Name: Accenture CEO's 3 musts for businesses success: Metaverse, Sustainability, and Leadership
Uploaded: 2022-11-08
Duration: 9 min 9 s
Description: Julie Sweet says 'experiment' with metaverse because 'you don’t want to miss the wave'. Sustainability is 'good business'. Best leadership advice: 'be a learner.'

Julie Sweet says "experiment' with metaverse because "you don’t want to miss the wave".  Sustainability is "good business". Best leadership advice: "be a learner."

Accenture CEO's 3 musts for businesses success: Metaverse, Sustainability, and Leadership

Leadership

Julie Sweet says "experiment' with metaverse; sustainability is "good business;" best leadership advice: "be a learner."

Accenture CEO's 3 musts for businesses success

julie. So great to see you and talk about all the things that you're doing over at accenture and you said that this is the time for change and reinvention and as always it has to deal with leadership characteristics. So tell us what are the characteristics of people who are the change makers and then often do become the great leaders. Well Susie, one of the first things I did when I became Ceo a few years ago was to outline what we call our leadership essentials and just a couple that I would highlight that I think are really important. One is to lead with excellence. Confidence and humility, humility is the important word because leaders who are humble our learners and they build great teams and that's what you need to be able to thrive in a time of change. The other piece that I would say is we have a leadership essential that says the courage to change and the ability to bring people along with you and that's equally important. If you have a great vision and you're not able to bring people along to communicate to be a real advocate, then you're not gonna be able to bring your organization along. Well I understand that center added 200,000 people during the pandemic years. And so that brings accenture to 720,000 employees. That's just a remarkable number. Many of Those new hires may become your leaders of the future. How did you identify the people that would have the leadership characteristics that you were just talking about. Well first of all we look at skills and so when we're hiring it's not about pedigree but about skills and that's allowed us, for example in the US to have over 20% of our hiring last year be apprenticeships, amazing talent and who knows hopefully one of them will someday lead accenture. The second piece is around learning. So we look for people who have what we call learning agility and we do it pretty simply we ask a question that says what have you learned recently, it doesn't matter if it's about you learned how to make paella right? The fact is are you a learner and that is a very very good indicator of who will be a strong leader at accenture. You've been talking a lot about important forces of change that are going to happen over the next decade. And it's a fascinating list. I just want to talk to you about a few of them. One of them at the top of your list is the metaverse. Uh That is the uh the most important change you say that C. E. O. S need to gear up for for the next decade. Tell us why we believe the metaverse change the change of the metaverse is actually more profound than digital and that is because of the ways that will change the way the way you operate your business, but also you interact every day. So three big areas. The first is it will become just another channel to buy things and it will also become a new kind of products. You're already seeing this in virtual trading cards for example, you're seeing companies look at in the avatars that you build in the metaverse, how can we sell clothing for those avatars? So a new channel and a new product category. It's also a new employee experience. We are on boarding 100 and 50,000 people into accenture's own metaverse called the End floor, we think it's the largest enterprise metaverse uh in the world today. And then finally it's in the industrial space, so it's in manufacturing and being able to create digital twins. It's also in things like oil and gas and being able to connect you know, rigs in the middle of the sea to back home to training to preventive maintenance, where people are going in and out of the physical and virtual worlds. So you're getting positive feedback from Ceo that I want to learn about metaverse absolutely! A few years ago, when people would talk to me about Blockchain, which is one of the underlying technology at the time, I would say not everybody should experiment, Our advice is different today, we think the metaverse with all of its underlying technologies is such a profound change that you don't want to miss the wave and you need to at least be experimenting, You also advocate the importance of sustainability, You're a big believer in that you say every business must be a sustainable business and we know that many companies have already set decarbonization goals, What more do they need to do? It's interesting, there's a new trend that yes, you set decarbonization goals which are long term goals and now they're setting micro goals, we've said by 2025 we will be net zero, we set by 20 at the end of 2023 that will have 100% renewable electricity. Why? Because that's a micro goal that we know that we can accomplish that will have a positive impact and we can't get to net zero by 2023 but we can get to 100% renewable electricity. And so I think you're gonna start to see companies moving from these long term goals to also adding micro goals, being able to communicate those and also being held accountable to achieve more milestones along the way. But are you also seeing some resistance on sustainable goals? I mean, I'm sure you've been hearing about the pushback that many C. E. O. S are saying, look, you know, I really can't afford to be devoting money and time to these environmental goals, for example, in the time where there could be a recession, there's all the, you know, turmoil in the financial markets and they're worried about their own companies. What do you say to those ceo actually, sustainability is good business and we're not really hearing that pushback instead. It's about how do I move from commitment to action because it does matter in the war for talent? It matters with the consumer, it matters with the regulators. So sustainability is really seen as good business in the early days of the pandemic, people were afraid exactly of that push back and the opposite happened in the same way. What are you thoughts about recession? Can a recession interrupt all of the change in innovation that you're talking about? We're actually seeing the uncertainty around the economy be a catalyst for change. So there are C. E. O. S. You're saying let's not waste this crisis, let's push forward. And when you think about innovation, there is big I innovation, like we talked about earlier but there's also little I innovation which is continuous improvement and it's using new technologies to drive greater product for example, it's using data to find new sources of revenue. And most of the ceos were talking about talking to today are saying let's use this uncertainty to try to push our organization to move faster. Let's wrap up by talking about women and leadership julie. You are one of only 46 women C. E. O. S running a Fortune 500 company and Fortune recently ranked you number two on its lid list of the most powerful women in business and we know that certainly it was not a straight line to the top for you or for all those other women. So just wondering what's the best advice that you can give to women today who aspire to run a big business or to start their own company. That will be a powerful force in business? What's your best advice be a learner? You know, I went from being the general counsel to the ceo of accenture. I went from not knowing anything about technology to leading a technology company and at the core. The reason I'm able to do that is that I am a learner. So in your early in the career, set a learning agenda as you become a leader, make sure you're learning agenda is also set for your team. What do you see as the future? Are you served on many boards? You talk to a lot of C E. O. S. Who are your clients? Do you see these business leaders encouraging and grooming women to be leaders or at least in the C suite diversity has become a business priority because it does drive innovation. And so I'm incredibly optimistic as I look around the world that we are continuing down a path where it's not about gender, the type of diversity but about getting the best leader. Uh and diversity just becomes a part of everyday business. And what about your job as CEO These past three years? You have said that the job of CEO has changed dramatically since the pandemic? I think it's surprising that with all your new responsibilities as Ceo you've taken on outside leadership, I understand you're very involved in helping displaced Ukrainians people from Afghanistan, your co leading an organization called Welcome dot Us. Why is this important to you? As XN, I'm actually co leading the Welcome that US Business council with the CEO of google. And it's very simple. We feel a responsibility to our communities and to provide opportunities, including in a tight labor market to the people that we are welcoming to this country. It's been incredibly gratifying to see how both communities and businesses are prioritizing uh serving this need.