AI (Synthetic Intelligence), Finest Workplaces, Excessive-trust management
Julie Candy doesn’t simply discuss reinvention — she lives it.
As CEO, she has led Accenture by its largest adjustments and continues to reshape how the corporate works and leads within the age of AI.
“Each chief wants to think about themselves as a reinventor,” she says. “Reinvention solely can occur with leaders, and leaders have to choose: Am I a reinventor?”
Candy believes leaders should rethink every part — how they function, how they develop expertise, and the way they lead. Merely including AI to what you are promoting isn’t sufficient to remain forward, she insists.
“Being a reinventor is believing that each a part of the enterprise and their product must be reinvented utilizing tech, knowledge, AI — new methods of working, new methods of partaking.”
Reinvention isn’t nearly enterprise technique. Leaders themselves should evolve, Candy says. Meaning studying new mindsets, behaviors, and expertise — and speaking clearly to encourage individuals and information them by change. “To develop individuals, it’s important to be an incredible communicator,” Candy says.
It’s why, beginning this 12 months, communication and change-management coaching is embedded into each degree of management at Accenture.
“AI can’t change real human connection,” says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Nice Place To Work®. “It may well’t pay attention, care, or encourage individuals. That’s what leaders do. Know-how might help us work smarter, however solely individuals can construct belief.”
“I’m a giant advocate of the 9 management behaviors that Nice Place To Work has laid out,” Candy says, crediting these behaviors and clear communication for constructing a basis of belief amongst Accenture’s 779,000 staff in over 120 nations.
That belief has helped Accenture climb two spots to No. 4, cracking the highest 5 of the 2025 Fortune World’s Finest Workplaces™ Checklist.
Firms with excessive ranges of belief, just like the World’s Finest Workplaces, have considerably larger ranges of productiveness, innovation, and agility than typical workplaces, leading to extra income and stronger inventory market efficiency, as confirmed by the data-backed Nice Place To Work Impact.
For agility to occur, leaders should create a tradition the place individuals really feel protected to strive new issues.
“We have now a tradition of progress over perfection,” Candy says. “When you could have that tradition, you present the security to maneuver rapidly, to have the ability to make errors, and that could be a deep a part of our DNA.”
Analysis from Nice Place To Work backs this up. The No.1 driver of agility is letting staff strive issues and celebrating their efforts. When that occurs, staff are 253% extra more likely to adapt to alter with out worry, in keeping with 1.3 million staff.
“AI can’t change real human connection. It may well’t pay attention, care, or encourage individuals. That’s what leaders do. Know-how might help us work smarter, however solely individuals can construct belief.” – Michael C. Bush
Three shifts leaders ought to make
Candy shared the next shifts leaders ought to embrace:
1. Pivot from effectivity to development
Conversations about AI are beginning to transfer past productiveness positive factors to how AI might help firms increase markets, enhance income, and add jobs.
“Most CEOs I speak to really feel like their organizations have over-tilted towards productiveness … they usually’re lacking the expansion alternatives from AI,” she says.
Accenture, as an example, helped construct Noli — a platform for L’Oréal within the UK that gives hyper-personalized skincare recommendation for purchasers, with plans to scale globally.
“We see a shift now with discussions round how you can use AI to drive development — by enterprise fashions, buyer engagement, or higher matching provide and demand.”
And a 12 months from now? “The dialog will shift from, ‘How do I scale?’ to ‘Can I scale?’ to ‘How briskly can I scale?’”
Candy additionally predicts we’ll quickly be speaking about “bodily AI”: “It’s going to blow up. That’s what I am betting on.”
2. Reskill for all
Accenture invests roughly $1 billion a 12 months in upskilling staff.
“Our major technique is reskilling,” Candy says. “Each one in every of our individuals has entry to coaching. We’ve simply opened our total studying platform, which incorporates levels, to any particular person at Accenture.”
Giving staff the prospect to study new expertise, irrespective of their title or job degree, results in “abundance for all,” Bush says. “AI ought to deliver extra, not much less. Extra belief, extra innovation, extra alternative. Nice leaders use AI to increase what’s doable for his or her enterprise, their staff, and their communities. That helps individuals thrive, not simply survive.”
Candy acknowledges that almost all organizations haven’t wanted to reskill their individuals this rapidly or broadly earlier than.
“Reskilling at scale isn’t a core competency for traditional HR,” she says. “Should you’re the HR particular person making an attempt to advise the CEO about skilling, they want a number of assist.”
It’s why Accenture launched LearnVantage, a personalised studying and coaching platform designed to assist firms and their individuals study the tech and AI expertise they want.
“Our major technique is reskilling. Each one in every of our individuals has entry to coaching. We’ve simply opened our total studying platform, which incorporates levels, to any particular person at Accenture.” – Julie Candy
3. Lead with braveness and humility
Leaders should be prepared to alter course when wanted. Candy’s first act as CEO in 2019 was to introduce a brand new development mannequin, and now, with the rise of AI, Accenture is pivoting once more.
“You must have the humility to say that, as nice as what we did in 2019 is, we have to embrace altering it, placing one thing else in. As a result of right this moment we glance ahead, and there’s a greater manner of working. What I did six years in the past might not be the proper path, and I’m prepared to problem myself.”
“Management can’t keep static,” Bush says. “Main the identical manner results in the identical outcomes. However it’s exhausting to alter — it takes braveness.”
“I ask myself each day, are we altering sufficient?” Candy says, emphasizing that no chief can predict the longer term with certainty — particularly as know-how quickly evolves.
And that’s each thrilling and expansive.
“At this second, when each business is altering, when the idea of competitors is altering, when the know-how is new, once we all should study new expertise — the truth that it’s important to study new expertise to do your job is just not a damaging. It’s a optimistic.
Excellence, confidence, and humility. That’s my North Star, as a result of the second I lose sight of that, I might not be difficult myself and our firm sufficient to proceed to be the winner. That’s how we’ve received.”
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