Julie Sweet, now the global CEO of Accenture, has taken her on the road to leading one of the world’s largest consulting firms. Back in late 2014, just a month before she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her then-boss and Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme made surprising comments when it looked like a routine meeting.
“At the end of the meeting, he closed the notebook and pushed it away and he said to me, it was totally blue…’I think you can run this place one day,” Bed recalls.
Accept the advice and step up
At that time, Sweet served as general counsel. She has no business background, has not spent her entire career at Accenture, and works in an organization traditionally led by men. Nanterme herself pointed out that she will first need operational experience before she can make such a leap.
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Instead of doubting herself, Sweet relies on the advice she once received from Dina Dublon, a former CFO and member of the Accenture Council of JPMorgan Chase.
“When someone gives you a stretched character…it’s very likely that the person who provides you with a stretched character is more nervous or nervous than you. So, don’t say anything, for example: Are you sure?” Dublon advises.
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Sweet keeps that in mind when she responds to Nanterme. She said, “I looked at him and I said-Dina’s head-‘Why, yes, I’m interested. What do you think?”
The conversation eventually led her to run Accenture’s North American business in 2015, and then was appointed global CEO in 2019.
Confidence as a leadership tool
In retrospect, sweet confidence, humility and excellence are at the heart of her leadership philosophy.
“We’ve been challenging each other and assumptions,” she explained. “When you build a team that thinks the status quo, the status quo is a challenging assumption, embracing change, it means you’re always questioning. You don’t need to stop and develop a big strategy… because you’ve been working on developing a strategy.”
Asking questions and seeking help continues to shape her leadership style, she added.
“I think the idea of being a top learner is really crucial, and in many companies, that’s not the usual,” she said. “Because a lot of times, senior leaders, whether they are CEOs or a level of level, they are people with all their wisdom. They get these big jobs, so the idea of training leaders is often really weird.”
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Beyond expertise
Sweet also reflects how she taught her early in Accenture’s legal division and she needed to expand her understanding of business success.
“I quickly learned that if I wanted to be a business leader with legal experience, I had to get a deeper understanding of the business,” she said.
This mentality helped her position her greater leadership opportunities, she explained. “Transparency builds trust,” Sweet added. “Because the more value you can contribute [to] The more likely you are to get the best next job in your company. ”
