Before joining Accenture in May 2004, Walt Shill spent 12 years at McKinsey & Company, where he led the Global Post-Merger Management practice. Today, Shill is global managing partner of Accenture's strategy services line of business.CM: Where would we find you spending your time these days? What types of industries and what types of work are you involved with?
Shill: I do a lot of work in mergers and acquisitions, and another exciting part for me is in organization strategy or design, and operating models. I spend some of my time working in the communications high tech industry and also work inside the entertainment industry. I have recently worked with companies that are doing global implementations, whether it involves an acquisition in China or going into Eastern Europe.
And then the second piece is leading our strategy practice, and there are kind of two parts to that. There's one part that reports directly to me that is cross-industry. We're organized into a couple of different groups. One is focused on corporate strategy; another, on organization strategy; another piece, on innovation, or growth and innovation; and then another, on strategic IT. We address other areas such as pricing.
A large portion of our strategy practice is within the operating groups or our industry groups. I help guide, provide leadership, and troubleshoot for those groups as well. I guess I would characterize that part as kind of a connector between those other parts.
CM: You mentioned pricing. Is this perhaps a new practice area for Accenture?
Shill: It's not new. We actually have several hundred people around Accenture who are working on pricing. But typically it's been by industry, and we've recently decided to take a portion of those people and skills and grow a cross-industry piece, and do more research and deeper pieces. So, essentially, we're taking part of that and centralizing it, and there's going to be more investment, more growth in that area.
CM: Are you sourcing talent in places different from those where other parts of Accenture source talent?
Shill: Yes. There are two things. We do the traditional campus hiring, both at undergraduate and MBA schools. But a large portion of our strategists come from the technology side. And if you realize that there are 130,000 people in Accenture, that's a sizable base to draw from for our recruiting. So we actually have a lot of our own homegrown strategists. It's a big advantage to have over the traditional strategy firms that have to rely 100 percent on MBAs. And, in fact, we are now working on a mini-MBA where we can take some of those folks and accelerate their development from the technology side into the business and strategy side.
CM: How did the abbreviated MBA initiative come about?
Shill: We call it a "mini-MBA." And we're revamping that as we speak. It's one of the things that — when I took on this role in November — it was one of the things that we wanted to upgrade. We're trying to make it more business-relevant, more execution-relevant, and it's sort of an accelerated business thing. We still sponsor people to get their MBAs, we're still recruiting MBAs. But there's some folks who say, "You know, I'm not sure I want to go spend two years and a quarter of a million dollars getting my MBA, when I'm having a very strong career here and Accenture gives me an opportunity to go into business strategy."
CM: Why should clients believe Accenture is better suited to bring change to organizations than more traditional strategy firms?
Shill: There's something unique about Accenture that is very different than the strategy firms and the other business consulting firms. And this is that Accenture has been under constant change. If you go back 10 years ago, Accenture was Andersen Consulting as part of an accounting firm. And in a relatively short time, it grew a technology business, separated from the accounting firm, went public, established a new brand, grew a massive outsourcing business, and ultimately changed the technology business from a mainframe- to services-oriented business.
One of the really unusual and interesting characteristics about Accenture is that it is so adaptable and has gone through its own transformation. Even when you look at our India operations, you see that Accenture grew this business to roughly 30,000 people in two or three years. I don't know of a strategy firm that's ever done that. And I think that this goes back to our sweet spot of being able to tie in execution.
CM: Are the business models being used by traditional strategists dated?
Shill: Most of the strategy consulting firms haven't changed their business model in 40 years. So our ability to work with clients on what they actually execute is where we're uniquely qualified, because we understand technology, because we've done our own transformation, and we're continuing to change our company.
CM: How large is Accenture's strategy practice today?
Shill: Our strategy practice is in the range of 2,000 people. Within Accenture, this sounds relatively small, but when you look at both our strategy and business consulting, we're of a comparable size to that of what I'll call the traditional management consulting firms. Our strategy practice is roughly the same size as, you know, Bain or BCG. And our business consulting is on roughly the same scale as that of Booz or McKinsey. So within Accenture this may seem relatively small, but I think that in the marketplace we're right at scale.
CM: If the strategy practice has 2,000 people today, should we expect it to have 2,200 people sometime next year? Or can you give us some sort of a sense of how we should see the strategy practice grow?
Shill: Well, I would have to be careful, because we're a publicly traded company, but I can tell you this: We have grown faster than the market for the last five years. And I think that we'll continue to grow faster than the market. What we're finding is that we're not consciously going out to gain market share. We don't think of it that way, but what we're finding is that we're in constant demand and we're frequently constrained by needing to be able to bring in the right-quality people all the time.
CM: When you say "faster than the market," are you referring to the overall consulting market or to the strategy component, which has perhaps regained some momentum?
Shill: I would say strategy or business consulting. We have for the last five years, and I think we'll continue to grow faster than the market. Again, I think that it's not us consciously going out to do it. I think that it's just responding to what we're delivering. It's a strategy that the market has evolved to. And that idea of strategy is not a nice PowerPoint presentation presented to the board. Strategy is executing day to day.
CM: You would expect other parts of Accenture's business to be more predictable in terms of revenue and earning streams. Strategy has always been a tough one when it comes to trying to look deeper into the pipeline. Would you agree?
Shill: The traditional strategy view of a three-month project or a six-month engagement has been harder. But what we're finding is that when you link the operational side and the tactical side with the strategy side, it tends to be more even. One of the reasons that made it unpredictable in the past is that you did a project and then you handed over the documents and said, "Good luck!" What we're finding is that since strategy is sort of seamless and integrated with the downstream offerings, it tends to be less episodic.
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