A Beginner’s Mindset.
Janet Foutty spent 33 years at Deloitte.
In her last two roles she served as executive chair of the board of Deloitte US from 2019-2023. Previously, she served as chair and CEO of Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Three years ago she left Deloitte and began again.
Janet focused on a major, a minor and an extra-curricular in her next era. The major and minor involved the future of the workforce in an AI age and women’s health, while the extra-curricular focused on supporting women in leadership roles.
Earlier this week we heard about the RAISE US to help the American workforce adapt to the AI age and her appointment as its President, Corporate Partnerships.
A small extract from the press release:
Gina Raimondo, the 40th U.S. Secretary of Commerce and 75th Governor of Rhode Island, and Eric Holcomb, the 51st Governor of Indiana, today launched RAISE US, a nonpartisan national organization that will partner with governors, employers, workers, and training organizations to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy.
RAISE US will design and pilot new corporate incentives to retrain and redeploy workers, new approaches to support people through job transitions, and new training models tied to changing employer demand. The organization will leverage private and philanthropic capital to scale what’s most effective and measure success by whether workers land and keep good jobs.
Leading technology companies Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation are coming together to help build the workforce response to AI as RAISE US anchor partners.
The entire press release: https://www.raiseus.ai/news/release
Though we first met each other a decade ago as part of our previous leadership roles, I have got to know Janet more over the past 18 months. We reconnected via the University of Chicago Graham School of Continuing Education and my friend Jason Wadler the founder of The Wisory. Janet has also been kind enough to join and contribute to The Athena Project on Modern Leadership that Drew Ianni and I co-founded. In addition, Janet participates in a class I teach on CEO Legacy for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Executive Education Program.
Janet joined Drew and I on Unbossing to share her learnings about leadership, her passion for women’s health and how AI will impact the workforce. We discussed what she had to learn and unlearn as she stepped away from Deloitte and much more. ( While Janet had under strict confidence shared the broad contours of her new role with me a few weeks ago we did not discuss this on this episode since it had not been announced yet.)
The tightly edited conversation takes just 30 minutes to listen to and is at the bottom of this post. Here are some highlights.
1. The three keys to thriving at work.
Janet believes the three keys we need for career satisfaction is to ask
a) Do we respect and feel connected to the people we work with and for?
b) Do we enjoy the work we do and over time do we feel we are growing doing the work?
c) Are we recognized for our accomplishments and fairly rewarded for our contributions?
Janet stayed at Deloitte for 33 years by ensuring that she navigated here career in ways that all three remained true.
These are great stars to steer our careers by.
2. Exiting with elegance is rare but something we should all strive for.
Too many leaders stay past their “ sell by” dates.
Few accept that each career has a midnight hour and the smart people leave at five to midnight.
The best learn how to untie and loosen ties versus cut ties.
Exits are as important as entrances.
3. A challenge is to balance a new start with the halo of the previous career.
Janet shares ways on how she ensured Janet the individual and Janet from Deloitte were not seen as the same person. How does one separate oneself from what one did for 33 years?
While Janet was offered many opportunities in proximity to her Deloitte career, she wanted to do new things and not go back to what she had already done.
Janet reminds us the trick is to launch a new chapter without repeating the chapter one has lived in a different way. The challenge is find ways to leverage the positive halo of the previous chapter while writing a new story.
Many people who work for many years in one company or in one profession will learn how to combine one’s roots and wings.
4. A beginners mindset is key but unlearning is difficult.
After 33 years at Deloitte Janet had to begin again without the crystalized knowledge that comes with understanding a place as she understood Deloitte, without a world class team to help her deliver ( but as she notes modern technology helps), and to prepare in new ways for the people and organizations she was now helping.
Transforming oneself is as difficult and exciting as transforming a company.
And in today’s AI age we will all have to reinvent ourselves.
5. Women are not smaller men.
Janet’s passion for women’s health in part comes from her understanding that much of the medical research and medicine has treated women as smaller men even though women are very different and have their own issues including over indexing in a variety of areas from alzheimer’s to auto-immune depression.
6. Diversity is a competitive edge and most leaders are aligned with this.
Most CEOs have significant data, research and real world results that show that a diverse table of talent generates great economic results and innovation.
They may not preach this loudly but they are practicing this in their firm.
During our “Profiles in Courage” section of The Athena Project events we constantly hear this reinforced as leaders share how they are “ adjusting the narrative but doubling down on the mission”.
Take a listen:
One Single Thing.
Granted which is Adam Grant’s Substack this week has a wonderful piece on how to avoid letting perfectionism hold us back.
To counter perfectionism, here are some basic messages that parents, teachers, and coaches can reinforce:
1. Mistakes don’t make you a failure. They make you a learner.
2. Achievements are not a symbol of your worth. They’re a snapshot of your performance.
3. Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger; it leaves you bruised. Don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to a good friend.
4. It’s impossible to please everyone. Decide whose opinion matters to you—and whose doesn’t.
5. Character is not revealed by how many setbacks you face. It’s forged by how you face them.
6. People gauge your competence mostly by your hits, not your misses.
7. The objective is not to be the best; it’s to get better. The person you’re competing with is your past self, and the bar you’re setting is for your future self.
8. Our biggest regrets aren’t actions—they’re inactions. Don’t set yourself up to wish you’d taken more chances.
9. Healthy goals include two targets: an aspirational result and an acceptable outcome. If you fall anywhere between them, you haven’t failed.
10. Success is not a straight line. It’s a squiggly line.