Julie Sweet

This week on A Call to Lead, you'll meet Julie Sweet, who is CEO of Accenture North America. Julie's story is remarkable. She was raised by hard-working parents who told their daughter that she could do anything. Julie ran with that ethos all the way to Columbia Law School and a partner position at law giant Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Then she did something really unconventional: Julie quit Cravath, joined Accenture as general counsel, and rose quickly to head Accenture's North American unit, where she oversees one of Accenture’s largest, most strategically-important businesses. In this podcast, Julie talks about what we all have to do amidst the tech revolution and disruption: learn continuously, develop flexibility, welcome divergent views, and collaborate constantly. Here are five things that Julie said that struck my team as particularly interesting:

 

1. Focus on learning and be deliberate in building a learning and development plan for yourself. "If learning is strategic and important, then it needs to be treated as a business priority."
2. Think about risk-taking in your career as a positive. "Instead of thinking about fear, which is [inherently a] negative, or "I'm taking risks," start thinking about, Am I pushing myself and the organization far enough to achieve what they can achieve?'"
3. The convergence of industries means experience spanning multiple industries is important and differentiating. "In a world where you have industry convergence, you can't just have people grow in the industry; they need to understand more."
4. Learn communication skills from leaders around you that communicate well. "To become a good communicator, you need to become a student of other good communicators."
5. In moments of stress, the ‘system’ doesn’t need more stress injected into it. It needs calm, stability, and rationality. "As a leader, the most important thing you can do is to put calm into the system, and to have people believe that you believe we can work through it."

 

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