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Human-Powered Leadership in a Disrupted World with Christie Smith, Ph.D, Ex-Accenture Global CEO on Transformation

Our Strategy Skills episode 521 is an interview with the author of Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts are Creating a New Human Powered Leadership, Dr. Christie Smith.

In this episode, Dr. Christie Smith shares her career journey through boutique firms, Deloitte, Apple, and Accenture. She shares key lessons about building client relationships, emphasizing that consultants should focus on understanding client needs rather than pushing their own agenda. Christie explains that successful consulting leaders need empathy and adaptability, especially as workplaces change with new technology. She also talks about balancing work and family life, and how trust matters more than brand in building a successful career. Through her new project, the Humanity Studio, Dr. Christie Smith now helps organizations deal with workplace challenges, particularly as AI becomes more common in business.

I hope you will enjoy this episode.

Kris Safarova

 

 

 

Dr. Christie Smith has over 35 years of experience advising the C-Suite of Fortune 500 companies on strategy, leadership, culture, talent, and the impact of workforce technologies, including AI, and has led global talent teams at Deloitte, Apple, and Accenture.

 

Get Dr. Christie Smith’s new book here:

Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership


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McKinsey & BCG winning resume


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Episode Transcript:

Kris Safarova  00:45

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and our podcast sponsor today is StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the overall approach used in well-managed strategy studies. It’s a free download, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. It is F-I-R-M-S consulting.com forward slash overall approach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF. And today we have with us Dr. Christie Smith, who is the author of Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts are Creating a New Human Powered Leadership. And the founder of the Humanity Studio. She has over 35 years of experience advising the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies on strategy, leadership, culture, talent, the impact of workforce, technologies, including AI, and has led global talent teams at Deloitte, Apple and Accenture. Kristy, welcome.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  01:57

Thank you. It’s so nice to be here with you.

 

Kris Safarova  02:01

So let’s start with your incredible career so far, maybe you could give us an overview.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  02:06

Well, I have been incredibly fortunate in my career to work for some of the world’s best brands. Mostly my career has been as a business consultant. I started my career Early in some boutique firms, and then was recruited by Deloitte, where I had a number of jobs, an industry job, a human capital partner job, and then I ran our West Region consulting practice. I also founded the Deloitte University Center for inclusion, which got the attention of Apple, and they recruited me to be their first inclusion and diversity officer, which was an incredible opportunity to innovate at arguably the world’s most innovative company. And then from there, went back to my consulting roots to Accenture, where I led the global talent and organization practice, and just retired from that position last year, and really felt as though I still had a lot of fire in my belly to continue to do this work as my passion and my mission is to solve for humanity in the workplace. Because if we solve for humanity in the workplace, we solve for the communities in which those workplaces reside. So I started my own company called the Humanity Studio.

 

Kris Safarova  03:30

An incredible journey so far, I feel we need to unpack it a little bit, because there’s a lot of gold buried in there. Maybe you could start with providing some advice for those of our listeners who are in consulting, let’s say they have just been promoted to partner, and they want to succeed, and they’re working at one of the larger firms. What would be your advice?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  03:54

Yeah, my number one piece of advice is to remember that you are in service of your client. And to start there, I think that sometimes we get caught up in the consulting world with, you know, our own narrative of how we fix things, rather than really, which is one of the principles of emotional maturity. My book, rather, you know, suspends self interest, in the interest of starting where your client is and really listening, being incredibly or insatiably curious about the issues that they’re dealing with. And just remember that we as consultants don’t get called because everything’s going well. Generally, there’s some aspect of the business or the individual who is in some degree of crisis and needs outside perspective, and so we have to really remember that we are truly in a service industry.

 

Kris Safarova  04:54

What do you think are the key skills that someone who is building their career in managing. And consultants should focus on so someone who is, let’s say, just been promoted to partner in the world is changing. I all of those things. What should they focus on developing in terms of skills?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  05:11

