CULTURE & TRANSFORMATION: How Accenture Is Tackling the CEO and Board Transformation Agenda Globally

With over 600,000 employees and serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture is one of the most recognizable and respected professional services?companies globally. The Strategy and Talent &?Organization practices are playing a critical role for companies today, as they begin to focus attention on transformation and how to enrich the relationship between people and technology. I recently spoke to?Managing Director Victoria Pelletier ?who I’ve had the opportunity to chat with several times in the past. We discussed how is leadership, talent and culture are rapidly becoming more critical for organizations planning for a post-Covid world.?

HB:?Fantastic to see you again, Victoria. I always like to jump straight in and ask my interviewee to give some background on their journey and what brought them to their current role.

VP:?I’m a classic example of someone growing wanting to have one kind of career and, through one serendipitous opportunity, went on to have an entirely different type of career. I’d always planned to go to university and become a lawyer but an early “temporary” assignment and relocation to Toronto opened my eyes to the corporate world which is an environment I truly love. That assignment became a full-time position, rapid advancement followed and from a relatively young age I was promoted to COO and GM for a large BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) organization.?

I know we’re going to be talking about culture and strategy in this chat, but I look back on my early BPO experience as foundational in affirming my own attitudes and beliefs about culture and leadership. When you’re leading an organization with wafer-thin margins and traditionally high turnovers, like a call center, you quickly realize the impact culture and leadership style can have on your operations. It was a great lesson for me to learn early on.

If I were to summarize my career it has always been as a lifelong business-to-business consultant and provider of services with a strong technology or technology enablement pedigree. Whether that’s been in Financial Services, corporate travel or at IBM where I was before joining Accenture, my career has been around leading businesses or regions where leadership, culture and workforce strategies were pivotal. I’ve now been at Accenture for about 6 months and have been focused on the myriad of new emerging issues on the CEO and Board agenda. Topics like sustainability, responsible leadership, talent, purpose, culture, Diversity Equity & Inclusion, along with the classic topics that remain important like digital and enterprise transformation, M&A etc. Of course, as Accenture we have a very strong perspective on the role of technology in advancing or augmenting all those areas.?

HB:?That’s great context. As you explain where you’re focused, I can absolutely see the need for it. Am I alone in being surprised that you’re creating it inside of Accenture? The technology component I completely get but I’d not previously considered Accenture as a consultancy that would provide the suite of leadership and culture counsel you’re talking about.?

VP:?I can understand how you might have that perspective and, you’re right, we are very well-positioned around technology and emerging tech, but we also have a strong strategy pedigree. As cliched as it may sound, the reality is that all businesses are having to transform at an incredible fast and compressed speed. Technology is certainly an accelerant and enabler of that but, as many CEO’s and Boards globally have come to realize, without a focus on talent – transformative talent – and a cohesive culture, all those transformation strategies are going to suffer. Accenture’s leadership is central to this people-driven transformation with talent and culture playing a critical role. Particularly as that?interconnectedness?between technology and new definitions and manifestations of talent and culture are becoming the conversation at Board meetings globally.?

Case in point, in a recent engagement with a large corporate, they were looking at the classic outcomes of growth and profit, but their strategies paid particular attention to new themes like social impact and sustainability. Themes that were going to require genuine Enterprise-level change and technological innovation. As our team dug into how those strategies were being developed it became obvious that this client was equally focused on how these items were going to create market differentiation but also differentiation in terms of talent acquisition, employee participation and evolving their culture. That’s the type of interconnectedness that we’re going to see more and more of, and that is where Accenture wants to play a key role for CEO’s and Boards.?

Knowing how tough these transformations typically are, I’m delighted that the clients I’m working with aren’t doing this as some surface-level culture initiative. They see this deep work as core to their business success and they’re putting genuine rigor and real teeth into doing it right.??

HB:?Fantastic and, like you, I’m delighted these leaders see the straight line between Strategy, Culture and Transformation. Switching gears slightly, in previous conversations you’ve said you consider “Culture is an Outcome.” With so much discussion around defining culture, can you expand on your outcome idea?

VP:?Absolutely. I think organizations often create and communicate a Purpose-fueled North Star that they want to strive towards. However, if you are not incredibly intentional in developing strategies that move towards creating exactly the type of environment that breeds a great sense of culture, then you're never going to achieve it. It’s the intentionality of your actions that makes anything possible and that’s particularly true of culture. You can have Purpose, Vision, Mission and all those elements but the intentionality is the programs, processes, people, and consistent investments you put in place, not the Values poster on the boardroom wall.?

