Stop waiting for clarity. Unfreeze and act

JULIE SWEET: Today, AI is how we do work. So I don’t see that as coercion in any way. You have to work in the way we work in order to be successful here. When I was selected as the CEO, a big reason was because I hadn’t grown up here, and I was willing to change things and just ask the question, like, “Why can’t we do this?”

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture. As AI disruption deepens and missiles fly in the Middle East, I wanted to talk to Julie about what she’s hearing from her many clients and what advice she’s giving. Julie shares some on-the-ground stories, including how she personally stays looped in on the constant changes. She also talks about why using AI tools is now a requirement for promotion at Accenture, why she’s doubling down on entry-level hiring, and more. It’s a high-level leadership session with lots of practical insights, so let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Julie Sweet, CEO and chair of global consulting firm Accenture. Julie, thanks for joining us.

SWEET: Thanks for having me, Bob.

Copy LinkWhy resilience matters more than waiting for certainty

SAFIAN: So Accenture works across 120 countries, 9,000 clients — you’re in every industry. You have this unique visibility into how organizations and leaders are navigating what is really a chaotic, fast-moving environment right now. Are there questions that you’re hearing particularly often right now?

SWEET: Well, Bob, it’s interesting if I just start with Iran, because I’m getting a lot of questions, particularly in Europe, where if you think about a potential energy crunch, it’s expected to hit harder in Europe than, say, the impact on the U.S. Everyone believes that this environment, where energy is a risk, is just their new norm. And actually, there’s more optimism because if you compare this to 2022, when the war in Ukraine started, Europe is in a much better position from a resilience perspective.

And it’s a theme that we’ve been seeing for quite some time. I got the same questions even a couple of months ago when we had this whole issue around tariffs and imposing them, which is that CEOs are really just expecting the unexpected. It’s being built in, and that’s why resilience is such a big theme. There are also big questions continuing on AI, et cetera, but I wanted to address the latest, which is the impact of the Iran war.

SAFIAN: When I talk to CEOs right now, there’s this sense that some of them seem almost frozen. They’re waiting for clarity. And I know you’ve encouraged the opposite: don’t take cover, take chances. How do you know when to act and when to wait?

SWEET: The reality is, as a CEO, you can’t bake anything into your plan simply because so much is unknown. And that’s where transparency really matters, being able to say, “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know.” And then we’re making our action plan with those things in mind.

And so when you think about when you know to act or not act, in my view, you’re always acting. It’s intentional decisions. It’s an action to say, “Because I don’t know this, I can’t alter my plans.” One of the biggest risks right now is even less about the impact on the economy from what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz and energy. The bigger risk that many companies are talking about is, do we have a cyberattack or an attack on critical infrastructure that spins out of that?

And for that, there are actions you can take, because we’re helping clients look at their cyber resilience. This has already been a big growth area for us because AI itself has increased the attack surface. But when you think about what the risks are, you can’t really tell what’s going to happen on the energy front. But knowing what you do know, what you don’t know, and whether there are actions that can be taken — and then acting — matters. And that’s why right now there are a million different scenarios that are really bad for the global economy, but they’re just scenarios right now. So trying to take actions and build them into your guidance and your plan could result in a much worse impact on your company than simply understanding whether those unknowables really prevent you from executing.

SAFIAN: Alongside all this geopolitical activity, there are also the technological shifts that we’re experiencing. You made a bold move last year where you merged a bunch of divisions into a single unit that you call Reinvention Services around AI. You’re coming off your biggest-ever quarter of revenue growth in new business. We see businesses that are not tech businesses that may not be getting the return on investment from their AI that they had expected or hoped for. Does it work in some places and not others? Are there industries and functions that are more fit for AI than others? Or is it more about culture and commitment?

SWEET: Well, in some ways, Bob, it’s going to be all of the above. So first of all, we have to remember the technology, while changing fast, is still really early. And there’s a lot of actual value that companies can get before advanced AI. So let me give you an example.

