Accenture CEO weighs in on why so many AI projects have failed with 3 red flags to watch out for

Red flags she sees for AI adoption

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Throughout her life, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet hasn’t been afraid to throw out the playbook, and, in the age of AI, both she and her Fortune 500 clients are in the middle of another reinvention.

Going into her freshman year at Claremont McKenna College, Sweet, who grew up in a middle class Tustin, Calif. family, decided to study international relations and learn Chinese. Then, after a 17-year law career which saw her become the first woman partner at her firm, she took a leap to Accenture and tech consulting where she would eventually earn the top job—even though she knew nothing about technology at first.

As the rapid development of AI has upended the business world and has touched everything from the customer to the front office, Sweet, Accenture’s first woman CEO and chair of the board, says companies also have to reinvent themselves from top to bottom.

“In order to capture the opportunity with AI, you really have to be willing to rewire your company,” Sweet told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on the inaugural episode of the Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “Many times, when clients are saying, we’re not getting a lot out of AI, it’s because they’re trying to apply it to how they operate today.” 

Rewiring, as Sweet describes it, means abandoning the mindset of business as usual. 

Accenture, itself, has already committed $3 billion to building out its data and AI practice, and has pledged to add 80,000 AI-focused employees to its already robust 770,000-plus workforce. The firm has completed more than 2,000 generative AI projects in this fiscal year alone, and Sweet said Accenture’s clients continue to come to them for their industry and technical knowledge, but also their data and technology.

Sweet said the AI revolution needs to be led

“The real promise of it is to use it at the core of your business and be able to change your trajectory.”