Chapters

Jason Mlicki (00:01.464)
So Jeff, I’ve been thinking, I need your help.

Jeff McKay (00:05.677)
I love to serve you, buddy.

Jason Mlicki (00:07.338)
I’m thinking about reinventing myself and I need some help kind of, what’s that? As I should. My question is, what does that mean? If I were to reinvent myself, what do you think I should be thinking about? Should it be like, I just get a new haircut? I wear these same blue, black, know, polos to every time we get together. Should I change it up, get like a purple polo?

Jeff McKay (00:12.227)
As you should. As you should.

Jason Mlicki (00:36.247)
A button down?

Jeff McKay (00:37.845)
I think you, what was that show a couple of years ago? I’m not even sure if it’s still on Queer Eye, where they come in and they reinvent the stayed father figure and kind of clean them up and make them hip. That’s what you need. You need Queer Eye.

Jason Mlicki (00:46.478)
I’m sorry.

Jason Mlicki (00:55.372)
Okay.

Jason Mlicki (00:59.704)
So you’re saying, are you saying I’m not hip? You’re saying I’m not hip, huh? I’m shocked. I am shocked by this information.

Jeff McKay (01:03.821)
gosh, are… Well, here’s the thing. You’re about this hip and I’m about that hip. So for your hipster-ness, I’m half of yours. So we’re in the same boat.

Jason Mlicki (01:11.17)
Uh-huh.

Okay, so if you…

Can we, is hipsterness additive? Can we add it together to make a really hip one, one collective distributed intelligence kind of a thing?

Jeff McKay (01:30.607)
Hey, that’s what we do with rattle and pedal. But some of the parts is… What’s that?

Jason Mlicki (01:32.928)
I guess using the phrase distributed intelligence literally reduced my hipness. Okay, but back to the question though, if I am reinventing myself, does that mean I’m just changing my haircut, the way I look, getting new glasses or getting some glasses, which I probably need? Or do I need to totally rethink everything? Do I have to go to the heart of my being, my personality?

Jeff McKay (01:39.034)
Ha ha ha.

Jason Mlicki (02:02.09)
everything that I’m thinking.

Jeff McKay (02:05.861)
That’s a profound question. And the answer is it depends.

It to me, the reinvention would be keep the good stuff and consider getting rid of the stuff that’s not working.

Jason Mlicki (02:20.77)
okay. Well, I don’t have any of that. So that means I’m good to go, baby. So, okay. But actually I love your segue, by the way, because you said it depends, which is the classic, classic consultants answer to everything. Right. And we’re talking about this notion of Accenture. The working headline I’ve been, I’ve seen frequently is Accenture rebrand rebranding consulting as reinvention services. That’s essentially one of the working headlines I’ve seen.

tossed around a lot. I don’t know if that’s actually an accurate explanation of what’s going on, but that’s the way I think some news media has picked it up. what I like to do is, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We want to talk about this new message. We’ll discuss exactly what it is from Accenture around reinvention and reinvention services. And we’re going to break down whether they did a good job, they did not do a good job.

whether this is something that’s really compelling and differentiated or it’s just smoke and mirrors. But where I want to start is what is it? Like what did Accenture actually do that’s got so much buzz and conversation going in, both in the news media, honestly, and in the consulting industry and on LinkedIn? And there’s a lot of dialogue about this. So can you help us lean into like what actually happened a little bit and what they’ve announced and what they’ve done?

Jeff McKay (03:47.193)
It’s so funny.

What they did is they changed the conversation and they did it in a way that resonated at least with you and me for sure. When I saw that press release that they are rebranding consulting services, reinvention, it’s just, I just had to laugh. mean, I just had a belly laugh and a chuckle like, come on. Really? But.

Jason Mlicki (04:17.422)
That was my reaction.

