Back to the Ideas Factory for Jaaback

Once again back at Accenture, Jon Jaaback—a civil engineer by training—gives a feel of what it’s like to be back in his current position as senior manager in the Strategy Practice, and why he returned.

Not many people would describe a civil engineering field job as “a comfort zone.” But Jon Jaaback, having worked as an engineer for a decade and with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) freshly under his belt, attended an Accenture road show and that was that: “I was made an offer. It looked very attractive, so I decided to leave my engineering comfort zone and put my MBA into practice. What attracted me was the prospect of working across different industries.”

That was in 1998, and it was the beginning of an enduring connection with Accenture. “It was the dot.com era with plenty of experimental projects on the boil,” Jaaback remembers. First as a manager then a senior manager in Accenture South Africa’s Strategy practice, he was involved in a variety of projects, the biggest one being to implement and operationalise an online trading marketplace for one of the leading banks.

Then followed a period in which Jaaback once again left a comfort zone, this time to start a number of independent businesses while continuing to work for Accenture on a contract basis. This was also the period in which the Strategy Practice as originally conceived went into abeyance. Having established and successfully sold a software business Jaaback saw that Accenture was re-opening its Strategy Practice under the current restructured operating model. He could not resist the challenge and now finds himself back at Accenture as a senior manager.

He says being back fulltime is exciting with “new stuff happening all the time.” He describes his current position as a “constant juggling act” between helping to build the practice, developing new business and servicing existing clients. “The more time you spend delivering value to clients, the more money the company makes. But, you also need to recruit and develop the right people to ensure the long-term sustainability of the business,” he says.

It is the people aspect that Jaaback feels he missed most when running his own small enterprises: “When you’re on your own you tend to go off on a particular track, but you don’t really have anyone to test things against. In an environment like Accenture–surrounded by very bright people–there’s plenty of opportunity to test your thinking. Having come back, I felt immediately that there were interesting people to bounce ideas off.” 

Jaaback says Accenture is a place where ideas abound, “A client comes with a specific need and you soon realize that the solution can be applied to other clients, so you can use the ideas you come up with in more than one way. This is a place where ideas feed off ideas.”

Jaaback says the Strategy practice fits in with Accenture’s new matrix operating model: “The structure of the new model makes provision for a Strategy practice that runs across the business and provides support to the vertically structured operating groups.” In his current position Jaaback says he is getting more involved “in developing the business behind the scenes, particularly in recruiting people and developing their skills.”

Another valuable aspect of working for Accenture, as Jaaback sees it, is the comprehensiveness of the solutions offered to clients: “When Accenture does strategy work, implementation is always a key consideration from the outset. We do strategy and implementation seamlessly so there’s no hand over from one service to another.” The overview perspective that Accenture can offer its clients right from the start of a project is important in terms of the project’s success in helping clients to progress toward high performance. “We build the implementation plan into the strategy to ensure that it is achievable and will make a contribution to the business goals—for Accenture, ideas are only good if they work,” he explains.

Happy to be exactly where he is, Jaaback says, “Accenture is a very exciting place to be right now…there’s a lot that’s changing and huge opportunities!”