We work with a pharma company that takes drugs to market, and there’s a process that, once the drug is approved, involves lots and lots of regulatory work. So what you write to explain it to the physician takes a long time. We’ve said for a long time that you could actually shorten that. Instead of it being months, it could be much faster if you changed the process to be standardized, if you kept your data in one place. None of that requires generative AI or advanced AI, but for most companies, they haven’t done that.

So when we worked with them, advanced AI was the catalyst because it enables you, if you have all the standardized processes, to actually create the content faster. But the first piece always could have been done and hadn’t been done. And so much of the work that we’re doing is actually work where companies are saying, “OK, wait a minute. Before I spend the money on advanced AI, I should clean up my fragmented processes. I should standardize things. I should not have as many people in middle management — completely apart from agents — because why would I spend money to create an agent to replace a manager that I shouldn’t have in the first place?”

Copy LinkClean up broken processes before expecting AI magic

SAFIAN: Is part of the hope that the motivation for not having done this is, “Oh, the agent or AI will come in and do this for me. I can skip a layer, save money.” And that’s the silver bullet. And if I’m hearing you right, you’re like, “Yeah, maybe not.”

SWEET: Yeah. I think there was this view at the beginning where companies thought, because it’s so easy, are they just going to do it all? Do I just ask this model, and this model is going to tell me how to change my company? One hundred percent, that is not it. The models don’t know how to change a company. And if you spend money on your current structure just replacing parts of it, you’re at best going to get incremental value.

And the real value is to actually reinvent everything you do. And that reinvention doesn’t start just with advanced AI, but with a lot of really basic lessons where companies haven’t had the will to fix things. I tell CEOs every day: in three years, you should be able to say, what did I use AI to make possible that was impossible before? Because if the only thing you’re doing is incrementally improving how you’re operating, you’re not going to get the biggest value. The biggest value is in the core operations of a company — things you’re going to be able to do with asset management in any industrial company, things you’re going to be able to do with the grid in utilities.

The tech isn’t completely there yet. It’s still error-prone. That’s why everybody’s tracking things like how long the tech works and the memory piece of it. So where you get value today is anything with customers, because those are short interactions. The tech has to continue to improve, and the strategy has to be, “I’m going to use this tech to do something I couldn’t do before.”

Copy LinkWhat it really takes to become an AI-first company

SAFIAN: There’s this phrase, AI-first. You’ve described Accenture as an AI-first company. It’s something a lot of other players aspire to but struggle to implement. Is it hard to be AI-first? What does it mean?

SWEET: First of all, it is hard. And the reason it’s hard is that it requires your leaders to understand what AI does. And this is so different from the digital era. Moving to the cloud and stuff, a lot of it was plumbing. So as a leader, you didn’t have to understand it because it was being handled by the tech folks.

To be AI-first, you have to say, what can AI actually do? So you have to understand things like, wait a minute, it has to have a certain amount of memory to actually be able to do something. You have to understand what it’s actually able to be accurate about. And then think about your business to say, “Where can I get a big enough return for using something at this cost?” So it starts with leaders having to understand technology in a totally different way.

So when ChatGPT first emerged in November 2022, the people who received the most training initially were actually my top 50 leaders, because I knew that if they didn’t understand the power, they would not be able to help us transform how we’re delivering our services and what our clients could use it for. So leader-led learning is a huge unlock. And then AI-first is asking yourself, is this something that AI could do?

It’s something as simple as, Bob, the way I used to gather information. I’d call somebody and I’d say, “Go do the research.” And now I have an agent that can go gather everything and synthesize it. It still needs to be read. It’s not always accurate, by the way, but that’s a completely different way of thinking. And that’s a small example, but imagine if that’s true throughout everything you do within your business. You have to first ask the question, “Can we approach this totally differently?”

SAFIAN: And for you, how did you train yourself to understand AI? And I guess, how do you stay caught up today?

SWEET: I’m spending time literally every day learning, getting the latest updates. I’ll read something like, oh, this latest release, and I’ll ping my team: let’s talk about what this really means. What did we see in advance? A lot of the technology that’s being released today is not being tested in enterprises first, which is a big shift. Stuff is being released before it’s actually been tested at scale.