Jeff McKay (04:20.451)
Right. And, and that’s because I’m a brand cynic. I read the article. I’m like, okay, this is, this is quintessential big four type of, you know, brand type of work. And then I started to reflect on it and think about the word reinvention. It’s a pretty common word. I wrote a white paper.

a decade ago on when it’s time to reinvent the firm, which actually had a similar theme to Accenture’s Science AI. So reinvention is a word in the vernacular. People get what it means. It means you got to rethink and

rebuild what you’ve been doing. And in that respect, because it’s a common word, I’m like, okay, well, let’s, let’s see what they mean about that. At least I’ll be invited in the conversation because I respect Accenture as a brand, right? There are not dumb people at Accenture.

Jason Mlicki (05:27.522)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (05:35.81)
Yeah. Well, I want to take that a step further. I want to, I respect them as a firm. So it’s not just, they do a great job in building their brand as an organization and representing it into the world and the things they do, but they do an even better job of delivering on the work. Of course, the two things are tied, but like, it’s like, they’re just that to me, they’re the gold standard in a lot of ways. and, all, and a lot of parts of technology services. So, whenever they do something you do kind of.

turn your head and go, okay, what are they doing here? What’s going on? So, keep going.

Jeff McKay (06:09.625)
Yeah. Well, and I shared this post on, on LinkedIn and I think my, my comment was something to the effect. So it begins and it’s, it was almost like, okay, here’s our demarcation point in the consulting world of the quote unquote AI epic of consulting. Yeah. With, with, know that AI is

Jason Mlicki (06:32.918)
Yeah, AI era.

Jeff McKay (06:38.799)
been building for some time. Some people might say chat GPT was the demarcation, but I’m talking about in the consulting world. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (06:46.791)
It’s like the opening salvo, like, yeah.

All right, so then what really is this thing then? Let’s break down, well, the announcement that I think really got everyone’s attention was sort of that there’s a reorganization of sorts. You want to talk about that for a second and then we’ll lean into what reinvention really is.

Jeff McKay (07:13.583)
Yeah, I printed out the report and I just started highlighting and writing notes and everything on this thing. But I think, you know, one of the headlines in this report that I really liked was reinvention as the strategy for success. And the fundamental concept to me

And I don’t think this is far reaching, but it’s the steak or the fulcrum that they use for everything else. And that is AI is not a tool. It’s a fundamental restructuring of the intelligence of the organization, human intelligence and artificial intelligence. And what does it take to bring that machine?

and human together in a transformational way and totally rethink work. That’s what I took away from the report.

You?

Jason Mlicki (08:27.072)
Yeah, I think that’s a good, a good summary. You know, it’s this idea that this isn’t just another technology, the way that, you know, the cloud was a technology or CRM was a technology or ERP was a technology. This is something that is going to change the way we work. It’s already changing the way we work and the organizations that are leading the organizations that are growing the fastest.

and generating faster profit growth, revenue and profit growth, according to their research and their client work are these, this group of organizations that they’re, they’re labeling reinventers and reinventers are, organizations that approach, AI in a certain way that are leveraging AI in a certain way. And they’re doing certain things that set them up for success.

hence the label reinventers and the label reinvention. So I think at its heart, is this deep multi-year longitudinal type of in-depth research underpinning all of this that’s looking at the behaviors of certain organization as it relates to AI. I’ll say digital transformation, because a lot of people are also saying this is of just

a reframe of digital transformation, saying digital transformation was this, but now it’s really reinvention. It’s deeper than that. Not just transforming the digital enterprise, you’re reinventing the way you operate, as you said.

I, you know, what I found, what’s interesting about this to me is what, got all the headlines, think was a reorg, you know? So they basically, there’s a press release. This is an article from consulting magazine where they basically announced that they’re taking five service lines and rolling them together into a single integrated business units. They’re taking their strategy practice, their consulting practice, their song business, which is horribly named.

Jason Mlicki (10:38.912)
technology practice and their operations practice. Of course, song was an acquisition, so that’s why. And then rolling it all together in this reinvention services thing. So it’s like, I think there’s this point of view, the white paper that you found that’s really good. And then there’s this organizational change that occurred that sort of put, again, your point, draws the line in the sand. It’s not just a white paper. We’re building the org around this.

