In the face fundamental change, the digitization of the global economy, Dan Durn, Adobe’s CFO and EVP, Finance, Technology Services and Operation, makes sure his team “Stay[s] hungry and sharp in the journey.” Even at one of the most iconic companies in the digital space, driving innovation remains key to continued success.
In this episode of Secrets of Rockstar CFOs, Jack McCullough sits down with Durn to dive into the exact leadership strategies that drive that innovation. They explore the company’s journey in the digital economy, discussing how Adobe has catalyzed some of the most significant technological shifts today, the importance of trust and the role of the CFO in a fast-evolving business landscape. Listen by clicking below. The Q&A, lightly edited and trimmed for clarity, follows.
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Listen to the podcast here
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Thank you, everybody. I am excited about our guest, and you will be as well. I’ve wanted to have him as one of our guests since we first launched this show about a year ago. Dan Durn is the CFO of Adobe and a fantastic CFO. Dan, welcome to the Secrets of Rockstar CFOs.
It’s great to be here, Jack. I appreciate the invitation to join you. It’s great to be here with you.
Adobe is an iconic company and one very well-known to our audience. For the few who might not be familiar with what you’re doing, can you give the 10,000-foot overview?
Adobe has been at the heart of catalyzing some of the most important technology shifts, particularly as it relates to digital content. We have a mission to unleash creativity for all, accelerate document productivity and empower digital businesses. At this moment in time, with everything we see around the digitalization of the global economy, against the backdrop of digital content and data increasingly being the driver of global economic growth, we have a company that is the digital content company with our Creative Cloud suite of products, the digital document company with our Document Cloud Acrobat suite of products, and then the digital interface between a company and its customers with their digital experience business.
Any one of those three, against the major trends shaping the global economy, is a great company. Having all three inside of a single company makes us a very, very special company. I’m thrilled to be a part of the Adobe journey.
What an impact the company has made, for sure. I want to learn a little about your early life first for our audience. Where did you grow up, Dan?
A small town in Pennsylvania called Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. If you know where that’s at, it’s about five minutes outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Billy Joel sang a song about Allentown, “We’re living here in Allentown.” If you understand the lyrics of the song, I think you’ll understand the area I grew up in. It’s in the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania.
While the economic opportunity was limited and I always knew that I would be leaving Pennsylvania for as long as I can remember, I’m enormously grateful for the small-town values, the integrity that my parents instilled in me, the hard work, the work ethic and also what I call a nonsense meter, or a BS meter that points true north. You see nonsense coming from ways away. It serves me well in the seat I sit in. I love that I grew up with small-town values.
We have an opportunity to do a first on the Secrets of Rockstar CFOs. I happen to know all the lyrics to Allentown. Do you want to do a little duet for our audience?
I’m not the most musically inclined person, so I’m not sure that would end well.
I don’t think anyone would listen beyond that. I have no talent in that area whatsoever. I am a big Billy Joel fan. He and I have the same birthday. Different year, as you might guess.
Lessons From The Navy: Leadership And Teamwork
You spent several years in the Navy. We discovered that we were both raised by military fathers in the same generation. How did your experience in the Navy affect your corporate career? Maybe, in particular, your leadership skills and your team-building philosophy?
Maybe the first place that I’d like to start is that I’m very humbled that the government would take a risk on me, and select me to attend the Naval Academy. Possibilities in life and things that I didn’t think were possible became realistic, having attended that incredible institution. At the core of it is the power of taking risks on people, the intersection of education and opportunity and how that can powerfully shape a person, their journey and society. I’m enormously humbled by the military and the government being willing to take a risk on me and educate me.
As I think about the journey of wearing the uniform, it is very foundational in terms of shaping who I am. I think the usual go-to suspects are things like discipline, operational rigor, teamwork and high standards are all the price of admission. If I think a bit deeper in terms of how it has shaped my thought process, there’s a handful of core beliefs that begin to spike out for me personally. First of all, belief in people. Believe in people, grow people, develop people.
One of the most complimentary things I can say about a leader inside of my organization is they’re a talent factory. They build and grow talent. At the core of that is leadership being about your people, not you. I’ve felt it personally when people have believed in me, and I’ve seen the power of that in other people’s careers.
