Accenture CEO Julie Sweet shares advice she received from former JPMorgan executive that shaped her career
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet recently shared one piece of advice that changed how she approached her career: when someone offers you a stretch role, never question it. The words, shared by former JPMorgan Chase CFO Dina Dublon, came back to Sweet at a pivotal moment in her journey. During an appearance at Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast with Alyson Shontell recently, Sweet shared when her then-boss suggested she could one day lead Accenture, Sweet chose not to doubt herself. Instead, she recalled Dublon’s wisdom that “the person offering you a stretch role is as nervous or more nervous than you are” and simply said yes. That decision, she said, set her path to the top job.Sweet was then serving as Accenture’s general counsel and did not fit the traditional CEO mold. She was a lawyer, not a business leader, a woman in a company long led by men, and had not spent her entire career at Accenture. Still, her boss, then-CEO Pierre Nanterme, believed she had the potential to run the company.““At the end of the meeting, he closes his notebook and he pushes it aside, and he says to me, completely out of the blue… ‘I think you could run this place someday,’” Sweet recalled during the podcast.She accepted the challenge, first taking on leadership of Accenture’s North American practice in 2015. Four years later, in 2019, she was named global CEO.Sweet says confidence has been central not just to her own rise but also to the culture she leads at Accenture. “We are constantly challenging each other and our assumptions,” she explained in Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “When you build a team that embraces change, you’re always working on the strategy.”She also stresses the importance of humility and learning, saying that even in the C-suite, asking for help is one of her “superpowers.” Transparency and trust, she believes, make leaders more effective and open doors to new opportunities.