In September, we introduced agentic AI training for every person at Accenture, whether you work in HR or you’re a technologist. It’s an hour of computer-based training, two hours of in-person training, and then we have another two-hour course that we created with Stanford. Everybody needs to understand this wherever they are, because it’s going to become a bigger and bigger part of how we’re operating as a company, in addition to what we’re selling.

Copy LinkThe competitive advantage of entry-level employees right now

SAFIAN: And because a lot of the tools are being introduced really at a consumer level before they’re at an enterprise level, does that mean you have folks bringing AI in with them? They’ve tried it somewhere else and they’re bringing it in, but you’re not really sure of the credibility or the resilience you want to have before it’s used internally?

SWEET: Well, no, we’re using it internally. The thing is, we understand where the technology is and where it should be used and where it’s not ready to be used. You’re pointing out something different. A lot of people ask me about entry-level jobs and why they’re going away. We’re hiring globally, in all our major markets, more entry-level workers this year than we did last year. What’s the number one advantage? The number one advantage for the college graduates we’re bringing in is that they are much more AI-fluent than someone who’s even been here two or three years. They’re using it in their education. They’re using it every day.

SAFIAN: And the idea that we hear about, that these entry-level jobs are going to be replaced by AI — you think that’s a myth?

SWEET: Well, what I would say is that it is very early in this technology’s evolution, and we can make choices. And so at Accenture, we said, “Look, entry-level jobs are important economically. It is less expensive. It’s how we create more experienced people, that whole path. If you don’t have anybody at the entry level, how do you create the next generations?” And it’s also the right thing for our communities. We can’t thrive if the community doesn’t thrive.

And so we said, “We need to crack the code on what changes we need to make as a company to continue to have entry-level roles.” So we’ve reconstituted jobs. We understand which tasks and jobs should be automated, can be replaced by agents. So then we’ve recreated new entry-level jobs with the skills that are not going to be replaced. We’ve changed the way we train when we bring people in so that we’re giving them the skills they may not yet have. We’ve changed the way we onboard and train people.

And then we’re introducing things like better communication training, because if someone can be more productive earlier, then that means they have less apprenticeship time working with clients. So we need to make sure they have better communication skills faster, and that they’re not learning them over as long a period of apprenticeship. So it’s an intentional strategy, which is paying off for us economically. It’s also the right thing to do.

SAFIAN: I love Julie’s expression, leader-led learning. You’ve got to understand all these changes at the top and then also lean into young newcomers who are AI-native. So what about the rest of the organization? And what responsibility does business have in society overall to prepare people for an AI future? We’ll talk about that more after the break. Stay with us.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet talked about how war in Iran and AI disruption are rattling CEOs’ assumptions. Now we talk about why Accenture tracks AI use in determining promotions, what she calls today’s biggest leadership essential, and why tension in the C-suite is a good thing, plus lessons she’s learned from her cancer battle. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkMaking AI adoption part of how work gets done

Accenture has committed billions to reskilling employees, but for those who don’t get serious about reskilling with AI, we’ve seen reports that they’re going to be shown the door, that you track your staff’s use of AI tools when considering promotions. How do you navigate this line between AI encouragement and what some might see as coercion?

SWEET: Well, I don’t think it is coercion in any sense of the word. So think about this. When we introduced computers — I’m old enough, I remember. I actually took a typing class. So I remember all this. No one would have said that requiring someone to use a computer is coercion. It’s how companies were going to get work done.

Today, AI at Accenture is how we do work. And by the way, if you’re coming in as a college graduate right now, you don’t even question that. I’ve had clients tell me that it’s the college graduates who come in and say, “What do you mean you’re not using this?” because they want to be at a company that’s actually using it. You have to work in the way we work in order to be successful here.

