In an era where the average CFO tenure is shrinking, Dallas Clement has built a 35-year career with Cox Enterprises, holding a CFO title for more than 15 years. From his early days navigating the analog-to-digital media shift to steering a diversified $23 billion enterprise through the age of AI and transformation, Dallas shares how the future of the CFO role is no longer about crunching numbers but about leading with credibility, clarity and calm in times of uncertainty.
Clement and host Jack McCullough unpack lessons on mentorship, building high-performing teams, partnering with CEOs and turning personal challenges—like dyslexia—into authentic leadership strengths. Listen by clicking below. The Q&A, lightly trimmed and edited for clarity, follows.
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Listen to the podcast here
Welcome back, everyone. I am really excited by our guest. This is one I’ve been looking forward to because the title of this podcast is Secrets of Rockstar CFOs. Dallas Clement is a true Rockstar CFO. In fact, I might even go so far as to say a bit of a unicorn. Dallas is the CFO of Cox Enterprises, and why he’s a unicorn is that he’s been part of Cox since 1990, and we’re living in a time where average CFO tenure is supposedly under four years. That’s a remarkable tenure. Dallas, welcome to the show.
Jack, you set a high bar. Thanks so much for having me.
It’s great to have you, and I think Cox is probably close to a household name. If you’re not, I’m not sure who would be, but for the benefit of the seven people who might not be familiar with the company, can you give a little overview of the company?
The company’s been around for 127 years. It started as a newspaper company, the fifth-largest newspaper in Dayton, Ohio, back when there were lots of newspapers in every market. It has evolved into other media, radio, television, cable and has gotten automotive services with Mannheim and Auto Trader. We’re the largest owner-operator of next-gen greenhouses. We own Axios. We own a government software business called OpenGov. Today, we’re about 23 billion in revenue with a variety of businesses and families still very much engaged. Alex Taylor, my boss, is a fourth-generation of the family, and the family has high hopes to be around for another 127 years.
That’s great that the family’s still engaged. I don’t know if you remember this, but it came out in, I’m going to say the ‘90s, but there was a woman, and she didn’t have any particular obvious expertise, but she was like a Warren Buffett-level stock picker. She just did phenomenal. She consistently outplayed the market, and she never told what she was doing, but finally, towards the end of her life, she did. Her investments were just in companies that were named after the founding family, like so for DowDupont, Cox, and she just said, “Look, if the family is still involved, it’s more than a business.” That’s where she wants to put her money. It really worked out well for her.
The governor, in his will, said, “Effectively do right by your employees, do right by your customers, do right by the communities that you serve and the family will be fine.” I think if you’re looking to do something for the long term, you have to be able to deliver on behalf of all of your stakeholders. You cannot suboptimize any particular stakeholder over the long term. That’s what I think the family and Cox have done so well over these last 100-plus years.
That’s fantastic. I definitely want to explore Cox, but I’d love to understand a little about your background. Where did you grow up, Dallas?
Sarasota, Florida.
What was that like living in Florida? You and I were about the same age. Growing up, we had great music and great movies, and other things. I had lousy weather in New England.
Sarasota had nice weather. I lived right on the water. It was wonderful. It was a small community. Most everyone lived in ranches, and most of my friends lived on the water and never went away to summer camp because I essentially lived at summer camp. I had a good group of friends, and we could get to see each other via the water or bicycling. Before I could drive, I rode my bicycle everywhere. It’s harder to do now, especially in a big city. I’m in Atlanta right now, but in a small town like that, you could do that. It was a wonderful area to grow up in.
What was your first job as a kid?
My first job as a kid was stringing tennis rackets. I got paid three dollars for every racket that I strung, and I could typically do two in an hour. It was about six dollars per hour. I think the minimum wage at the time was maybe, I don’t know, $2.50 an hour. I was doing pretty well. I wasn’t working 40 hours a week, but for the time I was working, I was doing pretty well. That was my first job, stringing tennis rackets.
