Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations.
Virtual keynote speaker James Taylor helps Accenture thrive in volatile times.
Accenture plc is a multinational professional services company. A Fortune Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $43.2 billion in 2019 and had 492,000 employees, serving clients in more than 120 countries. Accenture organises a speaker series to inspire and train their next generation leaders. Attendees of this series are all at either Managing Director or Vice President level.
The purpose of the programme is to fine-tune their leadership and soft-skills (e.g. creativity, design thinking, storytelling). Accenture invited James Taylor to give a speech and workshop as part of this series. The topic was on key leadership traits during times of crisis’ and focused on how to survive and thrive in volatile times. The objective of James’ session was to motivate the executives, increase their creative thinking skills and getting them to understand the big picture. During the pre-event call with James the Accenture team shared that in previous sessions the attendees have liked practical tips, industry examples and high engagement.
Based on this knowledge James recommended breaking the 2hr session into 20-30min segments with multiple points in which to run polling, breakout sessions and short-burst exercises. Accenture’s new CEO is known for valuing ‘curiosity’ highly in her people. Therefore James based his keynote around ways to spark our curiosity and generate powerful questions to help us rethink challenges and innovate.
In addition to the keynote part of the presentation James also added workshop style sections where he shared a creative thinking tool and then teams went into breakout sessions to apply these to challenges they or their clients faced. As part of James’ preparation for the keynote he took part in a number of pre-event calls and tech checks with the learning and development team from Accenture. In addition to this James undertook detailed research on the challenges and opportunities Accenture MD’s and VP’s were facing in the current economic climate. The final successful virtual presentation blended traditional keynote style with a more interactive training workshop format.
"Thank you for sharing valuable insights on key attributes/traits of a leader during times of crisis’ and how they can survive and thrive in such volatile times. The session was received extremely well and I am looking to another opportunity to invite you for your valuable interaction with our team. A BIG THANK YOU”
– Manoj Munjal, Managing Director, Talent and Organization Practice Lead, Capability Network, India at Accenture Consulting
Client:
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations.
Audience:
Managing Directors and Vice Presidents
Country:
Virtual
Challenge:
How to survive and thrive in a volatile market.
James Taylor’s Solution:
- 2 hour virtual keynote + training workshop
James Taylor’s Solution:
- James Taylor provided an interactive virtual presentation which blended the traditional keynote style with an interactive training workshop.
- James motivated Accenture’s MD’s and VP’s by sharing with them actionable insights around the ideas of curiosity, resilience, adaptability, collaboration, creativity, and caring.
- His virtual keynote combined an inspiring and highly-visual motivational presentation style with live polling, breakout sessions and Q&A’s which engaged the attendees throughout.