Work, Rewired: Rethinking Talent, Strategy, and AI

It’s a daunting task: moving AI from experimentation to transformation across a massive, global organization with more than 800,000 employees. It turns out it isn’t just about optimizing tasks — it’s about rethinking roles entirely, and managing that change effectively.

On this premiere episode of season three of Where AI Works, host Peter Cappelli is joined by Karalee Close, the Global Lead of Talent & Organization at Accenture, to explore what it truly takes to scale AI across a large enterprise — not just in isolated pilots, but as a driver of full organizational reinvention. Karalee shares her firsthand experience leading AI implementation on a global scale, underscoring that the real challenge isn’t technical, but cultural. She also explains how success depends on convincing leadership to embrace new ways of working, and keeping people at the center of every change, rather than treating AI as a tool for incremental improvements in existing workflows. Packed with insights and practical advice about Agentic AI in particular, this episode offers a clear look at what’s required to move beyond experimentation and generate real enterprise value.

Episode Highlights:

6:09 - Karalee pushes back against the notion that the relationship between AI and human employees has to be an adversarial one.

11:23 - Karalee explains how defining specific tasks and sequences is no longer necessary thanks to agentic AI — you only have to define the strategic intent.

18:26 - Karalee discusses the resistance Accenture has encountered in implementing AI — both internally and externally — and how to overcome it.