Lifetime Achievement Award
Jeanne Harris
Accenture
As an executive research fellow, Accenture's Jeanne Harris, conceives and leads original research on topics of strategic importance to business executives.
"Increasingly consultants need to distinguish themselves both by the quality of the ideas they bring to their clients and their ability to help them implement those ideas and thereby achieve high performance," Harris says. "Thought leadership plays an increasingly critical role in the ability of a consulting firm to differentiate itself in the marketplace."
But those ideas are a long way from where Harris started with Accenture back in 1977, when she was hired to establish a library/reference service for the Administrative Services Division. She assumed the firm wanted an accounting library.
"I was surprised to learn that the library was for technology consultants," she says. "From there, I branched into speech writing, researching client reports, business and proposal development, alliance management, ghostwriting articles and editing client reports." She became a full fledged consultant when her boyfriend at the time—and now her husband—convinced her to make the jump out of her office support role for Accenture.
"I've always had an untraditional career path, splitting my time between client work, business research and developing new practice offerings," Harris says. "If someone had asked me about it years ago, I would never have imagined that I would be doing the things I am today."
Today, Harris leads the Institute's global research agenda in the areas of information, technology, analytics and talent. "I love the intellectual challenge of consulting. I love talking to executives about real issues they are facing and how to deal with emerging challenges and opportunities," Harris says. "As a consultant, there are so many opportunities to learn, grow and reinvent yourself. I am rarely bored—one of the biggest benefits of being a consultant—since there are always new ideas and emerging areas to explore."
One of those emerging areas has been analytics, the subject of two recent books authored by Harris.
She is the co-author of the 2007 book Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning , and her forthcoming book— Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results will be published by Harvard Business School Press in early 2010.
"The publication of my first book was the culmination of decades of research and client engagement experience," she says. "I had ghost written many articles for others, but it was a thrill to see my own name in print. Now, I am looking forward to the launch of my new book. As a consultant, I enjoy seeing my ideas put into practice, so I am looking forward to taking our Analytics practice to the next level."
Harris has seen a lot in her 32 years at Accenture, but perhaps nowhere has the landscape change so dramatically as the number of women at the firm. "I never gave much thought to being a female consultant—I just wanted to serve my clients, be challenged intellectually, learn as much as I could and build my own skills," she says. "In retrospect, I think that being a woman and having an untraditional background was actually an asset. I sought out opportunities to get involved in unconventional assignments and emerging practice areas."
Harris recalls a few milestones along the way, such as the first time a client swore in a meeting and didn't stop to apologize to her; and she says the first time she had to wait in line in the ladies' room during the partners' meeting "an oddly thrilling moment."
Today, she's "proud to work for an organization that numbers 60,000 women among its employees, that values diversity and supports working mothers—and whose Board of Directors includes three women," Harris says. "I do believe the road is clearer for young women entering consulting now, but, honestly, I would not have changed my own path."
—Joseph Kornik
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