In this segment of Fortune 500:Titans and Disruptors of Industry Accenture CEO Julie Sweet opens up about how a breast cancer diagnosis reshaped her perspective and sharpened her resolve. She reflects on saying “yes” to a stretch role that would set her on the path to CEO, and on how decisive leadership has become her trademark in moments of uncertainty.
00:00A huge break that you got and deserved, frankly, was the North America CEO job.
00:05How did you first know that that was something that you wanted?
00:10And how did that come about?
00:12That seems like a really big career moment and a really big opportunity that you had.
00:17So I'm just curious if there's a backstory there and how you prepared.
00:20I went from GC straight to the head of North America.
00:23Wow.
00:24And I remember the moment this even became a possibility.
00:28So I worked for an amazing CEO, Pierre Nanterme, and I was in Paris.
00:34He was French.
00:36And we were having just a usual meeting.
00:38I was his general counsel.
00:38It's a very close relationship.
00:40We were kind of just doing the usual meeting.
00:42And at the end of the meeting, he closes his notebook and he pushes it aside.
00:46And he says to me, completely out of the blue, he says, I think you could run this place someday.
00:54But you'd have to run something else first.
00:56You can't go from general counsel to CEO.
00:58So he thought you could be the CEO of the whole thing.
01:00Right.
01:00That's what he said to me.
01:02He said, you know, do you want that?
01:05Now, at the time, what ran into my head immediately was something that we had this incredible director,
01:10Dina Dublon, who had once talked to a group of women and she'd given us advice.
01:16She said, when someone gives you a stretch role, and let's face it, moving from GC to, you know, being the global CEO is a stretch role.
01:24He says, like, chances are that the person offering you a stretch role is as nervous or more nervous than you are.
01:32So, don't say anything like, are you sure?
01:36You know, just say yes.
01:37And it would have been really easy to, because I was very close to Pierre and, you know, it would have been easy to be kind of like, oh, are you sure?
01:47And, you know, what's most remarkable about me being global CEO is not that I'm the first woman or that I was a lawyer, but I'm actually the first CEO that didn't start out of college.
01:56Right. So, like, it had never occurred to me that Accenture would take someone who hadn't grown up here to be CEO, and then you add on top of it, I was the general counsel.
02:07Like, it wasn't just part of, like, something I thought I could reasonably aspire to.
02:11So, I already looked at him and I said, with Dina in my head, why, yes, I'd be interested.
02:18What did you have in mind?
02:19Is that, like, interim step, you know?
02:21And he was really funny, because he said, well, you know, products is going to come available.
02:26That's one of our business units.
02:27Like, but that's really big.
02:28He's like, ooh la la, you know, maybe not.
02:31And he said, well, you know, maybe the North America job.
02:34So, that was just, like, an incredible moment.
02:37And a month later, I found out I had breast cancer.
02:39Oh, my gosh.
02:41So, I wasn't thinking too much about, you know, running North America at the time.
02:47And he was so incredible to me.
02:49And then when I came back full-time, I had a lot of complications.
02:54And when I came back full-time, the North America job actually opened up.
02:59And, you know, what an amazing company I work for.
03:02Because, you know, I battled with all the different things around breast cancer for about nine months.
03:07And I remember I came back in January of 2015.
03:10And there wasn't something like, oh, you know, Julie's been out or anything.
03:14It was just like, oh, she's back.
03:15The job, you know, became available.
03:18And, you know, long story short, on June 1st, 2015, I became the North America CEO, which, you know, was the stepping stone to be able to become the global CEO four years later.
03:29Wow.
03:30There must be something so clarifying and distilling about getting a diagnosis like that.
03:37And I'm curious how, and you've battled it now twice, including recently.
03:43And I'm so glad that your treatment has passed.
03:45And I hope you're doing well.
03:47I'm doing great.
03:48So, thank you.
03:48And I've had so much support.
03:50It's been amazing.
03:51So, I'm curious how it's changed you as a person.
03:55I'm sure, you know, it brings empathy with it, but also clarity of how do I want to be spending my time?
04:00Am I doing the thing that I really want to be doing?
04:02Do I want to spend all this time at work?
04:04So, I'm curious how you worked through that.
04:07When I go back to 2014, I had young kids.
04:09I was six and seven, which is always scary.
04:13And, you know, at the time, I felt good about how I'd been living my life because I said, you know, like, do I have any regrets?
04:22And I actually felt like I'd struck the right balance with the given that, obviously, I'd chosen a career that I was going to work a lot.
04:30Like, so it's not that I was, you know, like, that was just a choice.
04:34But within that choice, I felt good about the choices that I had made in terms of time.
04:38And in the intervening years, I've used that as kind of a litmus test because, I mean, you know, like, I know your job is crazy.
04:46So, I know you relate to this, right?
04:48You can get sucked into different times being really busy.
