From civil engineering through social engineering,
Accenture's UK managing director David Thomlinson has been part of
some major projects in his time.
"I started in civil engineering, doing big multi-storey
buildings," he says. "I studied civil engineering at Sheffield.
After that, I joined a civil engineering firm where I worked on
engineering projects such as the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. I then
joined Accenture in 1986. A lot of people say that it must have
been a big shift to go from a civil engineering firm to Accenture,
but really the two firms were both very impressive with good bright
people.
"Ultimately there was a commonality between them in that they
were both about doing difficult and challenging projects. Look at
some of the projects that the civil engineering firm did, such as
the Sydney Opera House, and you can see that it was all about big,
complex projects. The attraction of coming to Accenture was that of
helping clients to do complex and challenging things. It was the
appeal of bringing many different people with different skills
together as a high-performing team which could do remarkable
things.
"The power of Accenture is not about individual capable people
as much as people coming together to do remarkable things. I joined
the firm after working in a different industry At the time, that
was perhaps unusual, but now we can effectively integrate people
from competitors and from various industry sectors when they have
the right skills.
"We have always had a real commitment to industry knowledge,
across all the industries in which we work. One of our strengths as
Accenture has been to bring in bright people. A large part of our
organisation has been based around IT, but today it is more
balanced across a whole range of skills. Ultimately what we are
looking for is intellect and an ability to solve problems."
IT graduate pain
But are the necessary skills to produce Accenture employees in
ready supply in the UK? Or has the "skills crisis" that has been
talked about for so long taken its toll?
"My eldest son graduated recently, so I have some personal
experience of how graduates are feeling at the moment," he says. "I
am just coming up to my 23rd anniversary at Accenture. Throughout
that time we have had a well-deserved reputation as an employer of
choice and we regularly come out in surveys as one of the most
attractive companies for graduates to join. Getting good graduates
is not an issue for us."
Thomlinson takes an active role in trying to nurture new talent.
"I sit on various government and industry bodies which look at the
development of technology skills. I am a member of the E-Skills
board - which is a government body which is about attracting and
developing new skills in information technology," he says. "'I am a
member of the Council on Social Action which was set up and chaired
by Gordon Brown. It is a group of around 20 business leaders and
social entrepreneurs and government people who are looking at what
we can do in the UK to make a difference in society. How do we
build an opportunity and seize it? From a company point of view, we
have a real commitment to making a difference, but it is also a
tremendous personal interest. I get a lot of personal satisfaction
from it."
But aren't many such committees (particularly with politicians
at the helm) set up with the best of intentions but then fail to
deliver actionable results?
Thomlinson argues that the will to deliver genuine results is
there. "Accenture is a company that gets involved and has a great
commitment to and passion for results. We don't just write a cheque
to an organisation and wish them luck.
"We are very much into working alongside charities and so on to
get results. One of the real pleasures of my job is to see what we
do that makes a difference. Ultimately, that is what it is about.
How do you make a difference? How do to create and scale up social
interaction? There is now with social networking technology a
tremendous vehicle to do that. It will be an enormously powerful
force."
There must be a danger that such good intentions will give way
to commercial necessity and corporate expediency in light of the
economic meltdown. Perhaps doing good and saving the planet can
wait until the day after the recession?
"I think that's an overly cynical view," says Thomlinson. "My
last job before becoming UK country manager was running our global
resources industry practice, which was responsible for things like
alternative energy sources and improving the environment, so the
green agenda has been very much at the heart of the work that I
have been doing for many years."
Green agenda
"My sense is that the green agenda is now very much more
embedded in the discussions that people are having and the
decisions they are making every day. The result is that the green
agenda is not so hyped up as it has become an everyday commitment
from people across the whole industry.
"Of course, business people do obviously have some very
important short-term things to think about right now and need to
make the right operational decisions. That said, I have not
detected people not having the same commitment to green matters. I
think it is inevitable and unstoppable.
"If I look just at Accenture, we have a UK and a global
commitment to green," says Thomlinson. "In fact, one of the clear
pressures comes from the people we employ and who expect us to have
a clear environmental position that we hold to. I would not want to
have a choice anyway, but even if I did I don't because the
expectations of our employees would require us to maintain our
commitment."
Challenges of the downturn
But the current economic chaos must have caused many
organisations to forego longer term planning in favour of short
term strategic thinking in the interests of simply surviving?
"Clearly in the face of the current economic challenges, the UK
is going through some extremely challenging and turbulent times,"
says Thomlinson. "But there is an opportunity there to be proactive
and develop ideas around cost reduction and improvement of service.
If we have a well-structured proposition, then we can get the
attention of senior executives across all the industries in which
we work. The best way we work with clients is when we work together
to develop the proposition.
"Both long-term and mid-term plans are important. The ultimate
test is about delivering value - and by that I mean money. In the
current climate, if I went to a CEO and we talked about all the
nice things that could happen, I wouldn't expect any business.
Having a hard idea of what you can deliver in the short term is
incredibly important. That plays to our strength. We can show how
you can improve the performance of IT in the short term through our
technology consultancy and we have our outsourcing capabilities,
which are about 'show me the money'.
Future outlook
"The future leaders of companies are going to be those who chart
their way through these challenging times and who look at what
products they should be produce and what markets they should be in.
Part of the problem is the challenge - or the opportunity - that is
the fact that we are in a multi-polar world.
"There is true globalisation in industry. We have people working
on major clients in the UK, but they will have access to large
teams of people in our offshore delivery centres. That is just a
fact of the global economy. Some may see it as a threat, but we can
turn that to our advantage. The education system in India, for
example, is very good. But no market can escape the recession. Our
method is about having one foot in today and one foot in
tomorrow."