Recruit more women as senior executives I hope so because British companies need to avoid being caught up in mandatory quotas for women on boards as proposed by, yes you've guessed it, Brussels. But companies should also be free not to comply with targets of 25pc female board directors, resorting instead to the perfectly reasonable UK governance principle of comply or explain. A good reason why companies may struggle to hit the targets, and why Cranfield's optimism could prove false, is the shortage of suitable candidates. Recent zeal among companies to recruit more women on to FTSE 100 boards, for instance, is obviously the result of the high profile campaign led by Lord Davies. These encouraging early gains risk losing momentum because the pool of talent is being rapidly drained. That pool needs replenishing and to do that will require a separate, rather more fundamental campaign, which is to have many more women appointed to senior executive roles within companies. As well as chief executive and finance director level, these positions are just as crucial at the next level down at divisional or country level, or the equivalent. These are the female directors of the future but their ranks are not obviously large enough now to support providing 25pc-30pc of all company directors. Some candidates will come from the charity sector or overseas, but the core should come from female company executives who are coached and prepared for board life. This is probably a medium-term goal. Short term, one sensible and practical initiative that all chief executives or chairmen of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies should agree to is to identify and prepare at least one woman in their organisation over the next year for a board role at another, non-competing, quoted company. That's 350 new female board directors at a stroke developing valuable experience and keeping counterproductive quotas at bay.