The second I would say is listening. The best leaders are the best listeners. I’ll often think about people on the team and how they progress in their careers. Those who are the best listeners become the best leaders. That’s an important concept that was etched in stone for me as part of my military journey. Trust. I think people misunderstand the military. It’s too simplistic to think of it as a hierarchical organization. Why do people follow? They follow leaders because they trust leaders. I often say trust is your greatest currency as a leader.
It has shaped my view as to what instills followership in great leaders. It’s that trust. Trust is the greatest currency and then resilience. I don’t know if this is from growing up as the youngest of four boys in the family or from what the military taught me that probably formed growing up, but resilience was reinforced in the military. Don’t ever give up. Life isn’t a straight line. Careers are not a straight line. Be resilient in the face of adversity.
That’s fantastic, and you’re one of four boys?
Fortunately and unfortunately, the youngest of those four.
That has a different dynamic in play when there are four or more, particularly all of the same gender. That’s a great story. What did you call it, a learning factory?
Talent factory.
I’m going to steal that from you, Dan. I hope you don’t have a trademark on it or something like that, but that’s fantastic. In your career, this is your fifth CFO job and perhaps the most visible one. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way? Maybe some of the key mentors who’ve influenced your career journey?
One of the great things about the seats I’ve sat in is the industries we’ve been exposed to. It has all been technology-focused, semiconductors, software and innovative industries that get to shape how companies operate, how people live their lives and impact at a societal level. One of the most important lessons that comes out of those companies exposed to those opportunities is real value creation inside of technology companies when you see inflections before others do in the market and you innovate into those inflections to grow in a profitable way. There’s a difference between being a fast follower and seeing those inflections and growing into those inflections with fundamental innovation.
The second thing is it’s great that companies in a variety of industries can be exposed to and leveraged to a trend that shapes a market. There’s a big difference between being exposed to a trend and being a fundamental catalyst that brings that trend to life. The most attractive opportunities and the most attractive positions for companies to be in are to be those key catalysts that bring the inflection to life. We all live in a fast-moving environment, and there are trend lines in industries. There’s the business cycle overlay. There are peaks and troughs in the business cycle, but they’re above and below a trend line.
The best companies and the best leaders can distinguish between the business cycle overlay, the peak and trough, and the underlying trend line. What I’ve come to appreciate and understand is that when you can see the trend line, you position the company to succeed. You don’t over-rotate to the upside, over-react to the downside, and oscillate the company at those critical moments when major inflections shape the end markets, and the company can stay focused on the speed of innovation, as opposed to oscillating the company up and down because business cycles were misinterpreted for trend lines.
The clarity between the signal and the noise of the business cycle is an important concept. Mentors have played a key role in my career, and probably everybody’s career. I’ve had the great fortune of seeing five different CEOs and the magic that they brought to life in the company. Those are important relationships. During my time at Goldman Sachs, world-class talents were foundational. There’s a handful of key leaders. I was at an event where several of those key leaders were there, and it was great to interact with them again.
I’d also say mentorship is often confused with those that are more senior. An important concept, this is a personal view, is that mentorship is also about having people tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Mentorship isn’t always a tenure-based concept. At one of my companies, there was this wonderful woman who was my assistant. Three generations of her family worked for our company.
Her instinct and belief system and she was all in and so passionate about what we were doing, she was an amazing mentor to me to make sure I was fully in tune with the employee population and connecting with them on a very personal level. It’s not always a tenure-based concept. Some of the best mentors can be people that you work with. I was fortunate to have crossed paths with that woman.
I’m guessing, Dan, that you’re probably a pretty coveted, and it sounds like a pretty willing, mentor. Are you mentoring any professionals at this point in your career?
Mentorship is important. It’ll always be a part of my approach and how I view things. I would even take it a step further. This is my personal view. The most satisfying thing for me professionally is watching those that I’ve had the privilege of working with grow in their career and go on to assume responsibility inside of companies that are greater than they thought was possible. I take the responsibility seriously. I want others’ career paths to be easier than mine because there are twists and turns along the way.
Managing careers is complicated, but it’s the most satisfying thing in the world when you watch those come up in their career and go on to be CFOs of other companies. I view it as an important part of the seat I sit in. I take a personal role not only with the people that are on my team but also with others throughout the organization that reach out. Making my time available is a privilege to do that for other people.