It’s funny. I know there are people, some teenagers and 20-somethings, tuning in. Six dollars an hour, what a solid salary that is. I remember $2.95 to around that same period of time. I was damn pleased with my paycheck. That was really a different world. You graduated, you went to Harvard and then you actually got a master’s degree from Stanford, too. Do what we call Harvard and Stanford in my high school?
No, what do they, what do you call that?
Safety schools.
There you go.
You studied at Harvard and you got a degree in economics. I’m curious what the thinking was with that. I think it was economics and maybe mathematics, but you obviously must have been highly mathematically inclined.
I did well in math and science in high school. Back then, we didn’t talk a lot about college, and you certainly didn’t visit colleges. You sent a note card away to get the application, and you looked at the thickness of the application, and that was your first filter to decide which college to apply to. I think Dartmouth had a really big application. I said, “That’s too thick. I’m not going to do that.”
I applied and got accepted, and very fortunate. I’m quite positive I couldn’t get accepted today. When I went, I thought that college was all about getting more or less a vocational degree, thinking about your job. Since I was good at math and science, I thought of engineering. I started off as a mechanical engineer. Over time, I realized that I was going to one of the best liberal arts schools in the world, and college was less about a vocational degree, more about critical thinking, and you could do critical thinking in any number of disciplines.
I should probably take advantage of what Harvard has to offer. Because of all the math prerequisites I had taken from mechanical engineering, applied math and economics was as close to liberal arts as I could get, given that I was two years in with a lot of math prerequisites. It allowed me more electives in my junior and senior years. That was how I navigated my degree at Harvard.
It’s interesting because today there are a lot more options for becoming a CFO. It wasn’t very common that people with an economics background would be on a path that would eventually lead to being a chief financial officer. I think there are a few skills for a CFO. Do you find that what you learned back then has helped shape your career as a CFO?
It’s interesting, during my 35 years here, I developed a point of view that depending on the organization, depending on the individual, depending on the board, depending on the CEO, there are two flavors of CFO. There’s the more traditional flavor where you grew up, you got an accounting degree, CPA. You went and worked for one of the big accounting firms for a while, and then you entered a company in financial reporting or audit or something like that, and then made your way up the ranks in more traditional finance.
There are others that are problem-solving, and there are a number of disciplines you could do in college, and you could go do consulting, you might do investment banking, that thing. That creates a path into the CFO, and it creates a profile of a CFO that can manage a controller who has a CPA and does T-accounts, but whose skills might be critical thinking, problem solving, advising, strategy, etc.
I learned that for me, I’m more attuned, and I like the strategy, the critical thinking and the partnership with the CEO. I’m less attuned to the T-accounts and the accounting, the financial reporting. I can manage the folks and I understand the drivers, but that’s not the differentiation and the added value that I bring to the table.
A reference to T-accounts. I didn’t anticipate that coming up. You’re right. I’m the former a more traditional background. I worked in what’s now KPMG for a few years, an accounting manager, controller or CFO. I got my first CFO job and my background, then the dates, and it could change the name of the companies, but it’s almost like an identical resume to a bunch of other people that got their first CFO job at the same time. Today, it’s really different. I see engineers and economists and all sorts of people, not just getting the job, but flourishing in it.
It depends. It’s a critical partnership with the CEO and the organization and a catalyst for the organization. Different CEOs need different kinds of CFOs, and different companies need different kinds of CFOs. It’s a wonderful role for a variety of personalities and skills.
Indeed. One thing I want to ask you a bit about on a personal note, but I’m aware you’re dyslexic, and I know that presents some challenges both academically and probably in your professional life. It’s great admiration that you’ve come so far with it. What have you learned from having this, and how have you developed this phenomenal career while overcoming dyslexia?
