Julie Sweet

to either hire a consultant or be a consultant. So it seems as if everybody is a consultant these days. When people are being raised, they don't say to the little child, I hope you grew up to be a consultant. Why is everybody want to be a consultant? And what are all these consultants doing well? David, I think that we actually defy the label consultant because sometimes consultants seems to imply that we only give advice. And when you look at what Accenture does, we're really different than the

traditional version of a consultant our client. It's looked to us for two things. Relevance, you know how to help them be relevant today and tomorrow, like a Jaguar land Rover who hired us to help them radically transform the marketing of their vehicles and the experience of their owners.

And then the other thing they look for is results, right, so not just advice, but actually how do things change and how do you execute, Like someone who hires us for supply chain where we help digitize it and change their inventory results and their inventory turnaround. So we don't simply consult in a traditional sense. We're really about relevance and results, and that's what is driving our business. So let's suppose I'm a large corporation and I have a problem.

And typically in today when you have a problem, what you do is you call a consultant, and so they call you up and say, would you consult with me, which is to help solve my problem? Do you then put in a team of people. That's a great question, you know, I think one of the most important things is we always start with what's actually the either the problem or the opportunity, and we're very focused on repeatable solutions.

They get customized by the client, but not trying to be bespoke, you know, sort of The old consulting is let me come in, let me bring a bunch of people and study it. But today you can start with data. We serve the top five hundred of fortune five hundred uh and so what we're bringing to our clients often our solutions that then get customized, that are based on experience, and we invest a lot. You know, we'll spend four

billion dollars this year and acquisitions. We'll spend about eight hundred million dollars in R and D. We have over seven thousand patents are patents pending. So all of these things are assets to help our clients achieve their goals faster, with higher quality than they can do on their own. And that's really the test, you know. And sometimes, by the way, we say to clients, don't hire us because either they're business cases and ambitious enough, or they don't

need us. Well, what about a consulting project. And my example on the CEO, I have a problem, I call you up, I say solve my problem or give me a solution. How long does it usually take. Is it takes six months to come up with a a solution, a year or does it say it's going to take up forever? Solution it's gonna be five or ten years. Well, I think one of the most important things that's come out

of COVID is the need to move very quickly. You know, I had a lot of clients post COVID would say we move so fast, um, you know, I want to keep going. And I would always ask a simple question, David. I'd say, well, what have you changed? And oftentimes you know, they haven't changed. And we we don't operate as big

companies permanently in crisis mode. And so when you think about like how long does it solve things, A lot of it starts with, you know, the company being willing to set aggressive goals right, and so we're doing work for example with UM, a large consumer goods company, where we said we're going to in twelve weeks have a pilot to actually improve their manufacturing and that pre COVID probably would have been a six month project, not because

of accenture, but because of how the client worked. And so what we are trying to do now is work with our clients to work differently and to work faster. Well, how do you charge? You charge by the hour? Do you charge by the project? Is a cost plus profit thing? What's the secret of your billing. So our preference is to either have a fixed fee or to have um

something that shares, you know, upside or downside. And the reason for that is that we don't view ourselves as a vendor or a consultant, in that we are keeping ourselves at our length. We believe that the best way to get success is to co create solutions, have integrated teams. The advice I often will give CEOs is that our team at accenture and the science team should have the

exact same performance objectives so that they're completely aligned. Now, not every client is willing to work that way, but we think it's really important, and so we have plenty of clients who want to build by the hour, and that's their choice, but that's not our preference. Okay, let's oppose somebody hires your firm and they have a one year consulting project and at the end they say, I don't like this consulting advice. I'm not going to follow it um. In fact, I'm not going to pay your bill.

Does that ever happen? Well, look, we're not perfect, so it may happen, but shame on us if it takes a year to figure out that our client doesn't doesn't like what we do. I mean, one of the things that we focus on a lot is UH working with the client day in and day out, side by side, and not throwing things over a wall to consultant. So

unlikely that that specific scenario would happen. So without violating confidences, can you give me an example of something where you advise somebody it turned out to be great for them and they're so happy, they're willing to brag about what the great job you did. Well, We've got lots of examples of that. So if you take, for example, what we're doing with Cesto, UH, and we've announced a partnership there and we're helping Cicto. We talked about Compressed a transformation.

