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00:00This is my kitchen table and also my filing systemover much of the past three decades. I've been an investor the highest quality of mankind. I've often thought as privateequity. And then I started interviewing Oh I watch your interviews because I know how to do it.I've learned in doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top. I asked him how much he wanted. He said to 250. I said fineI didn't negotiate with him. I did no due diligence. I have something I'd like to sell and how they stay there. You don'tfeel inadequate now because the only the second wealthiest man. Was that right.One of the greatest growth businesses in the world is consulting. It seems that everybody today is either using aconsultant or is a consultant. The largest consulting firm in the world is Accenture with more than five hundred and sixtynine thousand employees and a market cap of over two hundred billion dollars. Julie Sweet has grown dramatically in theseveral years that she's been the CEO. I had a conversation with her about why everybody uses consultants and why everybodyshould be a consultant. So it seems as if everybody's a consultant these days whenpeople are being raised they don't say to the little child I hope you grow up to be a consultant. Why is everybody you wantto be a consultant on water. Are all these consultants doing. Well David I think that we actually defy the label consultantbecause 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 clients lookto us for two things. Relevance. You know how to help them be relevant today andtomorrow. Like a Jaguar Land Rover who hired us to help them radically transform the marketing of their vehicles and theexperience of their owners. And then the other thing they look for is results. Right. So not just advice but actually how dothings change and how do you execute like someone who hires us for a supply chain where we help digitize it and change theirinventory results in 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 corporationand I have a problem. And typically and today when you have a problem what you do isyou call a consultant and so they call you up and say would you consult with me. Which is to help solve my problem. You then putin a team of people. That's a great question. You know I think one of the mostimportant things is we always start with what's actually the either the problem or the opportunity.And we're very focused on repeatable solutions that get customized by the client but not trying to be bespoke you knowsort of the old consulting is. Let me come in. Let me bring a Dutch people and study it. But today you can start with data. Wewe serve you know 75 percent of the top 500 Fortune 500. And so what we're bringing to our clients often are solutions that thenget customized. There are based on experience and we invest a lot. We'll spend four billion dollars this year in acquisitions.We'll spend about eight hundred million dollars in RFID. We have over 7000 patents our patents pending. So all of these thingsare 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 their business casesand ambitious enough or they don't need us. Well what about a consulting project. In my example I'm 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 you to take. Six months to come upwith a solution a year. Or does it say it's going to take a forever solution is going to be five or 10 years. Well I thinkone of the most important things that's come out of Covid is the need to move very quickly. Not a lot of clients post Covid saywe move so fast. I mean I want to keep going. And I'd always ask a simple question David. I'd say well what have you changed.And oftentimes you know they haven't changed. And we don't operate as big companies permanently in crisis mode.And so when you think about look how long does it solve things. A lot of it starts with you know the company being willing toset aggressive goals. Right. And so we're doing work for example with a large consumer goods company where we said we're going toin 12 weeks have a a a pilot to actually improve their manufacturing. And that pre Covid probably would have been a sixmonth project not because of Accenture but because of how the client worked. And so what we are trying to do now is work withour clients to work differently and to work faster. Well how do you charge. You charge by the hour. Do you charge by the projectis a cost plus profit thing. What's the secret to your billing. So our preference is to either have a fixed fee or to havesomething that shares you know upside and downside. And the reason for that is that we don't view ourselves as a vendor or aconsultant in that we are keeping ourselves at arm's length. We believe that the best way to get success is to co createsolutions have integrated teams. The advice I often will give CEOs is that our team at Accenture and the client's team shouldhave the exact same performance objectives so that they're completely aligned. Now not every client is willing to work thatway but we think it's really important. And so we have plenty of clients who want a bill by the hour and that's their choice. Butthat's not our preference. Let's suppose somebody hires your firm and they have a one year consulting project. And at the endthey say I don't like this consulting advice. I'm not going to follow it. In fact I'm not going to pay your bill. Does thatever happen. Well look we're not perfect. So it may. Happen but shame on usif it takes a year to figure out that our client doesn't doesn't like what we do. One of the things that we focus on a lot isworking with the client. Day in and day out side by side and not throwing things over a wall to consultants. So unlikely thatthat specific scenario would happen. So without violating confidences can you give me an example of something where youadvise somebody. It turned out to be great for them and they're so happy they're willing to brag about what a great job you did.Well we've got lots of examples of that. So if you take for example what we're doing which is CDO and we've announced apartnership there and we're helping QA CTO we talked about compress a transformation. We're helping them digitize theexperience of being consumer. We're helping them redo their inventory and their systems. And so this is something that we'reboth very proud of the work that we're doing together. But suppose you need a consultant. Who do you call. You callMcKinsey or to call one of your own people. So normally we call one of our own people. But I will give you a great example whenI became CEO. I needed to put in a new operating model and I wanted to do itfaster than any we'd ever done in our past in any client had done to prove that you can move at scale. So six months biggestchange in our history. At the time our practice was completely sold out to do change management and new org design. And thehead of my practice said I think you should hire this small company called Katie Kessler. And I would tell you my leaderswere like why are we hiring a different