Just as profit is an outcome of how you run your business. How intentional and rigorous you are in executing your business plan and strategy determines that outcome.?

A great, or poor, culture is equally an outcome of how intentional you are about all the elements that impact culture. As I learned early on myself, how you show up as a leader is a significant part of it.

HB:?I like how you described that, Victoria. That notion of intentionality by leaders is a great way to describe how you get a particular culture outcome. Talking about intentionality, as we’re reading waves of Reports talking about “The Great Resignation” what counsel are you giving CEO’s about tackling this current scenario?

VP:?It’s hard to ignore that’s for sure. In the US, where?I’m based, there are currently more than 10?million open job vacancies in this market. As we’re talking to CEO’s and Executives, we’re urging them to see beyond this current “Future of Work” debate which, in this moment, is oriented around proximity and geography. The reality is work in the future will be a rapidly evolving construct. In simple terms organizations will always require a solid business strategy around the services and products they’re going to create, but the talent required to make the business transformations needed is going to get increasingly complex.?

This is where the interconnectedness between talent and technology becomes crucial. Reality is that many of the new talent and skills businesses need to transform are just emerging, there aren’t very many of them and they’re at a premium.??So, finding that talent and then securing the absolute best from them is going to get more urgent. Are you building that new brain trust internally? Is the new talent a gig worker you need to turn on and off as needed? Are we talking about a self-serving bot or an actual human? Each of those scenarios requires understanding the unique complement of skills your strategy needs to be successful – we’ve always had to bridge that – but now, the “where and how” those skills can be accessed is infinitely more diverse and way more fluid. That’s the exciting part but it is going to require a real dexterity from HR and talent leaders that hasn’t been called upon before.?

It also requires a more holistic strategy around talent and skills than many organizations have considered historically. And that’s where the leadership part becomes critical. This is not something that can be delegated.

HB:?I buy that. This evolving skills and talent complexity is going to put real pressure, as you say, on HR and Talent leaders. To do this well those teams are going to need to be deeply embedded in the organization’s growth strategies which, in my experience, is not their traditional domain of expertise. Do we believe we are growing the type of talent leaders this environment will demand??

VP:?Good question. To be clear many organizations will continue to need HR generalists who deal with the daily ebb and flow of HR requirements. However, in the search for efficiencies and impact, the question will be how much of those repetitive skills get automated by increasingly sophisticated bots? Having spent several years inside workforce transformation organizations there remains a significant volume of time and energy on answering questions related to payroll, benefits, vacation, the “policies” stuff. Technology and automation have a role to play there without a doubt.

The larger strategic reorientation of HR will be when those roles move beyond formulating policy, which can often be a risk mitigation exercise, and starts to look more closely at how talent directly impacts P&L, growth, capturing new markets etc. That requires folks, in my opinion, who come from direct P&L accountability, people who’ve run an operation themselves. The days of looking for someone based on “fit” or if they do the exact same job over at the competition are over.?

You need someone with a future-oriented vision of what are the next set of skills organizations need. Leaders who understand the true meaning and scope of diversity and inclusion.

Importantly, leaders who have the fortitude to make the tough calls and who will put in the right structures to let this new talent succeed.?

HB:?That seems like a real tall order, particularly for many larger organizations who seem intent on hiring a Chief Diversity Officer and thinking the job is done with that one hire. Anyone doing it right from your experience?

VP:?I agree that doing it at scale can be enormously difficult. Particularly because at scale you’re typically dealing with a diverse set of internal and external constituents who all have a voice and a vote. And, as we’ve seen, in a trade-off between employees and shareholders, its typically the latter who wins out.?

To help visualize this a bit further, I’m reminded of a large North American bank I worked with previously. What has impressed me is that they clearly articulated their corporate purpose and?impact strategy and they have focused their efforts on their sustainability and CSR objectives, with great alignment to the impact they want for their culture. That’s unique because they’re highly federated. I imagine that they’ve made some very deliberate choices about where they want to be leaders, where they’re comfortable being fast followers and where they’re okay with just meeting industry norms and being compliant.?

Ultimately, regardless of scale, we're talking about an exceptional amount of leadership effort, strategic planning, measurement that needs to go into holding people accountable to the work environment that we want. Classic example if you're our top have a top salesperson who's creating such a toxic environment that no-one wants to work with them. Well, at some point you need to say, this is just not acceptable, period!??So, can you do that at scale? Yes. But that requires significant intentionality and investment of time and effort in education, and ultimately accountability across the organization.