Why The Adobe Role Was So Attractive
That’s such a great philosophy, and kudos to you for that. I’m entitled to ask one fairly stupid question per interview. That’s a rule that I’ve given myself. Here it is. What was it about the Adobe role that attracted you to it?
There are a few things. I’ll go back to that point I was making earlier. I think the global economy goes through fundamental change once a century. A little over a century ago, the world became industrialized, and oil and gas were the predominant drivers of growth into that industrialization inflection. Roll the clock forward to where we are now, I think there’s a digitalization of the global economy that is underway. Every company and every industry is going to go through a fundamental transition, and increasingly digital content and data are going to be the drivers of global economic growth.
Against that backdrop, you have the company that’s the digital content company, the digital document company, and the digital interface between companies and their customers all under one roof. It’s an enormously attractive market position to be in. It’s more than that. This is a company that takes a deep-seated sense of responsibility, not only in the way in which they bring technology to life but also in the communities that they operate in, or that we operate in.
That sense of responsibility, that sense of purpose and that sense of community that defines this incredible Adobe culture, to be a part of it is a privilege. Lastly, our CEO, Shantanu, is an icon inside the company and in the technology space. What a privilege to be his business partner at this moment in time at this company. That’s an incredibly attractive seat to sit in if you do what I do for a living.
You stole my next question, which is great. One of the things that I’ve read, and a lot of CFOs have shared with me, is that the most important relationship often within the company is that between the CEO and CFO. I’m wondering if you can describe that relationship. Give advice to some of our audience who are looking to build that relationship as well.
It is the most important relationship in a CFO’s journey. This gets back to maybe playing team sports growing up, my time in the military or my experiences since then. I have a strong belief that the best teams win championships, not the best talent but the best teams. The role of a CFO is how do you complement the environment that exists, the magic that a CEO brings to a company, the executive team and their strength, and how you come in and complement that to create the best team so that the company can win championships, the company can be a leader in its industry and perpetuate that leadership.
To me, the best companies on the planet are the best innovators and the best executors. When you think about Shantanu, he’s an incredibly visionary leader. He’s gone through several transformations of the company and positioned us for decades of leadership. He is a consummate product detail person. He gets down to the minute details when it comes to products and empathy and connectivity with our customers.
We’re also a company that is growing to $20 billion in revenue, with aspirations to grow to $30 billion and $40 billion in revenue. How do we put the right infrastructure in place so the company operates at the velocity to realize the value embedded in our innovation? Taking Shantanu’s product and vision and market and customer magic, complementing it with a focus on that sharp execution that underpins that innovation to facilitate the value creation journey, that partnership is super important. While there aren’t hard, fast swim lanes between Shantanu and me, I think it gives you the contours of the relationship on how I feel like I can partner with him best to make sure that Adobe’s best days are in front of us.
That’s a great philosophy. A lot of first-time CFOs were told that that’s the most important relationship they’re going to have in this job, maybe the other direction too. For the CEO, he or she might say, “The CFO is the person I depend upon the most as well.” Anytime we can give meaningful insights into how to start those relationships and build them, it doesn’t mean you have to go out drinking on the weekends or anything like that, we’re probably a little bit old for that metaphor. It’s a mutual thing and you can work together. If the emperor has no clothes, it’s often up to the CFO to say so.
That’s right. In positions of leadership, you have to be able to exercise your voice in telling inconvenient truths. You can never abdicate that responsibility. The great thing with the partnership that Shantanu and I have is as we see the opportunity, that combination of not only what you do, but how you do it, that values-based approach, and the benefit of sharp execution. There’s a strong philosophical alignment around this moment in time and how we need to partner to drive the best days for Adobe in our leadership.
One thing I wanted to explore here a little bit, and giving you a lot of credit here, with Gen AI, I think there’s a handful of CFOs who are on the cutting edge of using it in a practical way for financial leadership. It’s different. The challenges that finance and accounting face with technology are different than sales and marketing and how other groups might approach it. You’ve risen to the forefront here. I’m curious about how you are doing it. One of your colleagues mentioned something about a finance hackathon, and I need to learn a little bit more about that.
