According to The Independent on Sunday, the way to shatter the glass ceiling is to change it.  They quote ongoing research by Egon Zehnder International (EZI) which looks set to confirm that the selection processes used to find senior executives, particularly board directors, discriminate against women.

To be fair, the article doesn’t actually say ‘discriminate’, using the more diplomatic ‘works against promoting women’, but you get the thrust.

The argument runs that the tools and techniques companies use to measure, assess and evaluate candidates for senior posts are out of date.  It is claimed they are based on experience-based competencies in a world where a lot of women lose out on experience because they tend to take time out in their 30s to have families.  Talent management programmes tend to focus on precisely that age group to groom the top directors of the future.  And women in their 30s with young families often buy into the idea of flexible working, which EZI describes as the ‘mummy trap’.

Other European countries who offer flexible working do a lot better than the UK as far as numbers of women on company boards are concerned – particularly the Scandinavian countries.  So I find myself wondering why UK companies don’t look at how the Finns, Danes and Norwegians do it.  Is it the infamous English old-boys’ network getting in the way of progress?  Or are  men unaware of the problem?  Certainly many men I talk to, including some fairly high powered coaches, question the existence of a glass ceiling (to which I am inclined to respond: ‘ welcome to OUR world, mate’.)  As long as that view of things prevails, it’s going to be hard to budge that glass ceiling.

One of the challenges we are going to have to deal with is the loss of opportunity which is likely to come in the current economic climate.  As a coach and trainer I have seen companies and government organisations alike cutting back on people development.  Secondments and other good career development tactics don’t come cheap (although I can see a great future for intern programmes for people fresh out of college or university).  Cut-backs are likely to affect promotability, so if  things are difficult for women now, they are likely to get worse in the next couple of years.  There are likely to be fewer opportunities to gain experience, more intense competition from both men and women for the opportunities that are available, and higher levels of stress for all concerned, and there’s likely to be a knock-on effect in the private sector as more people chase fewer opportunities across the board.

However, redundancy (or lay offs) bring opportunity: if you can’t break through the glass ceiling, why not create your own compay, where there IS no glass ceiling.  According to the CEO of the Small Business Task Force, speaking in 2005, a pound invested in developing women’s enterprise provides a greater return on investment that a pound invested in developing male owned enterprise.  A nice little tit-bit of information when you’re building the business case for that elusive bank loan!

And, hey, who said your boss had to pay for your training and development?  Some of the most successful women I know have put their hands in their own pockets and invested in themselves, for example by gaining additional qualifications or deliberately taking a pay-cut to get a job which offers valuable experience.

Now, more than ever, is the time to be thinking laterally about your career success.