04:51And so, I would stop and ask myself, like, if, you know, something happened to me tomorrow, would I still feel like I didn't have any regrets?
04:59And sometimes I'd be like, no, I would be regretful and I'd have to adjust.
05:03And so, I think it helped me bring more balance over the 10 years and balance not like somehow some nirvana, but being able to stay focused on what's important, which is my family and, you know, being with them.
05:17And then, you know, this latest time is just, of course, always a reminder.
05:21So, for me, you know, probably the thing that as a working mom kind of went to the wayside the most was a focus on my health.
05:29Now, fortunately, the one area I always did was self-exams because I actually found my recent cancer through a breast self-exam.
05:38And I always talk about that because I really want to encourage women to make sure that they're getting their mammograms and they're doing their regular self-exams.
05:47And because, you know, ultimately because I caught it early, you know, I'm here and I was able to get through it pretty quickly.
05:53But, you know, this time around, for me, it was a little bit more of a wake-up call that, you know, just focusing on my health and, you know, not so much about because of the cancer, but recognizing that I'm probably, I wasn't spending as much time.
06:08That wouldn't have affected whether I had cancer or not, but it was kind of like a reflection on I want to live a really long life.
06:13Like, you get really clear, I want to live a really long life.
06:17And I want that to be a quality life.
06:19And I was reading this book by Peter Atiyah, I don't know if you know what Outlived, and he talks about, you know, having a health quality, not just life, you know, tenure.
06:30And what he talks about is, like, you want to have that last 10 years of your life be very high quality, and that means you've got to do things now.
06:40And so I'm super focused on making sure that I'm doing the things that I need to do now that are good for my health now, but also put me in a position that, you know, I have, you know, an opportunity in the last decade of my life to live it to the fullest.
06:55Even as she faced her own health struggles, SWEET was steering Accenture through seismic shifts in geopolitics, the economy, and rapid tech change.
07:04In 2022, after navigating the firm through COVID, she made the swift decision to pull Accenture's operations out of Russia, just one week after the country's invasion of Ukraine.
07:14Russia overnight launched its long-anticipated attack on Ukraine, striking military posts across the country.
07:21That kind of rapid response reflects a broader leadership style, spotting opportunities and moving fast to act on them.
07:28SWEET has also helped drive an aggressive mergers and acquisitions push.
07:38The company targeted firms in data, analytics, marketing, and AI to strengthen its position in fast-growing sectors.
07:45Beyond AI, the company is pushing into bold new areas, too, from humanoid robots to space tech and even building digital twins.
07:54I think one of the defining things that I've just heard from your peers, we have a great profile of you out in Fortune, everybody should go read it.
08:01Jane Frazier, who runs Citi, said, you know, Julie is a great leader, but she makes decisive, quick decisions.
08:08And that seems to be just something that's trademark about your ability to lead, is that you are able to take a lot of noise and just be like, this is the path going with conviction.
08:18How do you make those decisions?
08:19Because from everybody else, it seems like it's fast and quick, but I'm sure to you there must be something going on internally.
08:25Is it data? Is it gut? Is it talking to peers?
08:27How are you coming to these conclusions?
08:30Well, first of all, Jane is an amazing leader, so it's so nice of her to say this.
08:34It starts with a great team.
08:35And what do I mean by that?
08:37I have a team that is constantly, like, also, you know, acting with humility, excellence, and confidence, right?
08:45We are constantly challenging each other and our assumptions.
08:50And when you have a team that thinks that way, right, not that they all think the same, in fact, the exact opposite, because we put together teams with, like, diverse experiences and ideas.
09:01But when you build a team that thinks that status quo is challenging assumptions, embracing change, it means you're constantly questioning, right?
09:11You don't need to stop and have a big strategy, sort of like, let's take the next, you know, 12 months to look at it, because you're always working on the strategy.
09:20And when you have that base, that means that you have, like, leaders to go to, like, to be starting to question and test things.
09:28And then I have a larger team, a global management committee that is deeply steeped in our strategy.
09:35They own every dollar of revenue and cost who are, like, also constantly providing input.
09:41And they're there to bounce ideas off very, very quickly.
09:45And this was an innovation when I became the CEO back in 2019, because the prior CEO only had his direct reports as the global management committee.
09:55And I expanded that to me, the direct reports and the people who lead our services.
10:00So think of that as our products and our markets.
10:03And what that means is I have about 45 people who are deeply steeped in our strategy, not, you know, sort of meeting once a year, you know, like lots of companies have these, like, kind of groups of leaders that are almost an adjunct.
10:16These are the leaders who are running the company, and they provide that constant input.
10:22And so I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have a body of leaders who know more than just their role, who believe that their role is also to lead the company, and that you can have, like, this constant resource of input so that as you're testing ideas, you know you've got the right input.
10:45And that makes me able to make decisions with a lot of confidence and to do so with my team.
Be the first to comment