Yeah. I mean, this is, this is, in essence, we didn’t write the book essential for consultancies themselves. We wrote it for all leadership positions, but I think clearly the tenets of it do speak to those in consulting. The world that we live in is changed dramatically, certainly from when I was growing up as a consultant. You’re looking at things as a leader that we are faced with that in the be, in their totality is is so much greater than you know, simply what we had to deal with in the past. So what do I mean by that? I mean that we are dealing as leaders with several wars around the world, socio political and economic conditions that are polarizing us, where we see certainly more divisions between the haves and have nots. We’re dealing with a skills crisis and a talent crisis like we’ve never seen before. If you think about, you know, 2030, 75% of leaders actually today believe that we will not have, they can’t have, can’t find or have the right skills to execute on their strategies. And we’re dealing with now as very public figures, that leaders become personal security, so the conditions in total, and the cumulative of all of those realities that we’re faced with today in in our world and the public sector looking to the private sector to solve some of these issues, that requires a whole new set of skills for leaders that we haven’t had to require in the past. So what are some of those skills? Certainly, we talk in the book about power skills. So no longer is it just soft skills, it’s really power skills, and those are skills like empathy, adaptability, self awareness, something that we’ve termed contextual competence, and, yeah, the tenants of emotional intelligence. So all of those skills are required, and I think that’s a starting point.

 

Kris Safarova  07:47

That is very true. And then, what would be your advice on how to meet sales targets? I just have to ask you, because you will have some things to share there.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  07:57

Yeah, I think for me, you know, in my career as a consultant, one of the best pieces of advice I got when I joined Deloitte was from the guy who hired me, Mike Fauci, who continues to be a dear friend and mentor. You know, Mike, I joined Deloitte a little later in my career, so I had a quote, unquote book of business and that and leaders that I could call upon in the in the context of now being a partner at Deloitte, and, you know, started to do that, and I am like other consultants, type A, And I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted to see fast enough, and so Mike and I were talking about it. He said, you know, Kristy, spend as much time with your partners in the firm, because they will be your sales force. You don’t have to shoulder this alone. It was the best advice I got because it accomplished a couple of things for me. One is I got to know our business incredibly quickly and the diverse kind of capabilities we had. And at that time, as is today, we were audit tax advisory services, consulting strategy, all of that. And so I was able, through building my relationships internally in the organization, to learn the business exceptionally well. The second thing that it gave me was exactly that the sales force of partners who would bring me into engagements, and frankly, sometimes I had to be the one to initiate finding what is the right place to bring my partners in. I had to start the chain of. Of, you know, really letting them know that I have their back as much as I’m asking them to have mine. And then the third thing which I have loved about consulting my whole life is, you know, gave me a lot of friends, lot of friends who I continue to stay in touch with today, and clients who became a lot of who came became very good friends. So I think that’s the advice that I would give around sales, is be really thoughtful about how you utilize and develop relationships internally in the firm as much as externally.

 

Kris Safarova  10:37

Kristy, and how did you thought about competing versus collaborating, because in consulting, especially, even if we look at lower levels, only so many people can get promoted, and you’re competing, but you’re also collaborating. What would be your advice?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  10:54

Yeah, I think that one of the things that I really enjoyed, especially at Deloitte, I would say, is we had a culture where we understood that the competition was outside. It wasn’t amongst us, and if we were to succeed, we were better together than we were apart or competing with each other. And the culture around hey, let’s lock arms and go out there and win against our competitors. Was very, very, very strong, those individuals who were trying to get to the next level who had that behavior of, you know, the guy sitting next to me or the woman sitting next to me as my competitor didn’t fare well. And so I think that having a cultural norm around how we think about, you know, do your job and do it with excellence. Don’t do it in the headwinds of competing with somebody do it, in the tailwinds of thinking about the team. I think this is very much present in in our book, when we talk about, you know, the move from emotional intelligence, which really is and has been such an a positive impact to leaders for many decades. At this point now, we talk about kind of the need to move from emotional intelligence that really looks at my attributes, my ability to be empathic, my ability to engage, my ability to be self aware. We need to move from that to what I call emotional maturity, which is not just understanding those things about ourselves, but actually is really invested in the humanity in your organization. So it’s not about you anymore. It’s about those who are working with you and those in your organization. And you know emotional maturity includes things like suspension of self interest, cultivating insatiable curiosity, creating cultures of excellence, having contextual competence in your job and of those who work with you. So I think we need, not only because of the realities of leadership today, but because of what employees are looking for. We need a new framework for leadership.