I saw it as sort of like almost like the unified commercial engine we’ve talked a lot about. The idea that they’re reinventing the way they organize and operate around this point of view that they’ve developed. And that’s pretty compelling. When they’re saying this is a big deal, it’s a big enough deal that we think we need to reorg, we need to reinvent the firm in a way. They’re reinventing themselves the same way they’re saying they’re trying to reinvent their clients or help their clients reinvent themselves, I should say.

And that’s kind of what I think grabbed the attention because the white paper you rep, you talked about, it was dropped a year ago. wasn’t like that was new information that’s been out there for a while. but it didn’t grab the attention of so many people. don’t think I’m not aware of it. It So, but this did. So, do you want to dig into the white paper more? think, I think it’s helpful to kind of talk about kind of like what reinvention is. And then that helps us get to,

Hey, is this, is this real? this, is this successful? Is this a good, you know, or is this smoke and mirrors? But there’s been people picking it apart, right? On both sides, both sides, kind of like, kind of like the, we’re going to attack this the way we did the Twitter X thing, right? Same thing.

Jeff McKay (12:19.508)
and Mackenzie. Nobody goes unscathed. Rattle and tattle.

Jason Mlicki (12:21.154)
Yes. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think the white paper puts forth sort of five pillars of reinvention, right? And I think we should go into those. You know, I don’t want to go into detail of the research itself necessarily. I do want to point out that there is leaders laggards research underlying this that is in depth.

that does identify a cluster of organizations that are growing faster and both revenue and profit faster than their peers, and that that group has been identified as reinventers. And then there’s five pillars to reinvention that they describe. I’m not gonna dig into the details of the research, but do you wanna walk us through the five pillars just to give people a sense of what they’re talking about as it relates to reinvention?

Jeff McKay (13:19.291)
Sure, to the degree that I can.

Jeff McKay (13:30.075)
And because this is a marketing growth podcast, we won’t go into too much depth on these. think the important thing to take away for people is that there is a methodology undergirding this point of view and that methodology links to specific solutions for the firm.

So when I go through these five, they will be generic enough that people may shake their heads and say that’s not all that differentiated. But to a degree, that’s the power of these things as well. So let’s go through them. The first one is replatform the digital core. So it’s saying move away from this departmental

approach to digital transformation. Rethink that digital core that happened with cloud that puts you in a place to access data and accumulate data and rethink how are you going to leverage it as knowledge within your firm. So that’s number one.

Number two, transform how work gets done. In other words, reinvent, think differently about how this gets done. And it’s not just, have agents do it, but how can we augment the performance of humans? Three, reimagine the customer and employee experience. To me, this is…

You know, apple pie, you know, apple pie and what I mean, how can you, how can you take your eye off the customer and employee experience? But what does that look like in an AI world for aligned leadership culture and talent? I’ve written quite a bit about this, the thinker seller doer and what this looks like in an AI.

Jason Mlicki (15:33.474)
I don’t know what the third is.

Jeff McKay (15:55.289)
world, but the example that you gave of Accenture reorganizing its five practices into one, I think illustrates what they’re talking about, is how do you get everyone alive, not just organizationally, structurally, but intellectually, right? Spiritually, if you will, right? To believe in what we’re doing.

Jason Mlicki (16:17.07)
Yeah.

Jeff McKay (16:24.195)
And then five, orchestrate change from the top. And to me, that’s just, again, apple pie. Leadership has got to lead this transformational process.

Jason Mlicki (16:39.47)
You ever wondered why why why large corporations have any employees at all? Because every single thing that has to be done seems to be require senior leadership no matter what it is every single piece of thought leadership always says you got to get the senior leadership involved so I guess the senior leaders should just do everything and there shouldn’t be anybody else because that apparently no matter what it is whether it’s you know employee engagement customer success it’s always comes down to you know get the get the

okay. Yeah. So, and those essentially are the five pillars of reinvention. So the idea is that these reinventers that they’ve labeled are organizations that have embraced these five better than their peers. And as a result, they’re further along on the kind of success journey of, of this entry into the AI era and are growing their organizations faster, as a result.