First of all, I appreciate the kind words. If there’s success inside Adobe, it’s because of all of the hard work of people on the team and what they’ve personally committed to. My feelings around inflections are like this. I have a strong point of view that change is coming. Against the backdrop of “Change is coming,” we have a choice as leaders. We can lead into that inflection and change, or we can wait for change to be imposed upon us. I have a strong point of view that I want to lead.
I have a team of leaders who want to lead. I have a broad population in the finance organization that wants to lead. I think it’s important against that backdrop to create a set of environments. The best ideas come from within an organization. It’s our job as leaders to create enough oxygen in the room that fosters these ideas from the bottom up, then shape and focus the organization on the highest value opportunities, and then provide the support and resources that enable the team to be successful.
Leveraging Generative AI In Finance
We came up with the idea of sourcing ideas ground up in the organization through a hackathon. We put the challenge out to the broad population, how will generative AI, how will AI and machine learning shape the future of finance? We got more than 100 submissions, bottoms up, from the team that my leadership team then sorted through. We came up with 15 ideas that we were going to put resources behind, drop into a sandbox and run proof of concept. We had those 15 teams come in and present to the finance leadership team in a Shark Tank-like moment of where we were going to put our resources. We chose five.
I intuitively knew it, but it was great to see happen. Sometimes inflections like this can create apprehension in people. Change is scary. Is my job going to be replaced? What got unlocked in this process was not only the best ideas being surfaced but the team fundamentally knew that they were going to be a part of the solution of what the future of finance inside of Adobe looked like. When you’re part of architecting the solution, morale goes way up. Enthusiasm and discretionary effort were unlocked. I couldn’t be more proud of what this team is driving and what the potential holds around the adoption of these technologies to fundamentally shape what the future of finance looks like in Adobe. I’m very fortunate to have the team I have.
I heard a quote from Professor Eric Bjornson over at Stanford. He was asked about CFOs, “Will generative AI replace CFOs?” He said, “No, but CFOs who would embrace generative AI are going to replace those who don’t.” It seems like your team, without having heard the quote most likely, buys into that philosophy.
Absolutely. My personal belief system is similar to the professor’s. I don’t think generative AI replaces human ingenuity. It augments human ingenuity to make us better and more effective at what we do. If I were to take a snapshot of how finance organizations operate free from AI, machine learning and generative AI, I would say probably 70 percent to 80 percent of the time is spent assembling data, doing analysis, generating reports, and 20 percent to 30 percent of the time is taking action and driving value.
I think these technologies have the opportunity to turn that on its head, where 20 percent to 30 percent of the time is creating a data-based picture that reflects the reality inside the company. Seventy percent or 80 percent of the time can then be focused on action and driving value. It makes us collectively more effective as a team. Personally, it’s the business impact that gets derived from the data. Driving business impact is the measure of an effective CFO. I don’t ever see that being machine-generated.
That makes a lot of sense. Gen AI is getting all of the press and all the focus of CFOs, rightly so, but the technological landscape generally is changing and has been for quite some time. What do you see as the big tech trends that CFOs need to stay aware of beyond Gen AI?
Data Democratization And Future Tech Trends
Data enablement is super important, and it’s going to become even more important. Not only that it gets consumed by algorithms to paint a picture that accurately reflects the operations inside of a company, but how the data gets democratized inside of an enterprise and pushed to the edge of the organization. At the core of that, I think finance and the future of all great finance leaders have a seat at the table, sort through complexity, get the underlying root cause drivers, frame the debate and dialogue and sharpen business decision-making. Once decisions are made, drive impact.
Democratizing data is about quickly getting to the insights inside of an organization. We can pivot to action quickly. When you inform decision-making at the edges of the organization with a democratized data infrastructure, you’ve increased the velocity of the company. We all know our end markets are moving quickly. If the speed of decision-making inside of a company moves at a different rate and pace, slower than the speed that your end markets move, there’s an impedance mismatch between your markets and your core operations.
That’s going to slow down innovation. That’s going to slow down value creation. Increasing the speed and velocity of operations to keep pace with your end markets is where real value gets unlocked. CFOs have to think about this concept of democratizing data, pushing it to the edge of an organization and speeding up the velocity of action and decision-making inside the company.
