Pamela Craig – Chief Financial Officer, Accenture

Accenture’s CFO has mentored dozens of women over the years. Now, their insight is helping her fight the recession.

By Taylor Mallory

We recently asked Pamela Craig, chief financial officer for Accenture, her best advice for surviving the recession. “Stay close to the client,” she says. “This business world is changing very fast. The slope of the line is very different right now. Industries are shrinking. Pay attention to how clients’ needs are evolving, rather than just assuming. You learn that through people, not just sticking to the computer and plowing through work.”

So where does she get her information? At least some of it comes from her protégés, women she’s been guiding for years. Mentoring has always been, in part, about knowledge transfer, seasoned professionals passing down company know-how to wet-behind-the-ears employees. But mentoring, says Craig, is two-sided, and there’s knowledge to be transferred upward from younger women with different perspectives as well. “It can get lonely at the top, but the women I mentor are closer to the customer – and work with them in different capacities. They have insights about the customers’ changing needs that those of us in senior roles don’t have much opportunity to experience first-hand.”

But that’s just an added bonus. Mentoring, for Craig, is first and foremost about helping other women achieve their dreams – and helping more women attain senior ranks.

Here, she shares mentoring success secrets – and how she became a C-level exec at Accenture, a $23.39 billion firm with approximately 177,000 employees and operations in 52 countries.

PINK: What are you best tips for mentoring
Pamela Craig: Learn to listen. It’s so important. Get a feel for the person, what makes them tick, what they’re concerned about and what they need help on. Once you get that rapport going and build trust, it just flows. The best way to establish that is to listen and ask questions so they know you’re interested in them.

PINK: How have you created relationships with mentors or protégés?
P.C.: You have to seek them out – and be choosy. I’ve been through formal programs, met some through informal channels and have even had people cold call me. There are a few women in Accenture I’ve mentored for a number of years, none in my direct reporting line. I have been mentoring a woman named Nellie Borrero for a number of years. When I met her in the New York Office, she was very involved in our diversity recruiting program and mentored a lot of people herself. I thought, “Here’s a person who needs to succeed,” and I thought I could help advance her career. I believed she could grow into an even more amazing diversity leader. She had an opportunity to structure some of her ideas into initiatives, and I talked to her about them. It helped her get support in some of the areas where she needed to develop. Now she’s a senior executive who leads our global Inclusion & Diversity program.

PINK: How do you feel about company-organized mentorship programs?
P.C.: It’s not always necessary to have procedures in place for women to mentor one another. But then there have been times I felt we needed to proactively set something up. Ten years ago, I was living in Japan. Our company did not have women in senior roles. I knew it would be long-term game. We established a mentoring program with some formal guidelines, connected people and got some senior women established. Then those women mentored others, who, in turn, mentored others. It wasn’t a natural act. They hadn’t done it before. Since then, participation in the program has grown significantly. Sometimes you need formality to get things started. If you’re checking progress (to see if people are getting opportunities), people will be interested in making sure they’re marking progress. I was back there checking in recently.

PINK: What’s your professional success secret?
P.C.: I was open to the roles before me. I collected experiences and had some good opportunities. I took on stretch roles and made some lateral moves when my husband needed to relocate, and the company accommodated me twice. I was open to all those roles, even if they didn’t seem great at first. Then I had the opportunity to listen, get into it and make it better. You can always develop a role beyond what it originally was. Even if it’s something you don’t think you can do, once you get in, you’ll realize you can. One key is being proactive about not getting pigeon-holed. If you’re good at what you do, people will want to keep you in that role. To avoid being pigeon-holed, make sure you’re building a successor – so you can move on when it’s time.

PINK: How did you rise so high in this organization?
P.C.: In my 30-year career, I’ve only spent five years in finance. I never expected to become CFO – not until the opportunity arose. My opportunity came the month we went public in July 2001, when our then-CEO asked me to move out of my consulting/leadership role and apply those skills to Accenture. I had some of the finance and performance management skills from working with clients. It was a tall order. It was large scale. It was global. It was a lot to do.  So it was hard, but it was a good decision. I really learned how our company works, preparing me to become the CFO.

PINK: How do you balance life and work?
P.C.: I have two children in college and a husband. My family is my No. 1 priority me. I think that this whole balance word is interesting. I never feel in balance – maybe for a moment and then something else pops into my head. It’s a philosophy versus a state. I look at each week holistically and determine what I need to do at work and at home. And that changes over time. My kids are in college so they don’t need me day-to-day. But my father is quite ill, so I spend a lot of time with my parents on the weekends.

PINK: How do you relax and rejuvenate your spirit?
P.C.: Drinking tea always relaxes me. I picked that up living in Japan. I love to take walks, listen to music, garden and cook. It’s pretty easy stuff to fit in – even over lunch. I work from home from time to time, and I’ll weed the garden. Or when I’m at the office, I might get in a 30-minute walk over lunch. You just have to fit in things for you. It’s rejuvenating. Even if it’s not a lot of time, you have to do it. You’ll feel better and have more energy to give to those who need you.

PINK: What is the best business advice you’ve ever gotten?
P.C.: I’ve developed confidence over time. I didn’t have it out of the chute. So the best advice I got was, “You can do it. Go for it. Fight for it.” Early in my career I didn’t always fight for the assignments and instead took them in more of a potluck style. Sometimes it worked out, but I learned later that I would have benefited by being more proactive earlier in my career. Push to get the experience and fight for it. Those were always much better assignments. You may not always get the exact opportunity you’re asking for today, but you will have a much greater chance of getting the next thing that comes along.  Even when you don’t feel the confidence, just telling yourself to have it anyway helps you feel it. Then you’ll be fine. The nervousness can be really hard at first. Sometimes you just need someone to say, “You can do this. Just go do it.”

PINK: How do you define “success”?
P.C.: It isn’t about the numbers or the stuff you get done. I find (and maybe it’s because I’m getting old) that it really is about the people you meet, building relationships and working together to make things happen. It’s true that what you do for work is work, but why shouldn’t it also be rewarding. You get to meet new people – even if you don’t hit it off with everyone at first. That’s challenging and rewarding.