HB:?Great example and, again, that intentionality term which I think is so apt for CEO’s and Boards to reflect on. We spoke briefly about The Great Resignation and a new recalibration of HR and Talent; are there other changes you’re seeing coming out of these 18-24 months of Covid? Other big changes organizations should be paying attention to?

VP:?Many people have spoken about how the pandemic and other societal unrest we’ve witnessed in the last 20 months, accelerated several trends exponentially. I’d agree with that wholeheartedly. I think consumers and our employees are demanding even more changes too. Much like 20, 30 years ago, when diversity programs were first stood up and companies put up a float in the pride parade because employees were asking for that kind of commitment, we’re now seeing increasing demands and expectations to be able to work in an organization that aligns with one's own individual purpose and their values. So, I think that shift is going to force business leaders to do things very differently.??Particularly if they’re going to seek to attract more diverse talent, they need to prove that diverse talent can actually thrive inside their organizations. If they can’t, talent will go elsewhere. We’re seeing that right now.

Also, I think some changes are generational to. So, I've got a Gen Z who says to me, “Mom, I'm really proud of you, but I want you to know, I don't want your life. I don't want to be you.” He said, “I've seen what long hours you work. And that’s not for me.”

So, there's also this dynamic of the newer workforce and what they are looking for. I'll say “job security” but job security to them means something very different than what it might have meant to you and me.??In some part, because they saw what their parents went through during the recession and the financial crisis, security comes by creating a future path for them and investment in their development or in the skills for future. Organizations who recognize that shift and are willing to be proactive, versus reactive, on that front will do well. We're going to see the needle finally start to move but the reality is there's still lots of heavy lifting to be done here.?

In 2020?Accenture released a global study around leadership ?and we've surveyed a multitude of constituents and tried to define the elements around what we’ve called responsible leadership. The Report uncovered 5 key elements around responsible leadership, or the leadership traits needed for the decades ahead of us, they included,?stakeholder inclusion, emotion & intuition, mission & purpose, technology & innovation and, finally, intellect & insight. While some of those dimensions aren’t particularly shocking, what’s fascinating is when you see how those dimensions rank and change when you take a slice of older, seasoned employees versus younger employees.?

Accenture has followed on this effort this year with an update that looked to decode "Sustainability DNA ” of organizations, which adds a set of 21 management practices, systems and processes that form the foundations of stakeholder-centricity to the 5 key elements of responsible leadership.

What we’re seeing is this real chasm between what older, seasoned executives deem as important and what younger employees believe is critical. That generational chasm needs to be addressed if organizations are going to have any chance of succeeding into the future.

HB:?Those Reports sounds fascinating. Always like to end by asking what advice are you giving these CEO’s and Boards that you’re now consulting with? What are the elements they should be prioritizing in your opinion?

VP:?Right now, and I remember I’m only in six months or so, I lean in heavily on the transformations that need to be CEO led from the front. More specifically at the business strategy and transformation needed to be successful but, looking very closely at the leadership culture and again, their intentional strategy to deliver. As we all know there's no silver bullet, so getting them to look very critically at their leadership and reminding them that shuffling of the deck chairs is not going to deliver the transformative change and outcomes they're seeking.?

One of the areas that I’m particularly up front with clients about is discussing impact and legacy. What impact do they want to make and what legacy do they want to leave either inside their organization or in society in general. I fully appreciate that it takes tremendous courage and fortitude to sit in front of a Board, particularly of a public company, and advocate for sweeping change and transformation. But, for many of the organizations that come to Accenture that’s exactly what they need to do to survive and stave off competition. Increasingly, much of that is going to come down to new leadership behaviours, new attitudes toward talent and a reinvigoration of how they think about, and build, these adaptive cultures inside their firms.

Those are the areas I’m telling them to focus on. And, in the majority of discussions we’re having, those priorities of leadership, talent and culture are really resonating.?

HB:?Always fun chatting Victoria. Very much appreciate your candor and I do think the gauntlet you’ve laid down today for CEO’s and Boards couldn’t be better timed.?

VP:?<Laughs>?My pleasure Hilton. I’m trying to be as unambiguous as I can be on these very important topics. Thank you for your time too. I enjoyed our conversation. Take care now.

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If you're intrigued by the topic of Culture and Transformation then I'd encourage you to look at the other interviews in this series which you can find on my website here .

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