And so I think what we should do is, I mean, it’s a very in-depth white paper. Obviously there’s much more surface version messages of this. The white paper, this is worth, we’ll talk about this later, was published last year. They’ve re, with the reorganization, they’ve led this message on the homepage, on the website, and you can kind of access what they’re saying a lot easier there with some video and various content. To me in that regard,

reinvention reminds me a lot of high performance and high performance delivered all the stuff they did with Tiger Woods 20 years ago. That was a really compelling, probably some of the best kind of like pure brand work I’ve ever really seen in professional services in terms of really owning an idea and then embodying that idea better than anybody. So let’s talk about this in more depth. from a, piece of, as thought leadership is this,

Did they get it right? Is this good thought leadership? We’ll point to the white paper itself. It’s 53 pages. People can either read it or drop it into AI and let AI summarize it for them. But what’s your take? Is this great thought leadership? What did they get right? What did they get wrong? Let’s talk about that. Or where did they fall short?

Jeff McKay (18:47.675)
It

Jeff McKay (19:02.319)
Well, I agree with you. this is just the playbook for high performance delivered and hyper high performance delivered was exceptional. And it wasn’t exceptional just because tiger was involved. was exceptional because it came from the top down and the organization was aligned to deliver it from top to bottom. And that is the fundamental difference between.

outstanding intellectual capital and thought leadership that drives revenue and the brand of the firm is that the organization has to be aligned to bring that idea, that thought leadership to life. And I think they’re doing that with this, at least out of the gate, everything would seem

to be so. They put a stake in the ground. It was bold. They were ridiculed, right? But they didn’t care. And if you have a differentiated point of view or a view that’s going to stand out, you’re going to be ridiculed. There’s just just just just expect it. If you’re not ridiculed, you probably missed the target.

Two, they follow it up with structural change and they make that structural change visible. It’s well explained. I’m sure that restructuring has created excitement and consternation within the firm as people are like, whoa, okay, what does that mean for me? Where am I gonna be? Rejockeying within it.

Jason Mlicki (20:44.47)
Yeah. And you notice in the in the article in the press release about that, there is some leadership change. Like there was one person that’s leaving, says that so and so left, you know, to pursue other opportunities. So clearly there was some disagreement in the leadership ranks about what this looked like. And someone said, hey, I’m not on this bus. And that’s fine. That’s fine. So.

Jeff McKay (21:09.349)
Yeah. So I think in that regard, they’ve done very well.

Jason Mlicki (21:16.386)
Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. It’s well substantiated. the thing I will say is this, is that like a lot of times firms get one part right and not the other, meaning that they get a really splashy, compelling message that carries the homepage. And you’re like, wow, that’s a really neat thing, but there’s nothing behind it. You know, it’s a message and you go behind the message and there’s just nothing there. It’s sort of In this case.

They have this in-depth white paper that is very well done and it demonstrates like there is significant depth and research underpinning this concept and they do a pretty good job of showing, making their case. it’s, I always talk about Bob Bade and I, when we were running the Thought Leadership Conference for years, we’d always talk about the sizzle and the stake.

You know, and they have the, the, research is the steak. The sizzle is the window dressing that gets you excited about it and brings you into it. And the way they’ve presented and package reinvention definitely has sizzle. I mean, it’s, it’s. I don’t, haven’t been, been on their site much, but there was a while there where their website was awful to be honest. It was loud in your face. It was noisy. I didn’t want to go there. It was terrible. Um, and I was just really pleasantly surprised to see that they’ve really kind of.

reigned it back in again and they’ve got it back to where it was in the high performance delivered days where you hit it and you’re like, wow, this is impressive. and there’s definitely stake. Now I am going to criticize the stake a little bit because I do think there’s some pieces of the state that left me scratching my head. they’re super opaque about how they identify these reinventers. So like, can’t find anywhere in this, in their, in their research.

any real meaningful definition that says this is how we determine who the reinventers are. So it’s sort of like we’ve identified this group of high performers. We’re not going to tell you how we identified them or what we constituted as high performance in this category, but they’re really good. And here’s why. And we’re going to show you what makes them different. and so that left me a little skeptical and a little bit surprised that I couldn’t get that answer. And I would think if I’m a senior leader, I’d be asking that question now.

