Throughout her life, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet hasn’t been afraid to throw out the playbook, and, in the age of AI, both she and her Fortune 500 clients are in the middle of another reinvention.
Going into her freshman year at Claremont McKenna College, Sweet, who grew up in a middle class Tustin, Calif. family, decided to study international relations and learn Chinese. Then, after a 17-year law career which saw her become the first woman partner at her firm, she took a leap to Accenture and tech consulting where she would eventually earn the top job—even though she knew nothing about technology at first.
As the rapid development of AI has upended the business world and has touched everything from the customer to the front office, Sweet, Accenture’s first woman CEO and chair of the board, says companies also have to reinvent themselves from top to bottom.
“In order to capture the opportunity with AI, you really have to be willing to rewire your company,” Sweet told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on the inaugural episode of the Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “Many times, when clients are saying, we’re not getting a lot out of AI, it’s because they’re trying to apply it to how they operate today.”
Rewiring, as Sweet describes it, means abandoning the mindset of business as usual.
Red flags she sees for AI adoption
- Applying legacy process. Her first red flag is if companies immediately want to tackle AI using the same old methods they’ve always used to tackle problems. “Things like cross functional steering committees; big red flag,” she said. “You have to actually change how you’re doing it.”
- Too much focus on projects that don’t move the needle, like collaboration: While working together is essential in business, reinventing a company for AI isn’t an excuse for more meetings because collaboration isn’t a business strategy, she said. “When the answer to using AI is to collaborate more; another big red flag.”
- Jumping into impractical AI projects: Sweet personally uses the technology to summarize data and build out PowerPoints, among other uses, but she notes: “that’s not going to change my bottom line.” Financial considerations and a clear strategy need to take precedence. “This isn’t about using AI on top of what you do today,” Sweet said. “If you’re not significantly changing the way you operate, then you’re not reinventing, and you’re not going to capture the value.”
Accenture, itself, has already committed $3 billion to building out its data and AI practice, and has pledged to add 80,000 AI-focused employees to its already robust 770,000-plus workforce. The firm has completed more than 2,000 generative AI projects in this fiscal year alone, and Sweet said Accenture’s clients continue to come to them for their industry and technical knowledge, but also their data and technology.
Sweet said the AI revolution needs to be led by executives, who are on the pulse of AI. They also need to not be afraid to change course, as Sweet, herself, has done at Accenture by rethinking her own initiatives from years ago.
“The real promise of it is to use it at the core of your business and be able to change your trajectory.”
