- Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has a plaque in her home that says, “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.” “I look at it every day when I think about where I need to take our company, and where I need to continue to learn as a company,” she said at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference in Riyadh.
Accenture’s chair and CEO, Julie Sweet, has shared the motto she repeats to herself when she feels like she’s bitten off more than she can chew in her career.
“My own inspiration is a plaque on my wall that says, if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough,” the CEO revealed at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Riyadh. “And I used that when I was trying to become CEO of Accenture.”
Ambitiously reaching for the things that scare her has worked out well for Sweet’s career. Before joining $199 billion market-cap tech giant Accenture in 2010 as general counsel, she spent a decade as partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. In 2019, she became Accenture’s first female CEO and took on the role of chair in 2021.
Today, the 57-year-old attorney turned CEO ranks second on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list, which was just released today. She is among just 5% of Fortune Global 500 companies helmed by a woman leader—and none of those have more employees than Accenture’s 800,000-plus.
Yet, despite her accomplishments, she still finds herself looking back at that motivational plaque at her home daily.
“I look at it every day when I think about where I need to take our company, and where I need to continue to learn as a company,” Sweet concluded. “So I hope for all of you that your dreams scare you, because that means you’re going to make the impact that I know you can.”
Go for the dreams that scare you—but don’t ignore any skills gaps
It’s not enough to just shoot for the scary stars. Sweet revealed that her promotion to CEO required a hard look at the gaps in her skill set. Having climbed the corporate rankings in law, she had to seriously brush up on her tech knowledge before stepping up at the tech powerhouse.
“When I joined Accenture in 2010 as the general counsel, I didn’t know what a CIO [chief information officer] was,” Sweet said on stage. “I come from a law firm. We didn’t have such a thing. We didn’t use technology. I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have the internet.”
Today, she says leaders—no matter their background or current industry—can’t do the top job with “deeply understanding” technology, “not as plumbing, but because AI is going to change everything in the front line.”
But all is not lost if you don’t know what a CIO is; that doesn’t automatically mean the door to leadership is shut.
“I share with you where I was in 2010 because anyone can learn these skills,” Sweet added. “At 42, most of the skills that matter today I didn’t have. Fifteen years later, I have them.”