You have a difficulty. You can choose to harp on that difficulty, or you can figure out coping mechanisms that create strengths in other areas based on the reality of the difficulty. Those strengths create your authenticity, how you approach what you do. For me, as an example, in mechanical engineering in school, it became obvious that it just took me longer to get things done.
Therefore, I rarely did better than Cs on midterms. In order to get it, I had to think about it from a variety of angles. In the process of thinking about it from a variety of angles, by the time I got to the final, I typically always did really well on the final. In applied math or mechanical engineering, if you do well in the final, you cannot argue that you don’t know the material. What it taught me is to trust the process.
It taught me to think about things from a variety of angles, outside-the-box thinking and not to panic. I think a lot of those are valuable skills for a CFO to have, especially in markets like today, with a lot of uncertainty. When you’re on a path and you’re not sure where it’s going to end. Sometimes you have to trust the process until you create more clarity by virtue of the process on where it’s going to end.
You have to, as a leader in an organization, CFO or otherwise, you have to create that calm, and you have to show that calm for the rest of the leaders in the organization and the rest of the troops. Those kinds of things helped me become my “super power,” if you will, my strengths and how I approach problem solving, how I approach difficult issues, volatility, etc.
I think that’s just absolutely fantastic that you can turn something that some people would have considered really problematic, and you’ve made an interesting superpower. Good for you, and that’s wonderful. One of the things you’ve worked so long at Cox, and we’ll get into it a little in a moment, but what it’s known for, amongst other things, is a very strong culture, maybe a learning culture and a committed leadership team. Undoubtedly, in your 30-something years that you’ve probably had some wonderful mentors along the way. I’m wondering if there are any that you look back on that stick out that really made an impact on the type of leader you’ve become today.
It’s interesting. I’ll talk about the mentor, but what I will say is when I think about the strong culture, and I’ve started to say this more and more, what Cox has is a very consistent set of values. I talked a little bit about it from the governor’s will, “Do the right thing by your employees, your customers, the communities that you serve.”
The way I think about culture is, culture is where the leader and the life stage of the business you’re in meet the values. As an example, Cox Communications, our cable business, when I was there, the president of the cable business was a gentleman by the name of Jim Robbins. Cox Communications, at the time, had a particular culture.
It was heavy growth, very dynamic. We moved from analog video into digital video, high-speed internet, digital telephone and started getting into wireless, etc. As compared to today, the cable business is more mature. Mark Greatrex is the leader today. Both Mark Greatrex and Jim Robbins exude the values of Cox. That’s why they’re leaders.
The culture in those two organizations, Cox Communications of the 1990s versus Cox Communications now, is a little bit different. It’s because Mark Greatrex is a different leader from Jim Robbins, and the life stage of the business is a little different. You have to operate at a different pace back then versus now. That’s point one relative to culture, your question.
Relative to mentor, also, I’ve had a variety of bosses, and I’ve had a variety of people work for me and a variety of boundary partners. What I would say is that I think I’ve taken a little bit from everyone and learn from everyone. To your point, Cox is a learning organization. I try to learn from everyone. Where I was most of a sponge for learning was earlier in my career, when Jim Robbins was the leader.
If you asked me to pick an individual who had a broader impact, it would be Jim Robbins as a mentor back in the early part of my career. I wouldn’t still be at Cox if I didn’t feel like I was still learning and still being challenged and still picking up something from every single person I interact with. I view the whole community as a mentorship to me.
That’s a beautiful thing. One of the things that I came across and am prepping for this is convos at Cox and the learning community. Tell us a little about that, and I’m assuming you’re deeply involved in it, and why it’s important.
We do not have a back-to-the-office mandate. Back before COVID happened, we instituted a policy of unlimited PTO, but that meant that our leaders had to lead and our leaders had to hold their respective teams accountable. Now, as on the back end of COVID, we don’t have a return to the office mandate because we’ve asked our leaders again to lead. Not every group has the same requirement to be in the office as every other group.
