Julie Sweet doesn’t just talk about reinvention—she lives it.
As CEO, she has led Accenture through its biggest changes and continues to reshape how the company works and leads in the age of AI.
“Every leader needs to think of themselves as a reinventor,” she says. “Reinvention only can happen with leaders, and leaders have to make a choice: Am I a reinventor?”
Sweet contends that leaders need to re-evaluate all aspects of their roles, including operational methods, talent development, and leadership approaches. She emphasizes that merely integrating AI into a business won't suffice for maintaining a competitive edge.
“Being a reinventor is believing that every part of the enterprise and their product has to be reinvented using tech, data, AI — new ways of working, new ways of engaging.”
Reinvention extends beyond business strategy; leaders must also transform themselves, according to Sweet. This involves acquiring new perspectives, habits, and competencies, alongside effectively conveying messages to motivate individuals and navigate transitions. “To develop people, you have to be a great communicator,” Sweet states.
It’s why, starting this year, communication and change-management training is embedded into every level of leadership at Accenture.
“AI can’t replace genuine human connection,” says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work®. “It can’t listen, care, or inspire people. That’s what leaders do. Technology can help us work smarter, but only people can build trust.”
“I’m a big advocate of the nine leadership behaviors that Great Place To Work has laid out,” Sweet says, crediting those behaviors and transparent communication for building a foundation of trust among Accenture’s 779,000 employees in over 120 countries. That trust has helped Accenture climb two spots to No. 4, cracking the top five of the 2025 Coins2Day World’s Best Workplaces™ List.
Companies with high levels of trust, like the World’s Best Workplaces, have significantly higher levels of productivity, innovation, and agility than typical workplaces, resulting in more revenue and stronger stock market performance, as proven by the data-backed Great Place To Work Effect.
For agility to happen, leaders must create a culture where people feel safe to try new things.
“We have a culture of progress over perfection,” Sweet says. “When you have that culture, you provide the safety to move quickly, to be able to make mistakes, and that is a deep part of our DNA.”
Great Place To Work's research supports this. The primary factor in agility is allowing staff to experiment and acknowledging their attempts. When this occurs, employees are 253% more prone to adjust to shifts without apprehension, according to 1.3 million employees.
Three changes leaders ought to implement
Sweet shared the following shifts leaders should embrace:
1. Pivot from efficiency to growth. Conversations about AI are starting to move beyond productivity gains to how AI can help companies expand markets, increase revenue, and add jobs.
“Most CEOs I talk to feel like their organizations have over-tilted toward productivity … and they’re missing the growth opportunities from AI,” she says.
Accenture, for example, assisted in developing Noli, a system for L’Oréal in the UK designed to offer highly tailored skincare recommendations to consumers, with intentions for worldwide expansion.
“We see a shift now with discussions around how to use AI to drive growth — through business models, customer engagement, or better matching supply and demand.”
And a year from now? “The conversation will shift from, ‘How do I scale?’ To ‘Can I scale?’ To ‘How fast can I scale?’”
Sweet also predicts we’ll soon be talking about “physical AI”: “It’s going to explode. That’s what I’m betting on.”
2. Reskill for all. Accenture invests approximately $1 billion a year in upskilling employees.
“Our primary strategy is reskilling,” Sweet says. “Every one of our people has access to training. We’ve just opened our entire learning platform, which includes degrees, to any person at Accenture.”
Bush states that offering employees opportunities to acquire new abilities, irrespective of their position or tenure, results in “abundance for all,”. “AI should bring more, not less. More trust, more innovation, more opportunity. Great leaders use AI to expand what’s possible for their business, their employees, and their communities. That helps people thrive, not just survive.”
Sweet recognizes that most organizations haven’t needed to reskill their people this quickly or broadly before.
“Reskilling at scale isn’t a core competency for standard HR,” she says. “If you’re the HR person trying to advise the CEO about skilling, they need a lot of help.”
This is the reason Accenture introduced LearnVantage, a tailored learning and development platform built to equip businesses and their employees with the essential tech and AI competencies.
3. Lead with courage and humility. Chief executives must be prepared to alter their course when circumstances demand it. Following his appointment as CEO in 2019, Sweet initiated a fresh growth strategy, and currently, in response to the emergence of AI, Accenture is shifting its focus once more.
“You have to have the humility to say that, as great as what we did in 2019 is, we need to embrace changing it, putting something else in. Because today we look forward, and there’s a better way of operating. What I did six years ago may not be the right path, and I’m willing to challenge myself.”
“Leadership can’t stay static,” Bush says. “Leading the same way leads to the same results. But it’s hard to change — it takes courage.”
“I ask myself every day, are we changing enough?” Sweet says, emphasizing that no leader can predict the future with certainty — especially as technology rapidly evolves.
And that is both exciting and expansive.
“At this moment, when every industry is changing, when the basis of competition is changing, when the technology is new, when we all have to learn new skills — the fact that you have to learn new skills to do your job is not a negative. It’s a positive. Excellence, confidence, and humility. That is my North Star, because the moment I lose sight of that, I may not be challenging myself and our company enough to continue to be the winner. That is how we’ve won.”
Roula Amire is the senior content director at Great Place To Work. Follow her on LinkedIn and sign up for the company’s LinkedIn newsletter, Culture Edge, to get the latest research on what drives business success.