We're helping them digitize the experience of the end consumer. We're helping them redo their inventory and their systems, and so this is something that you know, we're both very proud of the work that we're doing together. Let's suppose you need a consultant. Who do you call? Do you call Mackenzie or do you call one of your own people?

So normally we call one of our own people, but I will give you a great example, when I became CEO, I needed to put in a new operating model and I wanted to do it faster than any we've ever done in our past and any client had done to prove that you can move at scale. So six months

biggest change in our history. At the time, our practice was completely sold out to do change management and new work design, and the head of my practice that I think you should hire this small company called Kate's Kessler, and I would tell you my leaders were like, why are we hiring a different consultant. Within two weeks, the same leaders all came back and said, we need Kate's Kessler to be part of Accenture, and they are today.

So I'm grateful that they took the call because I'm sure it was a little intimidating to have Accenture hire someone. But you know, the lesson for that is, you know, to have humility. And one of the things that I think is really important that you know, when we look at leaders and industry around digitization, it's those who are willing to not always build it themselves, who think they have all of the answers, but that actually look outside and eccentric did the same let's talk about how you

rose up to be the CEO. So you grew up where I grew up in Tustin, California, which has a little sign and it says work where you must but live and shop in Tustin, So southern California. I thought I would have a sign and say home of Julie Sweet doesn't have that signet. We're gonna have to work on that. So were you a star student in high school or a start athlete or something like that. I was a speech and debate star. So starting when I was a freshman, I used to do do two kinds

of things. My dad used to get in his little v W and I would do the the circuit, the Lions Club, Optimus Club. And I'm greatly appreciative of all of those clubs because they helped me earn money for college. And then I was on the speech and debate team, and uh, you know, really love that. My parents didn't love it so much at times because I was apparently, you know, use the skills against them. But it was definitely a great way of creating a skill that I

used today. In other words, if you're a debate champion, you can debate your parents. Yes, they didn't like that. Okay, So where did you go to college? I went to Claremont McKenna College in southern California, and then I went to Columbia Law School. So did your parents say you should be a lawyer or you went to become a lawyer because you were good at talking in debating and so forth. Is that why you went to law school? Yeah? So you know, I wanted to be a lawyer since

I was in eighth grade. Uh. And I remember my senior year in college, before I wrote you know and accepted going to Columbia, one of my professors said, have you ever met a lawyer? And I said no? And he said, I am not letting you sign away. You know, I was borrowing all the money to go to college to go to law school until you've met a lawyer. And I met a lawyer and I said, great, I still want to go to law school. And uh, and I went to law school. So you went across the country.

I don't know why you went to Columbia because you like place at the beginning with the sea or what is it? What prompt you go from Claremont to Columbia. You know, it's funny. You know, I look back and I'm not sure why i had this at the time. Maybe it's because I'd gone to China during college. But I said, I've grown up in southern California, I should experience the East Coast. I fully intended to go back to southern California, but I fell in love with New York.

Uh and uh and so it was actually a deliberate decision that I needed to diversify my experience. After you graduated from Columbia, you went to work at Krevat, Swain and Moore, which is a large firm in New York that I was a summer associate. Continuing to see it began with a sea But why did you pick Cravat. It wasn't a place that a lot of women have become partners at. It wasn't in fact at the time.

I remember when I came back and I had accepted my offer, all my women friends were saying, what have you done? And all my male friends were like, congratulations. So it was definitely not the at the time selection of choice. It is now run by a woman, by the way, uh. And I picked it because I had no intention of staying a lawyer. It was the best in the world, and I wanted to go there for two years and then go off and and make my career.