 

Kris Safarova  13:38

Christie, when you looked at the teams that you were leading, and especially younger people who want to be partner, who see their career in management consulting versus coming to management consulting for two years because it looks good on their resume. Who, in your mind was partner material?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  13:58

That’s a great question. I think the person that was partner material were was certainly excellent in their craft, superior in ways in their craft, whether that was strategy, whether that was human capital capabilities, whether that was security or technology you had to demonstrate, and you could continue to have to demonstrate excellence in your craft. First and foremost. Secondly, you need to have that partner mindset, where you are bringing in others. You know, it’s very hard for consultants to say in front of their clients, sometimes I don’t know, right? And often they don’t, you know. Whisper those words, if you will, you know. But I found it to be something that was really powerful when I worked with clients, and I certainly. They asked me a question that wasn’t in my wheelhouse. My response was always, I don’t know, but let me find you the person who does. And I think you have to have that mindset, that partnership mindset, of being willing to pull, pull other people in and suspend your own self interest, perhaps in landing a project. I also think partner material is how you invest in others. I always thought a really good measure for those coming up as partners was, how well did they promote people on their teams? What was the career trajectory of those that they’d worked with for a long time? How many as senior managers? How many people did they move from analyst to consultant, consultant to senior consultant? That tells you a lot about a leader who’s invested in their team. And again, I think it is that absolute ability to convey, and not just convey, but behave in the best interest of your client, always, always, those are the critical components that I like to see in a partner.

 

Kris Safarova  16:21

I agree you spoke earlier about building client relationships, so becoming that trusted advisor, a person that client really trusts, an executive on the client side really trusts, and they even hire your firm because you are the one who got to be overseeing the project, what would be your advice on building those kinds of relationships with clients?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  16:46

You know, again, this is why we wrote the book. You know, it’s you’ve got to see people as human first. I mean, you know, like I said earlier, nobody calls a consultant because everything’s going well. There’s usually some issue or aspect that they’re dealing with that either, you know, their jobs on the line for if they don’t get it right, or a promotion maybe is on the line for because they if they don’t get it right, there’s some reason they’re calling us, they’re not meeting their their customers needs, whatever that scenario is, you know, coming in and understanding the humanity of your client, and I listen, I’ve had CEOs who are clients, understanding The human context in which they’re trying to operate is, I think, first and foremost, something that we have to do. Secondly, we have to be able to not take ourselves so seriously. And what I mean by that is, if we’re trying to impress to our clients that we know it all, we’ll lose them, and we are not focused on them the minute we focus on us and how great we are. You know that we are going to lose our clients, and we will not develop those long standing relationships. I think that we have to be willing to take a call at any time of day or night for a client and help them through whatever it is that we’ve engaged around. I think my clients will say, and have said over the years, is, is that they knew I was in the trenches with them. They knew I was willing to take the heat if something didn’t go right. I was always willing to be fired as a consultant on behalf of in order to on behalf of my client, in order to protect my client. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. But it is something that I think, that willingness that served me very well.

 

Kris Safarova  18:58

So for someone who is much earlier in their career? Yep, and let’s say they worked a little bit. They went back to school, did an MBA, and now they’re considered in consulting. What advice would you give them, for them to evaluate if consulting is for them or not? Yeah.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  19:15

First and foremost, I think management consulting is one of the greatest careers full stop. Why do I think that? One is that it the learning curve is steep and always because you’re working with clients, you are always learning something, and you’re always having to become, you know, teachable, frankly, you know, listen, I know in in my career where I was first a human capital partner, then an industry partner, and then, you know, several other iterations there of partner I was in a constant learning, you. Loop for through my whole career, I still am now. So this notion of coming into this career, coming into this career, management consulting, is number one, be teachable just because you’ve got the letters next to your name or behind your name that’s either an MBA, a PhD or whatever it is, doesn’t you know, the learning doesn’t stop. So be teachable and remain teachable. The second is always see how you can contribute. What is it that you know you may have an idea around, find the people that you can share that idea around, if it’s around the client problem, listen. Listening is the most incredible skill that you can have early in your career and keep it right. I think when you’re coming into your career and in management consulting, you’re you may be working in a lot of different industries and different companies, do your homework, listen to their analysts report, understanding what the trends are in that industry, understanding what are the potential headwinds a company or an industry has to face. How does that relate to the work that you’ve been asked to do, those kinds of things I think are really important. I also think finding not just a mentor, but a board of mentors that you really call upon to not only help them out, but also, you know, seek their wisdom. Thank

 

Kris Safarova  21:39

you very wise words. So another question I have for you, when you joined as a consultant, what surprised you about consulting that you didn’t expect?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  21:49

