Barclays Future Leaders Programme Hosts “Zero to 150” Keynote and Workshop

Amer Iqbal and Roshan Chhotu from 5 Ways to Innovate deliver their Zero to 150 keynote for Barclays leadership programme

On 31 October 2025, Barclays welcomed 5 Ways to Innovate co-founders Amer Iqbal and Roshan Chhotu to deliver a high-impact keynote and mini-workshop for the bank’s Future Leaders cohort — a hand-selected group of around 50 rising stars who will step into senior leadership roles in the coming years.

The session centred on Zero to 150, one of 5 Ways to Innovate’s flagship keynote topics, inspired by Roshan’s extraordinary story of training for — and completing — his first 150-mile ultramarathon across one of the world’s harshest deserts. The talk challenges leaders to identify the single, audacious goal that represents their leap to the next level. A teaser for the session can be found here on YouTube.

Equipping Barclays’ future leaders with a practical framework

Throughout the keynote, Roshan introduced a four-part framework designed to help leaders break their “Zero to 150” challenge into something actionable and achievable:

1. Make it bigger than you
Leaders were challenged to shift from personal achievement to creating impact through others. What does it mean to step up to the next level? And how do you become a catalyst for the growth of your teams, not just the star performer?

2. Reduce inertia
Every big goal has a bottleneck — the one hurdle that slows everything down. The cohort explored how to design systems and habits that create a bias for action and make progress frictionless.

3. Consistency over intensity
Success rarely comes from sporadic bursts of effort — it’s the everyday behaviours that compound. Leaders reflected on the “1 percent better” philosophy and the five-minute daily actions that move a team meaningfully forward.

4. Break it down to the smallest unit
Large goals only become achievable when broken into their smallest measurable components. Participants mapped their ambitions into simple units of progress — steps so small they couldn’t be ignored.

A room full of ambition — and vulnerability

What made the session especially powerful was the openness of the group. These were already high performers, yet they leaned into the discomfort of sharing the next big challenge they hoped to conquer. Their “Zero to 150” goals ranged from turning around underperforming teams, to confidently presenting to 500 people, to leading the bank’s highest-priority initiatives.

This mix of ambition and vulnerability created an electric learning environment — exactly the kind of space where future leaders sharpen their edge.

As Amer put it afterwards, “Sessions like this are special. You see exceptionally capable people articulate the fire that still burns inside them — the thing that represents their next transformation.”

What’s your Zero to 150?

The session closed with the same question that sits at the heart of the keynote:

What is the bold goal that proves you’re ready to rise to the next level?

For organisations developing their future leaders, Zero to 150 is an unforgettable way to ignite ambition and turn it into a roadmap for action. You can learn more about the keynote topic here:
👉 https://5waystoinnovate.com/zero-to-150