Aside from technology, the CFO role has always been evolving, but I’m fond of saying that evolution has become a revolution. What do you think of the future of financial leadership besides the technological shift?
Business impact. We’ll often get into meetings and continually underscore the importance of business impact. When we adopt technology or we drive meetings inside of the company, we always have to have a business impact at the forefront of how we think. The words we use to describe the context around the numbers shape the perception inside the discussion. That all has to be oriented and optimized to business impact. I think it’s insufficient for finance leaders to think of themselves as the numbers person, saying, “Here’s the number.” In the absence of business context and the absence of business impact, the numbers begin to lose relevance.
Hold that bar higher, always have a business impact at the forefront, shape the decision-making, frame the debate and dialogue and then drive execution and impact once decisions are made. Increasingly, that is where finance is going. These technologies that we’ve been talking about only accelerate this trend on the importance of a finance organization to good and strong innovation and execution.
I know you’re on the board of Marvell. The obvious question is, have you met Iron Man and Thor, and what are they like?
I think if you would pronounce the name Marvell [mahr-vuh l], you’d hear a reaction from the company. They’d be very quick to say it’s Marvell [mahr-vell]. I chuckle at that a little bit, but Marvell is a phenomenal company. They’ve been through an amazing transformation, reorienting the company based on visionary leadership, cultural transformation, along with business transformation. Doing one of those is a big lift. To do two simultaneously couldn’t be more complimentary of the leadership team that’s driving the company.
They’re a very critical supplier to the data center infrastructure that’s driving the compute capabilities that are bringing these technologies to life. The intersection of learning what I do for my day job and the opportunity to engage with this company that’s shaping the future of data center technology creates a nice reinforcing set of learning between the board role and my day job. I’m thrilled to be part of their journey.
Just so the audience knows, I didn’t know the proper pronunciation of Marvell, and I didn’t know that it wasn’t the superhero company, but increasingly CFOs are getting spots on boards of directors. I’m curious, is there an interesting story as to how you ended up at Marvell and what your role there is like?
It’s word of mouth. If you catch me at a moment of clarity, I’ll tell you I’m probably one of the worst networkers out there. It’s not something I’ve focused on. I don’t say that proudly. I realize there has been a gap in how I’ve approached my career, and I’m taking more steps to evolve in that area, but this was word of mouth. One of my prior CEOs was a good friend of the CEO of Marvell and, a while back, made observations of the role I played inside the company.
The CEO of Marvell has always kept that in the back of his mind, and when the opportunity came up, he reached out to me. I’ve been watching afar and admiring what that leadership team has done, and what the CEO and the leadership team have done. It was this nice moment of reconnecting with the Marvell CEO and being very enthusiastic. It’s more word of mouth and networking. I would encourage people to make sure that they do a bit more networking along the way because you never know how those dots connect over time.
It’s not like those jobs are exactly posted on LinkedIn either. I’ve never in my life seen a public company board seat that was public knowledge in that sense of the word. Does your being on a board of directors impact how you approach your day job as a chief financial officer?
It doesn’t change how I fundamentally execute the day job. There’s an important set of responsibilities at Adobe. There’s an important set of responsibilities at Marvell. There are shared learnings across both of those that I think have an opportunity to help both companies, but it’s an allocation and time management as opposed to fundamentally changing the day-to-day approach. I frame it more as a commitment of additional time to make sure I fulfill the shared responsibilities on both sides.
I want to get back to Adobe a little bit because that big company continues to be an exciting growth story. How do you and your team and the office of the CFO support that level of growth in a company that already has a huge critical mass?
A couple of things. The great thing about who we are is we have four decades of history where we’re a leader from a product standpoint, from a category creation standpoint and a customer relationship standpoint. We have so much goodness in who we are as a company and our market leadership positions. It’s important at a moment like now to make sure that we reflect on that journey, take a lot of satisfaction in what’s been accomplished, but don’t fall into a zone of complacency because we’re a strong leader in our core markets.
Stay sharp, stay hungry and keep the execution edge around the company because there are companies in the past, very iconic brands, that may have lost a bit of their step from an execution standpoint. That’s a great way for great companies to become good companies, and good companies to become fair companies. Making sure we stay hungry and sharp in the journey, keep people from complacency and make sure that we set the company up well for the next several decades of leadership, not just taking satisfaction in what has been accomplished to date, but phenomenal company and track record. I’m excited. I do fundamentally think our best days are in front of us, which says a lot, given what this team has accomplished over the last four decades.