Jeff McKay (23:07.643)
Hmm.

Jason Mlicki (23:31.776)
It’s possible that if you’re a client and they’re bringing this to you that they’re more transparent, right? Because this is the public facing version of what’s out there. But that was one thing that really jumped out at me. The white paper itself was light on good examples. So when that was released last year, if this was dropped in my lap and someone said, this great thought leadership, those would have been my, I would have been.

On the whole, like, yeah, this is good, but I would have had those two, those two red flags that have been like, definition of what these reinventers isn’t great. And then examples are kind of sparse and they’re not named. Now with the, with the real argue that they’ve closed that loop. Like you hit that homepage and it takes you right into these video interviews between CEO Julie Sweet and really high quality clients talking about reinvention. And it’s like that does its job really, really well.

So they have really closed the loop since that time. But in a void, that white paper was a little light on quality examples. And then the only criticism I had to be brutally honest was one of their five pillars, the actual words they use is that it’s the drive continuous reinvention. So it’s sort of like they’re making

You think about digital transformation, transformation felt like something where you had a start point and an end point. You’re going to transform. You’re going to know when you’ve arrived somewhere. They’re making reinvention more like, continuous improvement, you know? and that just feels a little self-serving. Kind of it’s like, well, you need to reinvent all the time and we need to be here forever. Right? Like, so it’s like, it kind of just feels a little bit like, okay. So you’re going to be on retainer for the rest of time. Like, okay. It sounds great.

Jeff McKay (25:13.723)
Ha

Jason Mlicki (25:23.432)
and that’s the reason I was a little bit like skeptical of that element of the pillar, not saying that what they’re saying is wrong. think it’s a hundred percent probably true, but it just, it just came off as a little bit like, you know, in their best interests for you to be in continuous, in a continuous reinvention mode for the rest of time. So, those are only things that jumped out that criticized, but, but, but on the whole. They, yeah, I’m the optimist.

Jeff McKay (25:45.411)
You’re such a cynic.

You’re such a cynic. Well, do you remember when we had Mazin from West Monroe and we were talking about their positioning around being digital? To me, these two concepts are very similar. And it’s, you could, it depends.

Jason Mlicki (25:57.634)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Mlicki (26:02.979)
Yeah.

Jeff McKay (26:17.215)
One might argue that Accenture’s value is that they teach organizations how to reinvent and therefore they don’t need Accenture as much anymore. Or it could be yours, this is a constant thing and you’re gonna need Accenture and we’re the people that partner with you for nigh on to forever. It could be either way, but.

And you’ve said this before, and I think this is insightful. The reinventers were doing this stuff without Accenture. Accenture identified that it was happening.

Jason Mlicki (27:02.926)
Well, in this case, would say it was a little bit of both. You definitely took away from their research synopsis that they were both pulling from original primary research they had done and from their own client work in depth. Like they were over the course of about two and a half years at least, they were systematically documenting the performance of their clients through their client relationships. And that was part of it. One of the things I liked about this a lot was that it wasn’t just a

a survey or a research study that was done in a void, was sort of interconnected with their work. And that was really impressive because, you we talk a lot about this idea that thought leadership needs to, to your point, needs to be, um, manifested through solutions and capabilities and part of the organization. it’s another thing when the thought leadership is actually developed in that way as well. And that doesn’t happen very often. Yeah. You know, that’s my experience pretty rare. Um,

So that was impressive. So all right, let’s do this. Let’s give our takes here. What’s your takeaway on this? Impressed, this is great. Wow. Or, meh, this is smoke and mirrors. I don’t buy it. It’s just, know, put lipstick on digital transformation.