That’s a good question. I think, you know, candidly, I What surprised me is how much I loved it to be really, you know, honest about it is, you know, I think that a little bit of a surprise was the reliance on your partners, you know, you know, I grew up as an athlete, and so, you know, I had that athlete, I still have that athlete mentality of, go out. You’ve got to get, you know, get the client, get get the, you know, sale, whatever it is. But really taking that kind of team approach to doing it was a pleasant surprise for me. I really enjoyed the vast amount of opportunities that I got to work with very different industries and different leaders. And I think the third thing that was most surprising to me is, you know, a phrase I grew up with from my dad, who was an executive in the menswear industry. He always used to say to us, you know, they put their pants on the same way you do one leg at a time, and so that no matter who I was interacting with as a client and whatever their title was, having the belief that, hey, they put their pants on one, one leg at a time, and they’re human. They’re human. They are not their title. They are human. Trying to find a prop, find an answer to a problem, and getting the best advice to do that.

 

Kris Safarova  23:35

That is a very good advice your dad gave you marketing, special, important to focus on as a foundation. We are all human. It’s about that first and then whatever relationship we have, for example, management consultant and the client, you mentioned finding mentors, and that is a challenge for many people. What would be your advice on finding mentors and then building those relationships. So it is beneficial for both people.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  24:04

I think you’ve got to look for a set of mentors. So for myself, I was intentional not just asking people for one mentor. I was going to mentors for several different reasons. One is understanding my craft better. You know, being a better consultant, being a better partner, that was one avenue where I found one or two phenomenal mentors that I just spent time being engaged in conversation. I didn’t go to them and say, Hey, I’d love you to be my mentor. I went to them with specific questions, specific scenarios, with a hey, I just would love to have your advice on this. Right? How would you handle this issue? So so from the stamp. Point of, you know, career, or for the standpoint of being a great consultant, I had mentors for that in terms of long term career, and, you know what, what did I look for in terms of, how should I think about navigating my career? You know, I had a woman by the name of Diana O’Brien at Deloitte, who continues to be my closest friend. But, you know, at the time I, you know, would go to her and say, you know, I don’t know what I should be doing next. What do you think? Can we talk about this, whether it was to take another position or try to grow toward another position within Deloitte, or, you know, if I were getting attention out outside the company? So, you know, career advice was another avenue in which I was very intentional about choosing a mentor, and they’re not necessarily the same. Right being excellent in your craft and then having a career, you know, somebody that you were working with around your career, that you could have an honest, safe conversation with two different kinds of mentors for me, you know, the third kind of mentor for me was really, you know, I two young children at the time, very young children. How do I navigate this? You know, while I had a arrangement with my spouse that, listen, we’re going to make the decision that you stay home and raise the kids, and I’m the breadwinner. That comes with some really difficult decisions to make. I’m going to be on the road. I’m going to miss a lot, you know, and I’m, you know, there’s not a lot of predictability in my calendar, so, you know, having another mentor to really kind of talk about that. So my advice to people would be, is, don’t limit yourself to thinking about one mentor. Think about the context in which you want mentoring and development and learning, and really be very clear about it, like write it down. And then I think, begin the conversations go into building the relationship, like you’d build any other relationship. Go into it with learning and and I think what you’ll find is the breadth of your board really makes you a better person as well as professional.

 

Kris Safarova  27:54

So you mentioned having two young kids at very senior levels in mentoring, consulting, a lot of pressure, a lot of traveling, that is such a common situation for my clients, for listeners who are listening to us right now, what did you learn that you wish you knew earlier on, in terms of being able to handle that, being a mom and also at the same time having so many responsibilities on your plate and succeeding in both of those roles.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  28:26

