Accenture Plc. CEO Julie Sweet says the lesson that steered her career arrived on a dark drive home from a speech contest when she was 15.

What Happened: Sweet recalled that after she complained about losing to "the daughter of the president" of the local Lions Club, her father replied, "First of all, Julie, you're never going to be the daughter of the president of the Lions Club. That's not the family you were born into… and I believe you can do anything, but you have to be so much better than anyone else that they have to give it to you. Tonight, you weren't that much better."

Sweet, who grew up in Tustin, California, later summed that pep talk from her father up as, "You should be fearless, but you have to be ready."

The Columbia University law graduate tells Fortune the episode taught her brutal self-honesty and constant adaptation, skills she first honed a year earlier as a teenage reservations clerk who "learned to change, to grow very, very fast."

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Those habits followed her from partner at Cravath Swaine & Moore, which was among the oldest of the elite law firms in Manhattan in the 90s, to Accenture's general counsel in 2010, North America chief in 2015 and global CEO in 2019, roles that required pivoting from law to cloud deals and most recently, generative AI services.

Why It Matters: Under Sweet, Accenture has spent $6.6 billion on acquisitions in two years and boosted its AI bookings to $1.4 billion, prompting a higher revenue outlook in March, reports Reuters.

She frames those moves as the same discipline her father demanded of being "so much better" that clients are forced to choose you -- a refrain she's echoed in a podcast about spotting talent and raising the bar.

Adaptability, Sweet notes, is hardly her monopoly. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warns that "the biggest mistake we could make is being complacent," a line he repeats when urging bankers to keep learning. Microsoft's Satya Nadella calls his north star "doing things that are going to be relevant tomorrow," crediting constant reinvention for three decades of growth.

Photo Courtesy: Nicoleta Ionescu on Shutterstock.com

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