The challenges of moving a business out of crisis mode

YOU cannot sustain a crisis mode forever, Julie Sweet observes, on one of the video calls that have become her default communications tool since Covid-19 hit.

The upheavals wrought by the pandemic have inevitably defined the year since the former head of Accenture's North American operations became the 500,000-person global consultancy's first female chief executive. But even though Accenture has had a better crisis than many, with its stock outperforming as it found pockets of growth in the turbulence, she is impatient to move beyond it.

"We have to quickly move to normalising," she insists. The challenge, though, is "finding the clarity and the vision at a time when your leadership team can't get in a room".