Yeah. I mean, I think that the thing that was most important is, you know, I think humility is seeing yourself as you really are, right? And part of what I had to see a truth about myself is that, you know, I I was a better mother working than if I were to have decided to stay home. And so I think you have to look in the mirror and really say, you know, who are you? What is it that you want? Where do you think you can make the best contribution to your family, right? And listen, I have sisters who said that, made that decision. Said, Well, I’m not going to work. I’m going to stay at home. And then there are other, you know, family members who said, Nope, I’m going to stay at home. And, I mean, I’m going to stay at work, because I think I’m a better parent that way, right? So I think that was something that was really important in those early days. I think the second thing was, Hey, have a family discussion. Have a discussion with your spouse. I mean, I my spouse and I talked about this for a long time. She had a very successful career, and so, you know, we, you know, talked about what is best as a whole, right for the family. And, you know, in deciding having children, I think the other thing that I wished I had known and had the confidence of earlier in my career, where my kids were little, is. Is the power of no and knows a full sentence, there were so many things that I could have said no to that were not client related. Because I think if you get in this business, it’s all about the client that were not client related that I could have said no to, you know, I was all too willing to jump on a plane and go across country, or jump on a plane and go to Europe or wherever in the world for something that wasn’t necessarily additive to either my career or or clients. But I felt like, if I, you know, I had to be in the room where it happened, so to speak. And that was the pressure I put on myself. No one else put that on me. So I wished I had had the ability to say no. I also think, you know, what’s really important is to make sure and have enough sponsors or advocates who are sitting in rooms where people are making decisions about my career, or you know your career is, you know, to have them Understand don’t in any way make a decision for me based on my career, because you think, Oh, she’s a mom. She has to stay home. I’ve seen that far too much with with women and and it’s it, frankly, angers me. You know, I think that that that is very old thinking, and I think it’s thinking that still persists in our organizations. So I always had those sponsors, or those spies, for lack of better word, in those rooms who would come and tell me, yeah, Krissy, they said, you know, they made the assumption that you wouldn’t want this role because of XYZ and that. Then I had the courage, which I am proud of myself for, to go and address it directly with people and say, Hey, listen, I understood this was a discussion. I just want you to know I would be willing to do this. You may not choose me, and that’s cool, but I absolutely would be eager to take on a role like this.

 

Kris Safarova  32:25

Kristy, thank you so much for being so honest and just sharing really valuable information for people. I would like to briefly speak about your transition to Apple. Doesn’t have to be brief as well, because it’s a big, big transition. When that happened, how did you adjust? What surprised you, and what did you learn?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  32:45

So my transition was really fueled by excitement, to be honest. I mean, I think that through I interviewed with Apple for quite some time, it was a long interview process and and they, they are a company that wants to change the world now. They do it through technology. They do it through health. They do it because they truly believe that, you know, technology and the and the products they produce can make life better, and and I believe that as well. And so the fact that, when we I was doing the interviewing, and I was hearing from people who are interviewing me, we really want to change the world here. We think we have a platform to do that when it comes to our own employees, to diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s clearly something that Tim Cook believes strongly in human rights and human dignity. He uses that phrase quite often. So so the transition was really hard to leave Deloitte. Love Deloitte. However, it’s a once in a lifetime chance, and so having the opportunity to make that transition, you know, was was really filled with excitement. It was different, clearly, from my consulting career in, you know, the fact that I was not consulting, you know, I was actually doing the work and doing the work to see it through for a long period of time as an employee, not as a consultant. It was not different from the perspective of I was really blessed in earlier in my career to build businesses that didn’t exist before. So I was intrapreneur, which trust. Me, I know that that’s a privilege to be able to be an entrepreneur, rather than an entrepreneur. The challenges are very, very different. But nonetheless, I knew how to set up a business or set up a practice, and so that was very similar when I was, you know, in terms of my responsibilities at Apple, I think that, you know, working for Apple and working with a company that is so data driven and so yet, you know, it’s the art and science that Steve Jobs built the company on Right, very data driven, and yet the art of humanity, you know, those, those, those two things were in balance. And so, you know, I obviously very different, but from the consulting industry, but there were so many similarities that, you know, it felt very comfortable.

 

Kris Safarova  36:05

What do you feel you learned from that experience? Anything that really changed the way you look at things after you worked at Apple?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  36:14

Yeah, I think that I always believe this. I think it’s solidified when I was at Apple in that, you know this, this absolute need to focus on purpose and values for an organization, and that your insides have to match your outsides. I think that became so much more magnified for me as a set of importance in organizations. Then you know, I think it was turbo charged. I mean, it’s always been there for me, but I think it was turbo charged when I was, you know, when, when during my time at Apple. I think that purpose values, culture really matters. I think that’s another thing. I mean, I think that cultures and subcultures matter, and there’s not a hierarchy to them. Each contribute to the whole I think that was something, again, that was illuminated. It was an incredible experience, and I have a tremendous amount of pride for what we accomplished, and I accomplished during that time. In fact, pretty much everything I created at that time is in place. And, you know, one of my mentees who I love and adore, Stephanie Fox, is, you know, now, head of talent there, and it’s, it’s, and many others that I brought in are in other incredible areas of the company, doing incredible work. So I have a lot of pride on that, because it’s really not what what you do. It’s vitally important in terms of what you do when you’re at a place that puts that kind of responsibility, gives you that kind of responsibility. It is important of what you do, but it’s more important the people you bring on the journey and how you leave them, and how you hopefully contribute to their well being in every way, not just their professional well being, but Their personal well being. And and I just have immense pride over, you know, and many, many of the people I’ve worked with to see where they’ve landed now.

