The Financial Talent Executive Network (F-TEN™)
Are you ready to lead in the boardroom?
F-TEN™ is an elite business leadership programme and peer to peer network, developed by the ICAEW to support senior finance professionals achieve their career goals.
The F-TEN™ programme is designed to provide participants with the skills and insight to become the next finance leaders through:
- eight 1.5 hour individual mentoring sessions with senior FTSE non-executive directors
- eight expertly facilitated, cross-industry peer learning groups
- four topically themed, financial leadership workshops
- four networking dinners with an inspirational FTSE guest speaker
“An enormously challenging and rewarding programme that’s addressing my core development needs and helping me step up to be a respected and decisive leader in my organisation” Finance Director
Why take part?
Our extensive research shows that a gap exists between the expectations of Finance Directors and their Chief Executives during the first months of their new role. F-TEN™ focuses on closing this gap and easing and accelerating the transition from finance specialist to senior business leader. F-TEN™ gives participants the tools and knowledge to succeed.
Key benefits:
- Gain enhanced leadership skills and self-awareness
- Build your network of business contacts in an elite peer group for key talent
- Strategic understanding of key business challenges
- Mentoring by executives who have reached the top of their game
- The ability to bring external, commercial and international perspectives to your leadership experience
- Free annual membership of ICAEW Financial Management Faculty and access to an exclusive online community and life long membership to an F-TEN alumni network.
- F-TEN Case Study: Claire Watt
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As cost transformation director at BT, Claire Watt has for the last 12 months been building up the telecoms giant’s internal management consultancy team, now 35 strong. A participant in this year’s F-TEN programme, she feels its combination of peer learning, mentoring and events are improving her leadership skills. ‘It’s helped me to be more disciplined in delegating and empowering my team,’ she explains. ‘My mentor says he has seen a difference in my approach – the impact of the way I am delegating and thinking more about where I want to take the team.’The F-TEN experience has also helped her further develop her relationships with senior stakeholders – the CEOs, CFOs and other senior figures in BT’s business divisions with whom Watt’s team must work to achieve cost efficiencies while maintaining customer service levels. ‘We had an F-TEN event focused on strategic influence,’ Watt notes. ‘It looked at how to influence and achieve the results that are right for the organisation, how to strike the balance between when you need to consult and collaborate, and when you don’t.’
Watt finds that ‘F-TEN provides an environment that allows for healthy, open and honest discussions’. Of the peer learning groups, she says: ‘When you have been with an organisation for a few years there is a risk that you can become insular. So it’s fantastic to share experiences with your peer group and hear how their organisation might do things differently.’
‘F-TEN is not just about being a finance person, it’s about being a leader,’ Watt says. ‘It helps you identify the areas you need to work on to be a leader in any area of your organisation.’
Current mentors include:
As Europe’s leading accountancy body, we’ve used our position to assemble an unrivalled collection of mentors with a wealth of non-executive director experience at FTSE companies. Mentors include:
- Alison Reed, former group finance director of Standard Life and Marks & Spencer. Non-executive director and audit committee chair of British Airways
- Andrew Shilston, finance director of Rolls-Royce. Non-executive director of AEA Technology from 1998 to 2003 and of Cairn Energy from 2004 to 2008.