So I don’t see that as coercion in any way. These are the new tools to operate a company. We didn’t go from zero to “you won’t get promoted” in a month. It’s been over a three-year period of getting used to the technology, making sure it’s user-friendly, making sure we have the right workbench for people to use, and then saying, “Hey, this is Accenture and how we operate. So if you want to get promoted, you’ve got to do the things that we do in order to operate Accenture.”

SAFIAN: But there are communities of folks who are anxious about what AI is going to do to them and about people being left behind. I’m sure you have some clients where they’re getting that feedback.

SWEET: There’s been a lot of investment in the AI itself. There hasn’t been as much investment by companies in training. Companies have to do more. I also think it means governments have to do more, because small and medium-sized enterprises don’t have the same means.

Copy LinkThe obstacles in reinventing a company

SAFIAN: You’ve said that every leader needs to think of themselves as a reinventor. Reinvention requires a tolerance for failure, and most large organizations are wired to punish failure. How do you think about and navigate and encourage that tolerance as to what failure is acceptable and good and learning, and what failure is not?

SWEET: It’s funny, Bob. I was just talking to someone and explaining to a CEO, I said, “You have to remember that when somebody says there’s an 80% chance we’re going to do it, that means there’s a 20% risk that you’re not.” And the 20% is real. Sometimes people forget that in everything we do at companies, there’s always that risk of failure, and then they’re shocked when something doesn’t go right. It’s an important mindset to understand that risks are real and they might happen.

The bigger challenge, Bob, is not about risk or fear of failure. The biggest issue with being a reinventor is letting go of how you’ve done things.

So we have a leadership essential around wanting everybody to respectfully challenge how we do things. What we recognized was that people didn’t see that as their job, but actually every one of us should be willing to challenge whether the way that I’ve done this is still the right way. And that’s really hard if it’s your baby, if you created it, if you’ve been doing it for 30 years. So I think it’s less about being willing to fail and more about having the humility to be willing to change.

SAFIAN: As we’re talking, I’m reminded that only, what, 5% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. I know you’re one of the highest-profile examples. I’m worried about how to even ask this. Is gender in business something you like talking about? Or does the focus on you as a quote-unquote “woman leader” frustrate you?

SWEET: I don’t care in the sense of whether it’s a productive conversation that leads to a different outcome. So I actually have a lot of CEOs who will ask me — particularly in parts of the world where there aren’t as many women leaders; the U.S. has a lot more, for example — who want to have the conversation because they genuinely are trying to figure out, how do I unlock that talent pool? What am I doing wrong? And so that focus is a good focus, because there are things that are barriers. Sometimes there are places I go in Europe and Asia where it’s like being in the U.S. around the 2000s when I was a young professional, because they’re just in a very different place.

Now, what I would tell you is that at Accenture, when I was selected as the CEO — first as the CEO of North America and then the CEO globally — a big reason was because I hadn’t grown up here and I was willing to change things because I wasn’t wed to how we’d done business for the last 30 years. I wasn’t wed to, “Well, we can’t do that because so-and-so won’t like it.” I was willing to come in and just ask the question, “Why can’t we do this?” And that came from coming in from the outside.

When you have diverse leadership teams, whether it’s gender diversity, outside-in diversity, or different backgrounds, they produce more innovation. It is because you get all these different viewpoints that you don’t have if everybody thinks the same. Gender can be part of that, but the bigger issue is often whether they’ve only worked in one place and aren’t thinking about other opportunities, other ways of doing things.

Copy LinkHow healthy tension and diverse viewpoints improve decisions

SAFIAN: And these differences that people bring could bring conflict, but what you’re saying is that conflict, as long as it doesn’t get personal, is good — that it helps illuminate options, ideas and possibilities?

SWEET: Absolutely. And in fact, the best CEOs in the world will tell you they don’t want a team that always says yes. They want a team where there’s healthy tension. Because at the level of the C-suite, things are not very clear-cut. There is always a lot of ambiguity. I do not get to make a decision where I just have 100% certainty. And so when you’re working through that ambiguity, you want different perspectives.

