­sex­u­al or non-dis­abled – you’re not going to attract the broad­est range of tal­ent”, she says.

The 25x25 cam­paign is as much about mak­ing the busi­ness case for change as it is about ensur­ing fair­ness. Stud­ies have con­sis­tent­ly found that diver­si­ty in lead­er­ship teams has a pos­i­tive effect on long-term prof­itabil­i­ty. Research in Octo­ber 2021 by US finan­cial ser­vices firm Morn­ingstar, for instance, found that the stocks of UK and North Amer­i­can firms with an equal gen­der split at board lev­el achieved a 7.52% return on invest­ment over three years, com­pared with an aver­age of 2.09%. 

Improving diversity and reducing groupthink

The rea­son it pays to have more female CEOs isn’t that women have a dif­fer­ent set of skills pure­ly because of their gen­der, accord­ing to Cem­lyn-Jones, who is “very loath” to sug­gest that women or men are any­thing but the same when it comes to their lead­er­ship qual­i­ties. Rather, the advan­tage of hav­ing more female CEOs con­cerns the greater per­spec­tive this offers.

Gen­der aside, the more var­ied the top team is, the broad­er its range of expe­ri­ence will be, which reduces the like­li­hood of group­think. (The fact that the FTSE 100 cur­rent­ly has no Black CEOs is anoth­er clear sign of the con­tin­u­ing lack of diver­si­ty on blue-chip boards and the risk this pos­es to the qual­i­ty of their strate­gic deci­sion-mak­ing.)

Cem­lyn-Jones adds that women’s his­tor­i­cal­ly high rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the HR pro­fes­sion is also per­ti­nent. With the UK’s econ­o­my becom­ing ever more ser­vice-ori­ent­ed, the need for CEOs to be mas­ters of peo­ple man­age­ment is increas­ing quick­ly, she argues. Giv­en her recent expe­ri­ence of work­ing in the fast-grow­ing fin­tech indus­try, she thinks this fac­tor is some­thing that big plcs, which have tra­di­tion­al­ly appoint­ed lead­ers with strong finan­cial skills, have been slow to grasp. 

“When you com­pare FTSE firms against tech com­pa­nies, you sud­den­ly realise that the skills required of a CEO have changed com­plete­ly,” she says. 

The appoint­ment of Unilever’s for­mer head of human resources, Leena Nair, as CEO of fash­ion house Chanel in Decem­ber sug­gests that things might at last be chang­ing. If so, female HR direc­tors could be well placed to ben­e­fit. 

Nonethe­less, mean­ing­ful change will not hap­pen with­out a push. Before its offi­cial launch in Novem­ber 2021, 25x25 con­duct­ed exten­sive research among busi­ness lead­ers. This found that entrenched cul­tur­al bias­es about who is – and isn’t – suit­ed to the top job still run deep. Such atti­tudes per­sist despite suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ment-led dri­ves – for instance, the Davies review in 2010 and the Hamp­ton-Alexan­der review in 2016 – to improve the sit­u­a­tion. 

“There’s been quite a lot of work on gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the board­room, but that hasn’t moved the dial much in terms of CEO num­bers,” Cem­lyn-Jones says.

Providing a path to the top

This is most­ly because the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the role are very spe­cif­ic, as are the routes into it. Just because boards fea­ture more women, this doesn’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late into hav­ing more female CEOs. It’s why 25x25 has a strong focus on the con­cept of ‘path­ways’ into the top job – in oth­er words, how firms pick, pre­pare and pro­mote high-poten­tial can­di­dates from with­in or recruit them exter­nal­ly.

Some improve­ments to the selec­tion process would be rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to make. For instance, hav­ing an inde­pen­dent observ­er sit in on job inter­views could alert the com­pa­ny to any unin­ten­tion­al bias­es, Cem­lyn-Jones sug­gests. 

But, in addi­tion to any quick fix­es, firms must ask hard ques­tions of their tal­ent devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion process­es, she argues. Con­sid­er an oil major or a glob­al engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny, for instance. The CEOs of such firms tend to have gained broad oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in sev­er­al areas of the busi­ness, which is fine on paper. Yet is the expec­ta­tion on can­di­dates to up sticks and move reg­u­lar­ly from post­ing to post­ing real­ly fair to women, giv­en its impli­ca­tions for fam­i­ly life and the inse­cu­ri­ty of cer­tain over­seas roles? 

The 25x25 ini­tia­tive has so far resist­ed propos­ing a set frame­work for com­pa­nies to fol­low. Instead, its main request of them is to “con­tin­ue to ques­tion tra­di­tion­al mod­els, which may not be appro­pri­ate for the CEO of the future”, says Cem­lyn-Jones, who adds that tar­get-set­ting is also vital. Hard objec­tives can bet­ter oil the wheels of insti­tu­tions and make change more like­ly. Putting it more blunt­ly, she says: “If it’s left to chance, we know noth­ing hap­pens.”

With this in mind, par­tic­i­pat­ing firms are encour­aged to set clear tar­gets for gen­der bal­ance across the top two to three lev­els of man­age­ment.

“It’s very easy for peo­ple to say: ‘Oh, I looked for a good female can­di­date and I didn’t find any,’” she notes. “If a senior per­son then tells them: ‘Look again, because this is impor­tant,’ they will look again and they will find one. It hap­pens every time.” 

Anoth­er 25x25 pri­or­i­ty is for exist­ing busi­ness lead­ers to start cham­pi­oning the cause of greater female rep­re­sen­ta­tion more vocal­ly. At present, a “hand­ful of com­pa­nies” are push­ing this agen­da hard, she says. Wel­come as this is, if more don’t fol­low suit, “we will sim­ply end up with the same prob­lem”. 

Cem­lyn-Jones explains: “If a CEO steps up and says: ‘This is impor­tant to me,’ what we find is that prop­er work then gets done.” 

It’s clear that sev­er­al male CEOs in the FTSE 100 must become promi­nent cheer­lead­ers for the cam­paign if it’s to suc­ceed. Hav­ing signed up as ‘lead ambas­sadors’ for 25x25, it’s a man­tle that BP’s Bernard Looney, Unilever’s Alan Jope, and BAE Sys­tems’ Charles Wood­burn have already accept­ed. 

So, fast-for­ward three years and imag­ine that Cemlyn-Jones’s efforts to change the face of FTSE-100 lead­er­ship have suc­ceed­ed. What dif­fer­ence would it make? Per­haps the most obvi­ous impact would be on the sense of oppor­tu­ni­ty grant­ed to half of the nation’s work­ing pop­u­la­tion, she says. The more female CEOs there are, the more nor­mal that sit­u­a­tion becomes for every­one.

Cemlyn-Jones’s vision is that of a vir­tu­ous cir­cle in which “every­thing seems to work togeth­er”: more open doors for tal­ent­ed women, bet­ter-bal­anced lead­er­ship teams, hap­pi­er work­ers all round and so on. Fur­ther­more, it would mean a more pro­duc­tive pri­vate sec­tor in gen­er­al. By encour­ag­ing greater diver­si­ty, firms will shake off old habits and start ben­e­fit­ing from an influx of new skills and per­spec­tives.

“We’re doing this because we do actu­al­ly think [a high­er per­cent­age of female CEOs] will deliv­er bet­ter per­for­mance,” she says. “If you open up the tal­ent base, you’ll get the skills com­ing through faster and you can accel­er­ate growth.”

Being a blue-chip CEO is not for every­one, of course. The hours are long, the respon­si­bil­i­ties are huge and the expec­ta­tions are colos­sal. But every­one should at least have the chance of reach­ing the top of the tree. That’s only fair – and smart.