At the time, I thought in Asia. Okay, so you ultimately stayed became a partner, I think the third woman partner. I was a third woman corporate partner, the ninth woman partner in the history of the firm. Okay. So you're a corporate partner at Cravat, which is a well compensated law firm, let's say, and you're making a flair amount of money by any standard. Why did you decide to

leave and give up that partnership? And where the people at Kravat, who usually don't have people leaving where they shocked, you know. I think they were surprised, but I was leaving for a great role, so they were very supportive. You know. I still remember being at my desk and picking up the phone when a recruiter called me about

the accenture job. And it was a few months after my father had passed away at a very young age at and I think, looking back, that's why I took a meeting and uh, and I basically said, I'm forty two years old and I can see my future, and it would be a great future. I loved kvath H and Accenture offered me something different, uh, and I decided to take it. And I think it was the last

gift of my dad, to be honest. So, UM, did you think when you joined the company that a female would become the head of this gigantic organization or did you think that it was going to be a typically a male run kind of thing. You know, I didn't really think about it because I joined as general counsel and uh, you know, as the general counsel, you know, and coming in where the average tenure on the leadership team when I joined was thirty years. I didn't come

in with the expectation that I would be CEO. Uh. And you know, really, when when we think about how do you how do you make a change in leadership and how do you continue to foster diversity in your leadership. Our former CEO, Pierre Antara, was a great example of someone who sponsored me, saw potential and created a new pathway that I certainly didn't have an expectation when I came into Accenture. You're one of the largest private employers in the United States, Is that right? That's right. Uh,

and that's globally, of course. And last year we actually are really proud that we added a net one hundred thousand jobs around the globe. Second, during the period of COVID, you added that many jobs. I mean, why was business so good during the COVID period? You know, it's it's really interesting when you think about what happened in COVID.

Sort of overnight there was we all moved online, and Accenture since has been building our capabilities and digital cloud of security, and so at the time of COVID, right, we became relevant and critical for really all of the

world's leading companies. And when you look at this fiscal year which we just ended, we actually had more clients who had over a hundred million dollars in bookings in the first three quarters of our fiscal year than all of last year, driven by what we call compressed transformation, the need to digitize all parts of the business. Now, one of your competitors, and you may not admit you have competitors, but our company called McKenzie you've probably heard

of them. They say, we don't want to be a public traded company, where a partnership it's easier to do this when you're not a publicly traded company. But you're a publicly traded company with a market cap of over two billion dollars. So what do you think about the view that consultant should be privately owned as opposed to publicly traded. You know, I think it's an interesting question for us. The markets are an important element of discipline,

right be. You know, we're giving our results every quarter. Uh, and of course we think it really attracts talent. Our employee value proposition is a really strong one because of our stock you know, which is a huge part. We have a pay for performance and a culture that's tied to creating value for all our stockholders. And so it served us well in terms of attracting great talent. But you're not competing with private equity, I hope. I mean, you're not going to be trying to steal people from

private equity to go into consulting. I hope. Now the private equity seems to be trying to compete with professional services, uh and hiring a few people and acquiring a lot in professional services these days, all that business has been a growth business. That's why you see a lot of quisitions there now you're doing this from Washington, d C. Washington, d C is a great place at the capital of our country, but it's not necessarily known as a place

you run global businesses from. Um, why are you headquartered in Washington, d C. We have not had a headquarters really since for thirty thirty years, three decades at least pre COVID, we were probably the largest organization running itself remotely. Our leaders are around the world, and so the sort of de facto headquarters has always been wherever the CEO is. So the last CEO was in Paris. That was in Paris.

Before that, it was Boston. For that Dallas, and so d C is a great place to to be based. And in fact, this is the first time in thirty years the CEO and the CFO are out of the same office. And so I'm very fortunate to have Casey McClure here with me in d C. So during the COVID period of time, did you go into the office or you just work remotely? I worked remotely. One of the things that we are, you know, famous for us being very close to our clients and so our offices

are not the center of our work. And because we have a distributed leadership team. I literally, even pre COVID would go to the office and beyond you know, teams calls uh. And so during COVID, I wanted to make sure that our people felt comfortable working from home and didn't feel pressured to go into the office. So how do you meet your clients? You you don't go meet him yourself so much because you've got other people around the world. And during the COVID period of time, I

assume you really didn't go meet anybody. You were just traveling and uh from your office to your home if if that right. So pre COVID I did definitely travel a lot. And I think we've all learned, however, during COVID that connections can be built remotely. Uh and certainly you know, my fun fact was I became CEO September one, twenty nineteen, and literally six months and eleven days after becoming CEO UH COVID, you know, the pandemic was declared.