Jeff McKay (28:25.899)
Ha

Well, my takeaway early out of the gate is this is going to be a success for them. They’ve checked all the boxes, I think, that are relevant. They’re attacking a big relevant issue right now, AI and its impact on organizations. They’re bringing new insights to that.

because there’s so much noise around AI that nobody knows what to think. They’re saying, here’s our insight. Here’s how you channel this energy into a laser and it’s called reinvention. And I think that’s, I think that’s a solid way of articulating it. Three, it’s differentiated.

if you’re going to go to market and have a strong point of view, it has to be different from others. And as I said, you gotta be ridiculed. You know, people need to attack it. that’s how you know, you’re over the, the target fourth. And I think this is spot on every indication is this, research and this positioning is.

furthering the business strategy and the brand strategy of Accenture. I think it builds on brand equity that the firm already had, i.e. its core, while it’s skating to where the puck is going to be AI. And I think that’s positive. And then fifth, you’ve already mentioned it. You have to have…

Jason Mlicki (30:15.81)
Yeah.

Jeff McKay (30:27.853)
a methodology that links to the solutions that drive revenue. And my sense is that that linear value chain is in place right now around reinvention or will be there shortly. There’s going to be some growing pains for this, as we already talked about.

Jason Mlicki (30:51.542)
Yeah, no, you’re right. in terms of a, I’m in the same camp, you know, I do think that this is going to be very successful for them. I think it’s going to look a lot like high performance delivered in terms of something that has a significant lasting impact both for the firm and quite frankly affects the marketplace and the perception of them.

You know, one of the things I like about it as a marketer is in, is in simplicity. And you mentioned this in the blog post you wrote about it is just what high performance did is it said it connected Accenture to high performers. people that believe that they were high performers, both as individuals and as corporations said, well, I to work with Accenture. That’s who the high performers work with. And you mentioned the same thing. They’re labeling these folks as reinventers.

So the people that say, I want to be a re-inventor. I want to be a leader like this. They work with Accenture. there’s a real simple brand association that they’re creating at the very kind of peak of all this that’s exceptionally well executed both times. And like you said, baking that into the organization, they do it well. mean, they had a high performance Institute, which was basically their thought leadership Institute back in the day. Again, just showing the connections between what they’re doing.

in the marketplace. So it’s not just a brand message. It’s not smoke and mirrors with them is what I’ve seen over the years. So.

Jeff McKay (32:23.547)
Yeah, I think that’s a great point because that was one of the things that jumped out at me when you talk about how do you substantiate this research beyond the data points. One was they cited 700 client engagements, which was a high number for me. That surprised me. And I still question how many of those are truly AI.

But 700 is quite a bit, but they have, they’ve developed and maybe these supplanted the high performance Institute, but now they have these network of generative AI studios. They didn’t go into depth with those, but I thought that was really industry interesting. They’ve already developed 19 industry diagnostics around this stuff, which is very akin to the high performance stuff.

But the high performance stuff was departmental. Remember, how to develop a high performance marketing organization, high performance sales organization. So I like the industry perspective. And they also have a proprietary tool. They called it the AI Navigator that allows them to explore clients to explore use cases. So to me, that’s a pretty intelligent product ladder.

kind of wade into the shallow end of the pool, but get up to speed quickly. And that’s going to lead directly to revenue. And I think that was pretty positive. And it came through, I think, in a straightforward, but not overbearing way in the report.

Jason Mlicki (34:11.182)
Yeah, one of the things that jumped out to me too was, I I mentioned this earlier, the report dropped in 2024. And then this big announcement occurs, you know, probably as much as 12 months later. And you can see the progression between the report and what they have really on the homepage at the highest level of the messaging arc. And

What that tells me, what I like about that, what that tells me is that they use the white paper, they use the research and the thought leadership as a test and learn type thing. It’s like, we’re going to put this in the marketplace and see how it performs. So by the time that they dropped this thing in this announcement on the website and everything, they had already determined that this is going to work very well because they had been testing this message in different ways and different layers for easily 12 months, very publicly.

