 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. Welcome back to ServiceNow Knowledge 18. This is theCUBE's live coverage. We are the leader in live technology coverage. We extract the signal from the noise. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. Got a great panel right now. We have Andrew Wilson, who is the CIO of Accenture, and Ellen Shook, who is the chief leadership and human resources officer at Accenture. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Hello, great to be back. So, good to see you again. Before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about people-driven change, but Accenture, not but, and Accenture is a huge organization, 400,000 plus individuals working around the world. How do you drive change in such a large and dispersed organization? Well, I think the most important thing is that change isn't human-driven, but humans need to be at the center of all change. And I think that's why Andrew and I show up in a lot of places together, because we do use technology to elevate the human experience at Accenture. And the more digital an organization becomes, the more important human connection is, and that's what we do, is create truly compelling experiences for our people. Because we don't have separate agendas at Accenture. The relationship that Ellen and I have, I think is one of the most important in our enterprise. We're driving digital transformation for our clients and within our own business. And it's equal parts, technology, talent, and change. And so you have to bring those things together. And so what we're doing at Knowledge is talking a lot about the outcomes that we drive. We're in an experience-rich culture. Our people, our employees, our citizens, our customers, they demand an experience which is very different to how the old IT post you had to deliver. So if we get the partnership right, we create a culture and an environment that they'll have fun in and enjoy and not just have to turn up at work for. So Ellen, what's the outcome that you're trying to achieve? Let's work backwards from there when you think about your human experience. Well, really what we're trying to do is create an environment where our people can be successful both professionally and personally. Because we really require huge diversity at Accenture because in order to bring innovative solutions to our clients, we truly need very broad diversity. And in order to discover and inspire diverse base of talent, we need to create world-class experiences that really unlock their full potential. And we're all human beings after all. We're human beings whether or not we're delivering services or whether we're consuming. So under Ellen's leadership, we talk about truly human. And I think that's really important because we must reflect and understand the community we serve. So if we don't have the diversity, if we don't have the gender mix, if we're not looking like the humans who we need to look after, then there's going to be a barrier. And I think that's at the heart of a lot of modern transformation. Hang on, I heard you say today you have a lot of non-human workers. I do, I do. So they're not all humans. Who are they? Are they robots? The future of work and the future workforce is a combination of human and machine because you need both. And you need both working in a way that complements each other. So we're often asked, does the machine replace the human? No, it doesn't. It changes the content of the work and frees the human to do more interesting work. And we need both in a modern agenda. And quite simply, we do have a very strong belief that technology elevates humans and does not eliminate humans. Yeah, and I'm an optimist too. But when I go to the airport, I see kiosks, more kiosks than humans. When I drive down the highway out of Heathrow, I see all the billboards and they're neon now or electronic. So clearly machines have always replaced humans in jobs and clearly as humans we've always overcome. So I'm an optimist too, but it seems different this time around because it's cognitive functions and it seems like a whole new set of skills. You guys are experts at this. What are your thoughts? I think we are building a set of skills in the new that's absolutely essential for the modern enterprise. So when you drive down the road from Heathrow, you don't see the data scientists. You don't see the design thinkers. You don't see the humans that are listening to and talking with their customers and surfacing insights. We think about applying intelligence in the enterprise. Now, the humans wouldn't have time to do that if they had to deal with all the old transactions. Free them up from that and then they can do all of this interesting work and that's the future of work. One of the things you were talking about on the main stage, Andrew, was about the changing role of the CIO and you said, I actually think of myself as a chief experience officer. Can you riff on that a little bit? Well, I think Ellen and I both care about the experience of all of our employees, all of our humans, all of our citizens and all of our customers and clients as well. So the days of operating in a data center of building systems are long gone. Accenture's now 90% in the cloud and I have to think about services which are really flexible agile that deliver outcomes. So if my customers are not enjoying the experience and having fun and feeling at home, they're going to walk away. So I care much more and that's why I think I lead with experience as the chief experience officer. So I love the- One, just to bring that down to an example, we hire about 100,000 people a year and if you think of kind of the old paradigm when someone starts at your company, they have to get assigned a desk, a computer, a security badge, you know, get on to payroll and all of that historically has been done very siloed function by function. What Andrew and I are trying to create is an exciting experience when you show up for work on the first day where all of that is frictionless. All of that process goes to the backstage and how you feel about showing up as a new employee on your first day is just a glorious experience. So we always talk about people process and technology as a CIO, you understand well, the technology will continue to progress. It's the people in process that are hard part but can you actually achieve that vision without a technology platform that is flexible that enables that type of work environment? The technology problem is really what is the enabler of the experiences we're trying to create but the most important thing that the technology does for us is enables us to create truly world-class human experiences. Before the