The CEO of Accenture explains why so many AI projects have failed with 3 red flags to monitor

By entering his first year at Claremont McKenna College, Sweet, who grew up in a family in the middle class of Tastin, California, decided to study international relations and learn Chinese. Then, after a career in 17 years which saw her become the first partner woman of her business, she made a jump to Accenture and Tech Consulting where she would end up winning the best job, even if she knew nothing about technology at the beginning.

As the rapid development of AI has overturned the business world and has touched everything, from the client to the front office, Sweet, the first CEO woman and president of the Accenture Board of Directors, says companies must also reinvent themselves from top to bottom.

“In order to seize the opportunity with AI, you must really be ready to reclass your business,” said Sweet Fortune The editor -in -chief Alyson Shontell in the inaugural episode of the Fortune 500 titans and disruptors of the industry podcast. “Several times, when customers say, we don’t come out much from AI, it’s because they try to apply it to the way they work today.”

Retancing, as Sweet describes, means to abandon the state of mind of business as usual.

Red flags she sees for the adoption of AI

• Apply an inherited process. His first red flag is if companies immediately want to tackle AI using the same old methods they have always used to solve problems. “Things like transversal management committees; Big Red Flag, “she said. “You must really change the way you do it.”

• Too much concentration on projects that do not move the needle, such as collaboration: Although working together is essential in business, reinventing a business for AI is no excuse for more meetings because collaboration is not a commercial strategy, she said. “When the response to the use of AI is to collaborate more; Another large red flag. “

• Jump into impracticable AI projects: Sweet personally uses technology to summarize data and develop powerpoints, among other uses, but it notes: “This will not change my results.” Financial considerations and a clear strategy must be deprived. “It’s not about using AI in addition to what you are doing today,” said Sweet. “If you do not significantly change your way of working, you do not reinvent and you are not going to capture the value.”

Accenture, himself, has already hired $ 3 billion to build its data and its firms on AI, and has committed to adding 80,000 employees focused on AI to its already robust workforce of 770,000. The company carried out more than 2,000 generative AI projects during this exercise only, and Sweet declared that the customers of Accenture continue to come for their industry and their technical knowledge, but also their data and their technology.

Sweet said that the AI ​​revolution must be directed by executives, who are on the AI ​​pulse. They also don’t need to be afraid to change course, like Sweet, herself, made Accenture by rethinking her own initiatives years ago.

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