And so, that’s a really smart way to go about this. know, Bob and I have years for years have talked about, like, if you’re thinking about launching a new capability or new offering, one way to start is just to basically develop a really strong white paper point of view on it and see how it does, you know, just see how the market reacts. And it gives you a sense of like, well, is anybody, you know, believe in this? Is this something that’s going to get traction or not? And I, and you could get the sense that that’s clearly what they’ve done here. and so that.

That kind of systemic approach is going to work well for them. But that’s me surmising outside looking at, I’m not sure. Okay. What’s, I already talked about what I thought they got wrong. I think where they really got wrong was they fell short on examples and there was just a lot of hand waving in the research that I think it’s glossed over.

Jeff McKay (35:41.563)
Let’s talk about what they got wrong. Let’s talk about what they got wrong.

Jason Mlicki (35:58.669)
So.

Jeff McKay (35:59.109)
See, I disagree with you on that front. I thought they substantiated who the reinventers are and what their characteristics are. They talked about them from basic performance metrics of revenue and profitability, but they also talked about the actual tactical things that they were doing in terms of investment levels and speed of change and.

some of the things around leadership that I thought were good. Could there have been more? Yes. I think they could have definitely outlined those characteristics. But that to me is keeping a little in reserve so that you can go out and share that stuff in your sales efforts. And that’s probably what they’ve done, as you’ve said.

Jason Mlicki (36:50.932)
Yeah, I mean, I would challenge you to go back and reread it and see if you can really give a clear answer as to how they identified those and it’s not clear. And then they make a lot of comparisons with two clusters, one that they call Transformers and the other that they call, what did they call the other group? was Optimizer.

Jeff McKay (37:07.205)
Transformers?

Jeff McKay (37:11.841)
Optimizers? Was it optimizers?

Jason Mlicki (37:14.584)
That is some terrible labeling because it’s really hard to look at that and be like, man, I’d really be a reinventor than a transformer. I don’t know, Optimus Prime is a pretty bad at, you know, guy. So I don’t know. I thought that was terrible. And then they were super willy nilly about when they made those comparisons and why. Sometimes they’re comparing to transformers. Sometimes they’re comparing to optimizers. There’s no rationale as to why they’re doing that.

It just felt like they were cherry picking the comparisons they wanted to make to get the data to tell the story they wanted to tell.

Jeff McKay (37:47.395)
And that surprises you.

Jason Mlicki (37:50.03)
Well, no, but you said I have to give criticisms here. What do mean to do? Just, you know, just feel like it’s all beautiful. Accenture is the best. La la la la la. Like, am I going to do that? Let’s see, you know.

Jeff McKay (37:51.78)
So.

Jeff McKay (38:01.605)
Well, here’s, here’s the thing I thought was, was funny. If, if you’re going to have a hero archetype, if you will, having it be in the top 10 % would be the characteristics you were looked, would look for. And the reinventer represented 9 % of the firms in the sample. And then.

Jason Mlicki (38:25.844)
the sample, yeah.

Jeff McKay (38:30.691)
well, what was the, the optimizers represented 10%, which means the transformers rep, represented 81%. And I’m like, really? Come on. That’s, that is such a huge bell curve. And I felt like they, they didn’t want to alienate anybody.

So they said, oh, these people, could be there, which is brilliant, right? Because you take all that potential market and you say, yeah, you could stay here, but if you really want to be up in the reinventers, come see us. So in that part, it’s brilliant. But 81 % I thought was kind of outrageous.