consultant. Within two weeks the same leaders all came back and said We need Kate'sKessler to be part of Accenture and they are today. So I'm grateful that they took the call because I'm sure it was alittle intimidating to have Accenture hire someone. But you know the lesson for that is to have humility. And one of the thingsthat I think is really important that when we look at leaders in industry around digitization it's those who are willing to notalways build it themselves who think they have all of the answers but that actually look outside. And Accenture didn't saydid you have any mistakes you made or failures that you can talk about so that people could feel you're not just a superhuman.People ask that question as if the only challenge is at work. Challenges come in a lot of different packages. Let's talk about how you rose up to be the CEO. So you grew upwhere I grew up in Tustin California which has a little sign and it says work where you must but live and shop in Tustin. SoSouthern California I thought I would have a sign and say Home of Judy Sweet doesn't have that song yet. We're going to have towork on that. So were you a star student in high school or star athlete or something like that. I was a speech and debate star.So I was starting when I was a freshman. I used to do two kinds of things. My dad used to get in his little VW and I would dothe circuit the Lions Club Optimist Club. And I'm greatly appreciative of all of those clubs because they helped me earnmoney for college. And then I was on the speech and debate team and I really loved that. And my parents didn't love it so muchat times because it was apparently you know use the skills against them. But it was definitely a great way of creating askill that I used today. And other words if you're a debate champion you can debate your parents. Yes they didn't. OK. Sowhere 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 and debatingand 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. And Iremember my senior year in college before I wrote you know and accepted going to Columbia. One of my professors said have youever 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 tocollege 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. AndI went to law school. So you went across the country. I don't know why you went to Columbia because you like places to beginwith a C or what is it. What prompt you got from Claremont to Columbia. You know it's funny. I looked back and I'm not surewhy 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. Andand so it was actually a deliberate decision that I needed to diversify my experience. You graduated from Columbia. You wentto work at Cravat Swaine and Moore which is a large firm in New York. That I was a summer associate at continuing to see. Itbegan with a C.. But why did you pick her back. It wasn't a place that a lot of women had become partners.It wasn't in fact at the time. I remember when I came back and I accepted my offer. All my women friends were saying what haveyou done. And all my male friends were like congratulations. So it was definitely not the at the time. Selection of choice isnow run by a woman by the way. And I picked it because I had no intention of staying a lawyer. It was the best in the world. AndI wanted to go there for two years and then go off and and make my career. At the time I thought in Asia. OK. So you openlystate became a partner. I think the third woman partner I was the third woman corporate partner. The ninth woman partner inthe history of the firm. OK. So you're a corporate partner acrobat which is a well compensated law firm let's say andyou're making a fair amount of money by any standard. Why did you decide to leave and give up that partnership and where thepeople at cravat who usually don't have people leaving. Were they shocked.I think they were surprised. But I was leaving for a great role. So they were very supportive. You know I still remember being atmy desk and picking up the phone when a recruiter called me about the Accenture job. And it was a few months after my fatherhad passed away at a very young age at 68. And I think looking back that's why I took a meeting. And and I basically said I'm42 years old and I can see my future and it'll be a great future. I loved Cravat and Accenture offered me somethingdifferent and I decided to take it. And I think it was the last gift of my dad to be honest. So did you think when you joinedthe company that a female would become the head of this gigantic organization or did you think that it was going to be atypically a male run kind of thing. No I didn't really think about it because I joined as general counsel and you know as thegeneral counsel and you know coming in where the average tenure on the leadership team when I joined was 30 years I didn't comein with the expectation that I would be CEO. And you know really when we think about how do you how do you make a change inleadership and how do you continue to foster diversity in your leadership. Our former CEO Pier 9 TAM was a great example ofsomeone who sponsored me saw potential and created a new pathway that. I certainly didn't have an expectation when I came intoAccenture. One of the largest private employers in the United States isthat right. That's right. And that's globally of course. And last year we actually are really proud that we added a net100000 jobs around the globe. Second during the period of Covid you added that many jobs. I mean why was business so good duringthe Covid period. You know it's it's really interesting when you think about whathappened in Covid sort of overnight. There was. We all moved online. And Accenture since 2013 has been building ourcapabilities in digital cloud and security. And so at the time of Covid we became relevant and critical for really all of theworld's leading companies. And when you look at this fiscal year which we just ended we actually had more clients who had overone hundred million dollars in bookings in the first three quarters of our fiscal year than all of last year driven by whatwe call compressed transformation. They need to digitize all parts of the business. Now one of your competitors and you maynot admit you have competitors but a company called McKinsey you probably heard of them. They say we don't want to be a publiclytraded company. We're a partnership. It's easier to do this when you're not a publicly traded company but you're a publiclytraded company with a market cap of over two hundred billion dollars. So what do you think about the view that consultantsshould be privately owned as opposed to publicly traded. You know it's an interesting question for us. The markets are animportant element of discipline right. Be you know where we're giving our results every quarter. And of course we think itreally attracts talent. Our employee value proposition is a really strong one because of our stock which is a huge part of apay for performance and a culture that's tied to creating value for all our stockholders. And so it's served us well in terms ofattracting great talent. But