Why I call the Accenture Salesforce ‘Ohana’ home
August 26, 2019
After more than 15 years leading global Salesforce implementations, Astrid has landed at Accenture as a Managing Director. She’s enjoying creating a sense of community – called ‘Ohana’ in Salesforce terms - that binds the practice together and makes it successful.
When Accenture bought Cloud Sherpas in 2016, I moved from a boutique consultancy to a Fortune Global 500 company with nearly half a million employees. The acquisition came at a perfect time for me, creating new opportunities to expand the complexity and breadth of my role.
It also raised my profile in the Salesforce community. In 2018, I was honoured to receive the Salesforce Global Partner Innovation Award for Industry Solutions in Financial Services – presented in San Francisco at the Salesforce global conference. It was a fantastic recognition of my Accenture team’s innovative use of the Salesforce platform.
Creating our own Ohana
Ultimately, my role as a leader is to nurture a strong sense of community and connectedness – our own Accenture ‘Ohana’ – throughout our 200-strong Salesforce practice across Australia and New Zealand.
Ohana binds us together and makes us responsible for each other. At a practical level, that means we collaborate, take care of one another – personally and professionally – and (importantly) have fun together.
The type of people I work with at Accenture are team players who can think on their feet. They’re a team who are truly excited about the Salesforce platform, brilliant problem solvers and know how to build great client relationships.
Supporting all our trailblazers
At Accenture, professional support comes in all shapes and sizes, including continual, on-the-job coaching and a mentoring program for emerging leaders. We use collaboration tools that let people tap into the experience of the entire community if they get stuck. We’re great at rallying round to solve problems together.
Once a fortnight, you’ll find us in a huddle for a Friday afternoon knowledge sharing session. People bring learnings from their current projects and Salesforce experts often drop in to share their insights too.
Perhaps one of the most important elements of professional support is our focus on encouraging people to play to their strengths and supporting them to make time for themselves outside of work.
As a community, we all respect each other’s priorities
We know that each person is an important piece that makes the whole of our practice work. So we let people choose how they structure their work.
For me, it’s exercise. I train three mornings a week, so everyone knows I start work late on those days. Parents in the team schedule their work around day care pickups. We also have a competitive swimmer who’s able to prioritise their training and go to meets in work hours. Others opt for a compressed week, working longer hours over four days and still have a full-time salary.
I strongly believe, when someone is doing work they love and they're really good at it – that's when you get the best out of people. If people don't enjoy their work, it's bad for everyone. So I'm personally motivated by both my team members' success – and their happiness.
Interested in joining our Salesforce team? Find out where you could fit.
