Accenture CEO Julie Sweet to CEOs: In three years, you should be able to say that my company has …
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has shared an example showing how other companies and their leaders can learn from Accenture’s approach to training employees to use AI tools effectively. In a recent interview, she said that company leaders should be able to tell within three years whether their company offers different services and insights enabled by AI, emphasising that this requires leaders first deeply understand AI. She even stressed that if leaders don’t understand AI, they can’t lead their companies through the necessary changes. She also explained how leader-led learning is critical, followed by bringing all employees along in the process.Speaking in a Bloomberg Television interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Sweet said, “If leaders don’t understand AI, they can’t lead the company through the changes. In three years, you should be able to say, ‘My company has different services and has different insights.’ That requires a depth of learning from leaders first, and then you have to bring everybody along the way. So leader-led learning is absolutely critical.” Sweet also emphasised that regulators in regulated industries must understand AI, warning that if regulators block AI, companies won’t be able to scale or succeed. She said governments, non-profits and companies all need leader-led learning and a strategy to train their people on AI.“It’s also critical for regulators and regulated industries: if regulators block AI, they won’t be able to scale or succeed. So governments, non-profits and companies all need leader-led learning and then a strategy to bring all of our people along,” she added.
What Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said about leader-led AI learning for the workforce
Bloomberg’s Francine asked for a “concrete example” from Sweet to make the audience understand how to put her thoughts through to “put it for my workforce or for my citizens.” Replying to her, Sweet said, “Well, one of my clients told me that, until they had their 300 leaders touch keyboards and see what AI could do, they couldn’t get moving. That’s a very tangible example. That’s the first thing we did way back after November 2022; most of the training was actually for our top 50 leaders who actually got their hands dirty, understanding it, and that’s what we mean by leader-led learning. And once you have that, it unlocks the possibilities of what it really means that it’s going to change everything.”