Jason Mlicki (39:24.566)
Yeah, that didn’t bother me only because it’s such a classic thought leadership methodology, right? We do it all the time. You you find the leaders, find the laggards and everybody else is in the middle. And the leaders and laggards are always like 10 or 15%. And then that’s kind of the way it rolls.

what you said is perfectly valid. mean, I’m not saying, mean, like you’re a hundred percent accurate, but it is such a classic thought leadership researcher approach that, know, in that sense, it didn’t surprise me in the least in the real world. You’re right. It’s probably more clustered than that. You know, this is super random, but there was a really nice piece that the Wall Street Journal did about a year ago that, that said that was talking about our political landscape. And they were saying that, you know,

problem with America is everybody thinks there’s just two factions, red and blue. And they’re actually like, it’s really not. And they actually clustered it into five and they explained each of the five and it was really well done piece. But of course it gets no traction. Nobody remembers it. Can I name any one of the five? No, because it’s too complicated. Right? So it’s like, almost like you got to make it simpler for it to get an attraction and memorability. And that’s clearly what they’re doing there. so.

Jeff McKay (40:34.051)
Yeah. The rule of three, which brings me to another criticism. Criticism may not be fair. To me, this whole report could have been structured around people, process and technology, which has been the extenser mantra for Nion to forever people process. Technology. And, and I felt.

Jason Mlicki (40:52.488)
god.

That’s been everybody’s mantra forever.

Jeff McKay (41:04.507)
I just felt like, that’s old news. But then as I thought about it, I’m thinking you have to build on the brand equity that you’ve established. You need to protect your core while you’re expanding the performance envelope. And it would be disingenuous, I think, to throw the baby out with the bath water.

because that people process and technology has been successful, you have to bridge. And I think they did that pretty well. They didn’t, I don’t even know if they use the terms people process and technology in the piece.

Jason Mlicki (41:48.088)
I didn’t see it in there that way. We’re slowly not loud enough to… Yeah.

Jeff McKay (41:50.723)
Yeah, I intuited that as I read it. You know, it was the same thing. And you already touched on this is leaders need to lead. No kidding. Nothing’s going to happen in the organization unless the leaders lead. That’s not a big insight, right? And you could have said the same thing with digital transformation. Yeah, that’s why you need a

executive to be chief digital officer or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. so I think in that respect, a little weak.

Jason Mlicki (42:28.568)
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we’re going to end on a final. have a final question for you. So so after all of this, now that we understand what reinvention is and what reinventers are, if I’m going to reinvent myself, what are we talking about here? You know, is this a wholesale, you know, down to the down to the core of who I am or is it just a window dressing?

Jeff McKay (42:59.385)
I, my answer remains the same. Take the best of who you are and discard the other parts.

Jason Mlicki (43:01.678)
You

good, like I said before, I guess I’m good to go then. I have to do any reinvention at all. Just keep on rolling, huh?

Jeff McKay (43:13.251)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, if there three takeaways for people, I think they would be this from from the lessons of Accenture. You know, one. You have to make a bold claim, you have to have a point of view, you have to break through the noise, say something, say something bold because you’re brilliant.

Jason Mlicki (43:25.282)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff McKay (43:42.743)
or because people aren’t hearing it, but they need to. Two, when you bring that point of view, have to undergird it with results, with data, with proof points. Otherwise, it’s just an opinion. And number three,

And Accenture did this well. You have to speak to your ideal client. You have to build some pot of code. You know, I want to be the re-inventor. You’re speaking to who I am and my worldview about myself. That’s who I want to be. You have to connect on that emotional level with this stuff. And if you do those, those three things, make a bold statement, substantiate it.

and tell the story within the context of who your ideal client sees themselves to be. You can’t help but be successful. Then you have to work your ass off getting it into the market. Cause you don’t have the Accenture machine behind you.

Jason Mlicki (44:46.062)
Well, yeah. Well, and getting into the organization, right? You you left that out there. But yeah, mean, driving it into the organization is sort of job number one at that point. And that’s not easy. That is not an easy task, even in a small organization, let alone an organization the scale of Accenture. So all right, well, good discussion. And I enjoyed it. So thanks.

Jeff McKay (45:14.459)
See you buddy.