cameras are rolling, you were talking about how you have five generations of workers at Accenture. How do you cater to them? I mean, as you said, you want coming to work every day whether it's your first day or your, you know, you've been there for 20 years to be a glorious experience. How do you make sure you are taking this empathetic people-centered approach for each of these different kinds of workers? Yeah, I call it with my team sweating the small stuff and that's not worrying about bureaucracy and process, that's worrying about the individual. So we do have five generations working side by side, both serving our clients and serving our business and the most important thing is truly understanding what's most important to the human, not what generation they're coming from or were born during. Those five generations have a lot in common. Before they come to work, they've typically watched the news, they may have read the Wall Street Journal, they may have consumed content on YouTube, they may have looked at Twitter, they may have subscribed to Netflix, they may have asked Alexa or Cortana for advice and guidance. When they get to work, what changes? It has to feel and be exactly like that. And Ellen and I will be creating the services that do that so that it feels welcoming and sticky and so they'll want to stay, which is really important in the modern enterprise when there's so much opportunity out there for the human. And to go back to the question you were asking and talking about driving out of Heathrow and not seeing humans, I think the thing that CEOs really need to understand is that employees are excited about the opportunity that technology is going to bring to their job. In fact, we did a piece of research that we launched earlier this year that says over 80% of people are excited about how technology is going to improve their work because of the very reason. They Google things at home, they use Amazon or whatever to go buy their things that they need for themselves. And so they see the opportunity and it's companies and organizations' roles to tap into that excitement and really change the future of work. Well, here's a really good example of that. So there is nothing more boring than security training. We're told. So inside Accenture, why don't you subscribe to a TV show that looks like 24, the TV show 24, that's episodic, we drop a season that has actors portraying the implications of if you don't get your security right as a human and as an individual. It gets great ratings, great viewing figures. So it's ratings and viewing figures that tell us we're communicating with our employees. That's what being in the news is about. And that's really innovative. I was going to ask you about training and education because the example of Heathrow, you don't see the data scientist. The person who's putting up paper and glue doesn't have the skill sets of that data scientist. So I know Accenture big on training, education, you guys invest a lot of there. My question is, as you span five generations, is the training regimen sort of, how do you tailor it to those different needs? Well, what we're finding frankly is that all of our people really want to stay relevant to their clients and to their people. And so what we did was we worked together to democratize our learning platform. So you no longer have to be tapped on the shoulder and invited to take training. We've enabled our training platform to be available real time and on demand. And when you create a culture in which people are hungry to learn, you see some amazing things happen. And we can see on our dashboard that Andrew's team has built all of the trending topics on any given day, in any day of the week that our people are doing through self-learning. And that's shared and open. Absolutely. So there's a little bit of game theory going on here. Because transparency builds trust, absolutely. Learn what you want, where you want, when you want it, why you want it, and at the rate you want it because everybody has different sets of needs. But they'll stay relevant, they'll stay liquid, and they'll be able to keep up with modern technology because we're a technology business in our case, that's what training is about. And they'll be more effective and they'll have fun and they'll have job security and none of that is threatened by other aspects of technology. But one point to add to that because I think Andrew's brilliance doesn't always fully come through is that everything that he's built for our people has a social component to it. So for example, on the learning platform, I can recommend different learning experiences that I've gone through to my colleagues, to my peers. And when you see the interaction among the people and how you can create real change, but just each other without driving change top down, that social experience really changes the whole dynamic in an organization. I think one of the things that Ellen and I have had a chance to leave our mark on is that we have both democratized training and we've socialized training as well both are really important. You talked about, oh sorry, go ahead please. You said you hire 100,000 people a year and at a time where the skill set is really changing because so many of the repetitive automated tasks are being automated. And so really the skill sets that we need are more empathetic, more creative. How are you finding those people particularly at a time where we really are in a war for talent? We talk about discovering new sources of talent rather than attracting talent to us. So we've really tried to go digital where the people are. So that's where people are, that's where we go look for them. But the most important thing is that we are investing in new skilling our people. So we're not just hiring people in with new skills, we're giving all of the 442,000 humans at Accenture the opportunity to continue to keep themselves relevant. So rather than coders and testers, we now have data scientists and I do think we have new talent sources inside and outside the company. So I'm delighted to say that 54% of my team in China happened to be leaders and there's a really good solid data science gene in them which is helping us with our analytics and surfacing insights in a way that my organization didn't use to do. So we've tapped into new talent. Many of them we already had. It's just how you free them to do the job that they are very, very capable of doing. Well, Andrew, Ellen, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to have you here. Thanks for having us. Thanks you guys. Great to see you guys. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. We will have more from ServiceNow Knowledge 18 just after this.