Name: Accenture CEO Julie Sweet says companies need to get out of ‘crisis mode’
Uploaded: 2020-09-30
Duration: 5 min 30 s
Description: 'If you're going to move with speed it can't be a permanent crisis mode,' say Sweet.

 SPEAKER 1: Digital transformation has just been such a huge part of the business conversation in the last few months and certainly predating that. And I think what we're seeing is kind of a split between companies who are ahead on digital transformation, who have done even better, gone even further, in the pandemic and companies that are lagging behind. That includes, I think in a lot of cases, small businesses, which are so important to our economy. So, from your perspective, if you're a company that is on sort of the losing end of that, what can you do to get ahead of it? And, how can we set those companies up to be in the best possible position? SPEAKER 2: It's a great question, a very astute point. We actually did research the year before the pandemic in 2019 that measured 8,000 companies across industries at their technology, adoption, debt, leadership and culture, and the top 10% we're doing twice as well as the bottom 25%, and the pandemic happened and really that gap became a chasm. And so, we're spending a lot of time with both leaders who are doubling down and trying to widen that gap even further, but also the laggards. And the first thing that we really have talked a lot about is the need to be brutal with your reality, meeting pre-COVID, a lot of times people felt like they were doing a lot, they had put new positions, and they were spending a lot. But really, where they were against their competition became front and center. The second thing is after sort of facing the brutal reality, is to set all goals, and it goes back to a little bit about that quote is to redefine speed, and I often talk to CEOs who say, we move really quickly. And so, I have a very simple question. I said, what have you changed in institutionalized speed? And oftentimes, there's silence, because that a lot of what people have done is still rely on being in the crisis mode. But if you want to do digital transformation as much as we'd like it to be overnight, although everyone is trying to do it much faster, these are major programs. And if you're going to move that speed, it can't be a permanent crisis mode. And so, I think it's a really important question for people to ask themselves that, yes they perform well, they were able to respond well, but how are they institutionalizing that, so that that's speed becomes just a normal course of speed in the organization? SPEAKER 1: That's interesting. You know, I read this Times story recently that referred to you as the CEO whisperer. Now, I have no idea how you feel about that nickname, but obviously, it's talking about these conversations that you're having with CEOs, like the one you just described. And I'm wondering at this stage in the pandemic, what are you hearing from your client CEOs as far as their main concerns, and what they're focused on for the next six months to a year? SPEAKER 2: I'm sorry, I try to ignore headlines, so what I am very fortunate to do is we have a lot of, we serve just some of the world's leading companies. It's a privilege to get to have a lot of conversations with citizens across the globe. There are two very prominent topics right now. One is, when do you turn the page? What do I mean by that? You know, there's a lot of discussion that we're in a new reality. We don't know when the vaccine is going to come and be available, or whether it'll be effective. There's a lot of uncertainty about what kind of work is going to stay remote or not. And so, the question is, how do you move the organization on to live in that more permanently? So, at extension, for example, we just had earnings, we finished our fiscal year August 1st, and I declared internally and externally that we were turning the page. We had, no-- we were out of navigating the crisis, and we are instead facing the new reality and expecting ourselves to return to pre-COVID growth over a certain time frame. That is a big conversation right now, as to how to move the organization on understanding that the pressures will continue, but then, it's almost more exhausting to sort of constantly wait for when it's ending. That's a big topic, and the second topic is really about how do you measure that you're going to emerge stronger? And, what do I mean by that? Every CEO says, I want to use this crisis to be stronger, and at Accenture, I actually said to my board in July. I give five specific measures. This is how your board should judge it. And that was important because we felt we had to move from saying that to sort of holding ourselves accountable. And also, setting goals for the organization. And I've had a lot of conversations recently that, as you can imagine, are linked to this idea of how do we get into the new reality, especially when what's happening today is so uncertain. 

"If you're going to move with speed it can't be a permanent crisis mode," say Sweet.