you're not competing with private equity. I hope you're not going to be trying to steal peoplefrom private equity to go into consulting. I hope now the private equity seems to be trying to compete with professionalservices and hiring a few people and acquiring a lot of professional services these days. That business has been agrowth business. That's why you see a lot of acquisitions there. Now you're doing this from Washington D.C.. Washington D.C. is agreat place. It's the capital of our country but it's not necessarily known as a place you run global businesses from. Whyare you headquartered in Washington D.C.. You know we have not had a headquarters really since for 30 30 years three decades atleast pre Covid. We were probably the largest organization running itself remotely. Our leaders are around the world. Andso 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 timein 30 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 inD.C.. So during the Covid period of time did you go into the office or you just worked remotely. I worked remotely. One ofthe things that we are you know famous for is being very close to our clients. And so our offices are not the center of ourwork. And because we have a distributed leadership team I literally even pre Covid would go to the office and beyond teamscalls. And so during Covid I wanted to make sure that our people felt comfortable working from home and didn't feel pressured togo into the office. So how do you meet your clients. You don't go meet them yourself so much because you've got other peoplearound the world. And during the cold period time I assume you really didn't go meet anybody. You were just traveling in fromyour office to your home. If if that. Right. So pre Covid I did definitely travel a lot. And I think we've all learned howeverduring Covid that connections can be built remotely. And certainly you know my fun fact was I became CEO September 1st 2019 and literally six months and eleven days after becoming CEO Covid you know the pandemic was declared. And so I've had a veryinteresting first couple of years and I built really strong relationships by leveraging technology and really thinking abouthow do you build connections. And I think one of the great learnings out of Covid is this idea of omni connections. And Ithink too many people focus on remote work and hybrid work and physical location as opposed to you know how do you connect withpeople. When do you need to do it. Physically you know how to be intentional and you know what. What. What's required forconnections. So how do you keep up with what's going on around the world. You have so many consultants and you know all the bigprojects you get reports daily or weekly or monthly about. Going on or if there are problems and do you have to go out and woothe 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 publish for my all of my managing directors how many client meetings I've had and how manymeetings I've had with our ecosystem partners to reinforce that our business begins with understanding our clients. I call itthe proximity imperative and I spend more than 50 percent of my time with clients not just wooing them. They're not in a salesmode but understanding them building relationships. And that's really what our entire foundation of Accenture isbuilt on is that proximity to clients. And then with respect to how do I run the business and when the most important lessonsthat I think any leader has is you put it. You build a great team and then you rely on them for what they are. You have beenasked to do. And so I don't micromanage. I really focus on you know who is doing what and what do I needto know and having a great team. Let's suppose I go to business school and I do reasonably wellthere and I say I want to be a consultant and you interview me or somebody interviews me. What are the skills you're lookingfor is a hard work integrity brilliance. What is what makes a good consultant. All of those are I think table stakes. But oneof the things that we really look for. So yes we want people who work hard who you know have you know have performed well. Butthe most important skill that we see is the willingness to learn because the environment around us is changing. We know from askills perspective skills and 20 17 30 percent of them are obsolete today.And so we test for learning. We ask really basic questions like what have you learned in the last six months that wasn't in aclassroom. And and so learning agility curiosity are really core to our hiring philosophy. So what do you do when you're notconsulting. You have any outside interests. Well I took up tennis during Covid which was pretty brave at 52.And I actually can hit the ball. I'm not great but I can play a game. And mostly I focus on my two daughters who are 13 andabout to be 15. Have you thought of hiring a consultant for your tennis game. You know if you hire a consultant that wouldimprove your tennis game right. Well actually most of the time I play tennis with a coach because that way I can actually hit theball and get a little bit better OK. So if the president United States called you and said you know you're running a giganticcompany you've done a terrific job. I need some more women leaders in my government. I wanted tocome in and be secretary of something important. What would you say. I'd say I'm honored to be asked but I have really importantwork to do in the private sector. OK so you wouldn't go in right now.That is not my current aspiration. OK. Now somebody who's watching this would say this person has an incredibleprofessional life. Rose up to be a partner at Carol Massar. Now she's the CEO of this gigantic company. Can you cite somethingthat didn't work out in your professional life so that people could feel you're not just a superhuman and then make peoplefeel good that they can see that somebody made a mistake. Do you have any mistakes you've made or failures that you can talkabout. 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 a spectacularfailure. But in my own personal life. Right. My father died when he was 68.I had breast cancer. We had drug addiction in our family mental health issues.And so one of the things that I've learned is that challenges come in a lot of different packages.And to have empathy for people you know when someone having a bad day you don't know if that bad day is because they've gotsomething going on at home or in their personal life. And so my challenges haven't been about spectacular failures at work butthere have been challenges. And I talk about that because I think that's true for a lot of people.

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The David Rubenstein Show: Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

Accenture Chair and CEO Julie Sweet talks about working remotely, hiring during the pandemic, and why the company has no world headquarters. She appears on "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations." This was recorded Sept. 8 in Washington. (Source: Bloomberg)

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