 

Kris Safarova  38:30

Christie, and then you go to extension. So you missed consulting. Is that you went back to consulting?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  38:36

Well, you know, there were several things. I mean, I think the pandemic hit and that really threw everything into chaos, as we all know, I had a real, really both painful and poignant moment when the pandemic hit and I was home for for quite some time, still Working at Apple, but I remember, you know, my kids were 12 and 13 at the time. I think it was maybe they were both 13. They’re, they’re same age. And I was commuting from Seattle to Cupertino, and I, I can remember, so I was gone, you know, Sunday night or Monday morning through Friday night. I can remember a moment when my kids seemed to almost relax in their interaction with me, because I wasn’t running out the door to catch plane to go back to Cupertino. I’ve always been really super close to my kids, but there was something palpable there. I’m not even sure I could define it, but it was palpable in that they calmed down, you know, or just relaxed because they knew I wasn’t going to walk out the door. And at that moment, I thought, I have spent their entire careers on a plane, I mean, their entire lives on a plane. I. I’m not going to do this. I can’t do it anymore. As much as I appreciate what I was doing, I loved what I was doing. You know, in hindsight, what I was doing was impactful, and I have again, I’m, I’m grateful for that, but nothing I couldn’t, I can’t, I couldn’t, you know, travel like that anymore. It was too important for me to stay home and have the kids know that I was there and I wasn’t going anywhere, and Accenture afforded me that opportunity.

 

Kris Safarova  40:29

Christian, what was key differences from your experience working at Accenture versus Deloitte?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  40:37

Well, I mean, I think the biggest difference is, is that Accenture is a public company. Deloitte is a private company. So the standards of measurement are very different, and the timing of, you know, outcomes and results very different in a public company. So that’s number one. Number two is that I you know, Accenture has always been seen, or mostly had been seen in their evolution as a company, as a tech company. And you know, many still see them as just a tech company, whereas at Deloitte, I think there was a balance between, you know, having capabilities in technology, but also equally human capital and strategy, and then, of course, the the advisory and you know, tax and audit side of the house, so very different from that perspective of more equity across the service lines within Deloitte and at Accenture, really that heavy emphasis on technology, so building the talent and organization practice. And I think my career has mostly been, you know, I have been a builder in my career. I love coming in and building things, building businesses, building new practice areas, those kinds of things. And so getting the chance to come in and grow the talent and organization practice through those things I learned at Deloitte, through our partners and building the confidence of our partners at or our senior managing directors at Accenture, that talent and organization wasn’t your mother and father’s change management program, but this was really strategic. I, you know, was involved in five acquisitions during my tenure at at Accenture, in the TNO practice. So that was very different than Deloitte, where I was doing a lot of M and A for clients. You know, we were in a buy mode in terms of human capital or talent and organization capabilities. So, so very different circumstances as businesses. But you know, again, the growth we saw in human capital, the growth we saw in talent and organization was sizable. Was very, very, very significant, and again, leaving, you know, a legacy of a great practice and great practitioners, you know, both the same.

 

Kris Safarova  43:13

And then I want to spend a little bit of time that we have left also discussing AI and your thoughts. How do you see generative AI, and what’s happening with technology related to AI is shaping the workforce and what skills will be most critical? We spoke a little bit about skills today, but maybe we can go a little bit deep on that.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  43:34