And so I've a very interesting first couple of years and I've built really strong relationships by leveraging technology and really thinking about how do you build connections? And I think one of the great learnings out of COVID is this idea of omni connections. And I think too many people focus on remote work and hybrid work and physical location as opposed to you know, how do you connect with people? When do you need to do it physically? You know how to be intentional and you know what

what what's required for connections. So how do you keep up with what's going on around the world? I mean, you have so many consultants and do you know all the big projects. Do you get reports daily or weekly or monthly about what's going on or if their problems? And do you have to go out and woo the clients yourself and get the business well? First and foremost, I lead by example, and our business is about clients.

And so every quarter I published from my all of my managing directors how many client meetings I've had and how many things I've had with our ecosystem partners, to reinforce that our business begins with understanding our clients. I call it the proximity imperative, as I spend more than of my time with clients not just wooing them, you know, not in a sales mode, but understanding them, building relationships. And that's really what our entire foundation of Accenter is

built on is that proximity to clients. And then with respect to how do I run the business? And one of the most important lessons that I think any leader has is you put you build a great team and then you rely on them for what they are you know, have been asked to do. And so I don't micromanage. I really focus on you know, who is doing what and what do I need to know and having a

great team. Let's suppose I go to businesschool and I do reasonaly while there and I say I want to be a consultant, and you interview me or somebody interviews me. What are the skills you're looking for? Is that hard work? U, integrity, brilliance, what makes a good con Alton? All of those are I think table stakes, but one of the things that we really look for. So yes, we want people who work hard, who you know, have you have performed well? But the most important skill that we see is uh

the willingness and to learn. Because the environment around us is changing. We know from a skills perspective, skills in them are obsolete today, and so we test for learning. We as really basic questions like what have you learned in the last six months that wasn't in a classroom? And uh and so learning, agility, curiosity are really core to our hiring philosophy. So what do you do when you're not consulting? Do you have any outside interests? Well?

I took up tennis during COVID, which was pretty brave at fifty two, and I actually can hit the ball. I'm not great, but I can, you know, play game. And mostly I focus on my two daughters, who are thirteen and about to be fifteen. Have you thought of hiring consultant for your tennis game? You know, if you hire a consultant, that would improve your tennis game, right, Well, actually, most of the time I played tennis with a coach because that way I can actually hit the ball and

get a little bit better. Okay, So if the President United States called you and said, you know, you're running a gigantic company. You've done a terrific job. I need some more, uh women leaders in my government. Why don't you come in and be secretary of something important? What would you say? I'd say, I'm honored to be asked, but I have really important work to do in the private sector. Okay, so you wouldn't go in right now,

that is not my current aspiration. Okay, Now somebody who's watching this would say, this person has an incredible professional light rose up to be a partner at Kravat. Now she's the CEO of this gigantic company. Can you cite something that didn't work out in your professional life so that people could feel you're not just superhuman and that make people feel good that they can see that somebody

made a mistake. Did you have any mistakes you've made or failures that you can talk about, you know, David, people ask that question as if the only challenge is at work, And for me, work has been a great place. I've had a lot of success and I don't have these spectacular failure But in my own personal life, right my father died when he was sixty eight. I had

breast cancer. Uh, we had drug addiction in our family, mental health issues, and so one of the things I've learned is that challenges come in a lot of different packages.

And to have empathy for people. Uh, you know, when someone I was a bad day, you don't know if that bad day is because they've got something going on at home or in their personal life and uh and so my challenges haven't been about spectacular failures at work, but they have been challenges, and I talk about that because I think that's true for a lot of people. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.