Fortune - 04.2020

10 FORTUNE APRIL 2020

both data science and creativity.

We were hired recently by Kim­

berly­Clark to change the relation­

ship they have with moms around

their baby­care products. Their chief

growth officer said that she wouldn’t

have hired Droga5 on its own or Ac­

centure on its own. The combination

is why they hired us.

The hard part is not just having

those capabilities but also the scale

behind them in terms of technology

to serve major enterprises.

THE PEOPLE BUSINESS

Speaking of scale, you’ve got more

than half-a-million employees across

the world.^7 Will your workforce a

decade from now be anywhere near

as big, particularly as you continue

to digitize operations?

We actually have constant change in

our workforce because we build au­

tomation into everything we’re doing.

We’re growing because we’re serving

more clients, doing higher­value

things. So it isn’t, like, “Oh, wait a

minute, now we need to automate.”

So I don’t focus too much on how

many people I have. I focus on, What

are those people doing? And we

do what we tell our clients to do:

focus relentlessly on making sure

that we’re using the most advanced

technologies and reskill our people

to use them. When we automated

40,000 jobs in our business­process

outsourcing business, we reinvested

60% of the upfront savings to upskill

those who had those roles. We invest

$1 billion a year in training, reskill­

ing, and leadership development—

training over 300,000 people in the

last three years alone.

And we have a growing business,

which is why we’re able to do it.

Most important is that we’re trans­

parent from the start. In this case, we

said to our people, Help us automate

what you’re doing now, and then

we’re going to invest to upskill you.

That’s why we have no change in our

average 10­year attrition.

You’re one of just 14 women CEOs

at a Fortune Global 500 company.

There was a moment, when you

were in your early thirties, that

became a turning point for you in

your mission to help other women

navigate their careers. You were

about to make partner at white-shoe

law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore—

and there was a meeting at the firm

about unconscious bias.

It was in 1999, and I can still see

myself walking up to our conference­

room floor. We had an old­fashioned

conference room, big table. I know

exactly where I sat. It was literally

two weeks before they were going to

make the partnership decision. Ev­

erything was fine. I go in, I sit down,

and they have this facilitator who

turns to me at one point and says,

“Julie, you’re a senior woman in the

world. Have you ever experienced any

of these things, unconscious biases?”

I opened my mouth to speak ...

and I started sobbing. Big loud sobs,

and I could not get myself under

control. I got up, went back to my

office, and shut the door. Maybe

half an hour later, the first woman

corporate partner, a good friend of

mine, came in.

And she said, “Okay, the men have

met. They asked me to come see if

you’re okay.”

And she looked at me, and she

knew. She knew there wasn’t some

big scandal. Because at that very mo­

ment, when that woman asked me

that, it was like everything kind of

came crushing down: All the things

that I had endured at that time to get

to where I was.

And I do talk about it now because

it was a turning point for me. And I

thought, “Now that I’m going to be a

partner, I have to make it so it’s not

the same for other women.”

And it was something that I

worked hard on as a partner, and it

shaped who I am today. And as I’ve

grown and learned, it became not

just around gender^8 but around all

kinds of diversity.

THE CONVERSATION

(5) Getting

acquisitive:

Accenture spent

more than $6 billion

on 129 acquisitions

in its past six

fiscal years.

(6) An ad, ad, ad,

ad world: Accen­

ture Interactive,

the firm’s digital

“experience” agency,

paid a reported

$475 million for the

Madison Avenue

shop last spring. In

the past two years,

Accenture has

purchased similar

firms in Brazil, China,

Denmark, France,

Germany, Mexico,

the Netherlands,

Spain, Sweden, the

U.K., and the U.S.

(7) GLOBAL

WORKFORCE

Accenture passed

half­a­million em­

ployees in late 2019,

after its fiscal year

ended.

(8) Doubling down

on diversity: Ac­

centure was ranked

No. 1 on Refinitiv’s

Global Diversity &

Inclusion Index in

both 2018 and 2019.

FY 2015 2019

492,

EMPLOYEES

358,

SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

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