Yeah, again. I mean, I think that we’re in a skills crisis in that, you know, certainly the research in our book bears this out that by 2023 most companies are not going to have the skills that are required, not just from a technology standpoint, but from all aspects of business. Right now, in 2024 three out of four people don’t have the right skills in their organizations, we are not training them fast enough, thus losing productivity. We have looked at AI in recent years as the magic bullet that is going to kind of solve our skills problems. We know that now that that is not true, and in fact, that’s failing because people are not using AI or technology in because they haven’t been trained on how to use it, frankly, in the context of their business and their daily responsibilities. You know, we talk a lot in the book about AI and humanity basically, and we really talk about the notion of human intelligence. Listen, AI automates repetitive tasks and enhances efficiencies in organizations. If organizations. Humans are investing in the education around how to use the that AI, whereas humans really provide that kind of ethical judgment, contextual awareness and creativity, and both have to exist, right? Ai, plus kind of human contextual thinking is really what will drive human intelligence. I don’t think that AI is the magic bullet. I do think it can be exceptionally helpful and help with repetitive tasks and those kinds of things, but we’re not spending the time what we’re you know, we’re not spending the time educating people on any of these technologies. You know, the study that we did with a number of very senior leaders was around asking them the question of, you know, do they think technology is important to their growth and important to competitive advantage? 100% of them said absolutely. Yet, only 25% were willing to actually implement the technology by the technology, implement the technology, technology, or learn about the technology. So we have a huge gap in our organizations and leaderships who say they know they need technology to help automate from an AI perspective and an analytical perspective all of those things, yet they’re not willing to take action with regards to implementing technology, because it’s not just implementing technology. It is about, how do you use that technology productively in your organization? As a person at this level, that level, this job, that job, this area of the business, that area of business, and teach those individuals how to use those capabilities. We are not spending money or time on that. We are just throwing another technology on the desk and saying, Hey, learn this. And the productivity rates around AI are abysmal because employees are saying that, you know, candidly, this is just yet another thing you’re asking me to do, and it has no you haven’t built the why for me as to how it should impact my careers, therefore, I’m not doing it.

 

Kris Safarova  47:45

And final question, my favorite question to ask is, over the last few years, what were two, three aha moments, realizations, or even one that really changed the way you look at life or the way you look at business?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  47:58

I think that the biggest aha for me has been the realization that I don’t necessarily need a brand to have a business. And so what do I mean by that? I mean I think that, you know, I have had, as we’ve talked about in this conversation, association with, you know, the world’s some of the world’s most favorite brands, and I have loved everything about my career. I’m not sure I would change anything good and bad. And as I had looked to retirement and what was next in my career, as I said to you earlier, knew that I had fire in my belly, that I was not done with solving humanity for humanity in the workplace. I was not done doing the work that I did. That’s why I wrote this book and then decided to really build the humanities studio, and I was terrified. I’m still terrified, right? But what I’ve realized and taken comfort in, is that the culmination of the things that I’ve done in my career and the brands that I work have worked for, do in some way speak to my credibility, but what speaks to my credibility more, I think, is in the relationships that I’ve dealt developed over those years, and the trust that I’ve built in clients, the friendships I’ve built in clients, and the demonstrated ability to, you know, be incredibly invested in those that I work with and that my brand without those other big brands associated, it’s enough. It’s enough. And I think that that is probably, yeah, that’s probably the biggest aha that I’ve that I’ve come to in the last year.

 

Kris Safarova  49:56

Christie, I think you are more than enough.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  49:58

Thank you. Yeah.

 

Kris Safarova  50:02

Thank you for being here with us. Thank you for being so honest and giving such thoughtful answers from the depth of your heart. I really appreciate it.

 

Dr. Christie Smith  50:10

Oh, it’s been my pleasure. I have loved our conversation, and yeah, I look forward to more.

 

Kris Safarova  50:16

Same here. Where can our listeners learn more about you by your book? Anything you want to share?

 

Dr. Christie Smith  50:23

Wonderful. Well, thank you. There are two websites. One is the humanitystudio.com. That’s where you can find out about me in the business. There’s also a link to the book. But our book website, my co author, Kelly Monahan and I is smith-monahan.com.

 

Kris Safarova  50:41

Christie, again. Thank you so much for being here for everything you shared. I’m looking forward to having more discussions down the road. Thank you. Our guest today again has been Dr. Christie Smith, check out Christie’s book. It’s called Essential. And our podcast sponsor today is StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the overall approach used in well-managed strategy studies. It’s a free download, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. And you can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume. It’s a free download of a resume that got offers from both firms. We spoke a lot today about management consulting. This is an example of a consulting resume that works and can work at any level, and not just for consulting, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF. Thank you everyone for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.

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