It’s easy to say my best days are in front of us when you’re at the start of the journey. You’re well-established and iconic. To think that the future is going to be even better is special. Good for you.
We’re very excited.
You have a lot going on. CFO, a very visible role, a large public company and you’re on the board of directors. How do you manage to balance work and life? It’s something that we all struggle with. I’d love to get your secrets to that.
Not as well as I would like, but I try. What I mean by that is that the people that I’ve respected the most along the way. As you start your career and journey, you look up to others around you and you say, “What qualities do I admire?” One of the things I’ve admired the most is seeing people who are successful in their business lives and their personal lives. They’ve created that right balance where they’re self-reinforcing to each other. I’ve always had the philosophy that family time is important, and I’ve never been one to multitask.
I have two children. They’re grown and they’ll probably be embarrassed to have me talk about the way I am. When they were little and growing up, I’d have one on one knee and one on the other knee. It’s not like I was pretending to be present with them and looking at my email on my phone. I always tried to be present in the moment. That was important to me. There are sacrifices and you have to create that nice balance between the professional demands and the family and personal demands. It’s never a static equilibrium.
Wherever that equilibrium is, it’s at a moment in time that ebbs and flows. Having an understanding family is important. When it comes to my quarterly earnings calls, they know I’m not in control of my schedule at that point. There are demands around my time at those quarterly moments that I have very limited degrees of freedom. In the run-up to the earnings crunch, and on the back end of the earnings crunch, I try to make that investment with my family to make it a long-term sustainable balance.
I do want to be one of those people who has a successful career and a successful personal life. There are trade-offs. It’s never easy. It’s something that I personally struggle with. I also personally strive to be better at it. I know I’ll never be perfect, but it’s not from a lack of intent or lack of desire.
Advice For Future CFOs
I like to ask the same question. I conclude every episode with the same question, and I’d love to get your perspective on it. What is the advice you would give to the next generation of CFOs? Those who are starting out as CFOs, or maybe they’re six to 18 months away from getting their first CFO job.
First, I’d like to say congratulations for being in a zone where that is a possibility for the next step in the career journey. It speaks volumes individually and collectively as a community of what you’ve accomplished, but don’t lose authenticity. I think it’s super important. There’s no formula for doing a job like this. There are lots of different ways of doing it, and there are lots of different paths to success.
Be authentic because it strikes at the heart of the concept that I raised a little earlier in the conversation. Trust as a leader is your greatest currency. If people don’t feel like you’re authentic, they’re not going to willingly trust and follow. There’s an important connection between the concepts of trust, followership and authenticity. Building and growing teams is enormously gratifying. Believe in people, invest in people, grow people and bring that next generation of leaders on. You’ll understand the gratifying nature of that investment over time. It’s enormously gratifying.
I guess another point I’d make is this concept I call being constructively unreasonable. Put positive tension into a system. If you set wild goals that organizations have no hope of achieving, they’ve checked out before the journey started. If you set the bar too low, you get what you expect. The magic in a role like this is to be constructively unreasonable, to stretch organizations in a constructive way, and to get them to do more and achieve more than they thought was possible at the beginning of the journey.
There’s no formula to it. It comes with judgment. This concept of being constructively unreasonable is important to me. Lastly, go for it. Take a career risk. Take yourself out of your comfort zone. If you don’t think you’re ready, you are ready. Jump in with both feet and go for it. Take the risk. That’s when nonlinear growth happens, personally and professionally. Go for it.
That’s great advice. Dan, I want to thank you for your time. This has been a great conversation. You’ve built such a great story out there in Silicon Valley. I want to give you the final word.
First of all, Jack, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity, not only to meet you and get to know you but the opportunity to be a part of this great platform that you’ve created. For that, thank you. I guess maybe I want to end by thanking my family. The things I’ve accomplished are not possible without their sacrifice and support along the way. I had amazing opportunities to do incredible things. I’m grateful for it. I’m humbled by it, but it’s not possible without their support. I want to add a note of thanks to them.