I learned that when I was a young lawyer, a partner at a law firm. I was a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore after 10 years there. In my first year as a partner, I had this very difficult problem, and in fact a client who was trying to get me fired because I wasn’t giving them the answer they wanted. And I remember I brought together the most conservative partners and the most liberal partners, because I felt like that was the only way to test whether my viewpoint and advice were right. I wanted to bring in the people that I thought, if anybody is going to disagree, it’s going to be these three.

And I remember I brought nine partners together. So when we went back and actually stuck with our position, the head of the firm could feel so confident because it wasn’t about being right or righteous. We’d really had that difficult discussion, with lots of viewpoints, and then landed on our position.

Copy LinkJulie Sweet’s experience of battling cancer

SAFIAN: So I have a little bit of a personal question. I know that last year, in the midst of all the leadership and business challenges, you were diagnosed for a second time with breast cancer. Dealing with health issues while trying to project strength as a leader — that’s a lot of extra stress. Or do the health issues put the work stress into perspective?

SWEET: I never mind talking about it. And I feel that in part because I always use it as a plug to say that whether you’re a man or a woman, there are certain cancer screenings that you should do, and everyone should get them done because when cancer is caught early, you survive. In my case, my first cancer was in 2015, and it was caught by a mammogram. In this case, a decade later, it was caught by a self-exam, and that’s super important. And as you know, there are lots of recommended cancer screenings, and it’s usually when people don’t get them that they end up finding cancer too late. So that’s one point.

Look, I’m one of those people — I would never say, “Wow, you should have cancer because you’re going to have this great insight into your life,” or something. There have got to be better ways to have insights. And at the same time, I think you find a silver lining. The first time I had cancer, one of the things I really honed in on was that I didn’t have regrets. I felt like I was living the life I wanted and making the right choices.

So over the last decade, I used to ask myself that. I used to say, “If I found out I had cancer tomorrow, would I still feel like I didn’t have regrets in terms of the way I was living my life?” And sometimes it would cause me to change. I’d be like, “You know what? I’m away too much. I’m not feeling good about those choices.”

I was hoping that was a theoretical question I was asking myself, but that didn’t turn out to be right. And so when this happened, of course, it had an impact. I couldn’t travel, et cetera, but I had a phenomenal team. And when you look at our results, we had a great year in the year that I had cancer. We took massive market share. We’re a $70 billion company growing at 7%. And the testimony, I believe, is that you build companies to be resilient and you build great teams. I still stand by this, though: I don’t wish on anyone having to learn those lessons that way. Starting 2026 cancer-free and not having to manage any health issues is great.

SAFIAN: Well, that is good news to hear. The environment in 2026 feels so unpredictable — politics, regulation, AI, war, changes everywhere. I’m curious whether you have a philosophy about what the role of business is in setting the course for the future.

SWEET: Look, we have believed for a very long time that businesses have responsibilities to their customers, their employees, their investors, their shareholders and their communities. We spend a lot of our corporate citizenship efforts on digital reskilling because we know that helps communities have more people who are employed, and that’s directly linked to our success as a company.

That’s why with AI, I do think it’s very important that we are being intentional about keeping entry-level jobs, that we are being intentional about the new strategies that are needed for reskilling. In the world of AI, it’s going to take more and more of those deliberate strategies to ensure that AI does benefit everyone.

SAFIAN: Julie, this was great. Thank you so much for doing it.

SWEET: Thank you.

SAFIAN: Julie’s focus on deliberate strategies, on intentional actions — it’s a steady thread in her advice, from the Iran response to AI. And when I think about it, there’s probably an emotional benefit as well as a practical one. When we feel overwhelmed or even panicked, what can we do to get regrounded? As Julie says, we can identify what we know and also identify what we don’t know, and then be transparent about both with others and with ourselves.

I’ll confess to having moments of dismay and anxiety, to feeling both frozen and frantic at the same time. In those instances, I try to remind myself what I can and can’t control, and then I build a plan for action. Doing something makes me feel better and allows me to take agency over my life and my work, even when so much is out of my hands. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.