People do different things. By the way, during COVID, for example, in our Mannheim locations, we had drivers driving had to go into the auctions and drive cars every day or recondition cars. You cannot do that job remotely like you can an accountant or whatnot. We didn’t have any mandate then. We don’t have a mandate now, but we asked our leaders to lead. In terms of the overall environment, we’re trying to remind folks that it’s hard to build relationships, it’s hard to build culture, it’s hard to get to know folks remotely, and it’s much better to be in person.
We try to create engaging activities on campus that draw people in and create opportunities to get together. Convos at Cox was a brainchild of our house team and marketing team, and out of our HR organization, that said, “Let’s get leaders to sit down in our cafe, have a session, and talk about whatever they are passionate about. It could be one of our women leaders talking about work-life balance.
It could be someone else who has struggled with some difficulty. Whatever it is, whatever you’re passionate about.” For me, I’m passionate about the early career folks. I’ve got four daughters, and we may talk about them in a bit, but I love to be there and help and learn from these kids who are in college and very supportive of the intern program.
I told one of our leaders of the intern program, “I’d love to visit with the interns and learn from them and speak to them.” They said, “Would you want to do a Convos of Cox focused on the early career folks?” I said, “Sure, but be happy to do that.” What I didn’t know is that they like to create a title for those. The person said, “What do you want to call it?” I thought for half a second, and I said, “How about Early Career Advice from an Old Guy?”
He looked at me, thinking that I was joking, not really sure, and then he laughed and he said, “I love it, let’s do it.” That was what we were going to do. I was on vacation a week or two later, someone else sent me an email and said, “Dallas, I’ve been thinking about the title. I want to know what you think about tweaking it to Been There, Done That, Early Career Advice from Dallas Clement.” I read that out loud to my daughters, and predictably, they went, “Ah.”
I said, “I tell you what. Let’s move it back to Early Career Advice from an Old Guy for a couple of reasons. One is, making fun of myself is part of my authenticity, and I want to exude that, and that’s an important message to these early-career folks. B, the reality is I am an old guy and I should not in any way represent that I know where they are, what they’re doing, the challenges and what’s different then versus now.
I should create an opportunity and permission for them to take what resonates for them and throw away the stuff that doesn’t resonate. I think it just does it better by saying Early Career Advice from an Old Guy.” We kept it there, and I just finished in July, my third year. I’ve done it for three years in a row, and it’s fun. It’s great. I love it. They ask great questions. They’re really engaged. They’re much better prepared at their stage of their career than I was when I was their age. It’s fun.
That’s funny. My notes actually have advice from an old guy in quotes. I just thought somebody was paraphrasing. It didn’t really matter.
That’s the title. I appreciate people wanting to protect me. In some way, or form, I said, “No, you don’t need to protect me. I am the old guy. I own it. It’s all good.”
I just want to say a more thin-skinned guy than me might be upset that you call yourself old, considering I’m two years older than you.
I feel it every day, and my daughters remind me of it every day. You just got to it.
That’s great. You answered the question in advance, but we’ll expand a little bit on it. Again, by reputation, Cox has one of the best finance teams in the game. I’d love it if you could share your philosophy on building a high-performance team and, in particular, attracting those early career professionals, because let’s face it, they have a lot of options right now as they enter the workforce, a lot more than maybe we did.
Back when we entered the workforce, we could really go get our master’s, you could go into accounting, you could go into investment banking or go into consulting. There were no startups back then. You’re exactly right. I guess what I would say about building a high-performing organization is for people coming in, I talked about the what and the how of work.
People always talk about the purpose and the why. That is incredibly important, and I agree with that. However, for some people, they need something more tangible, more right now than why or purpose or long-term. The what and the how are, you’re hired to do something, do what you’re hired to do. The how is how do you show up? How do you engage with your boundary partners? How do you ask questions?
How do you support other people in the organization? What I tell folks is the bare minimum is what, do what you’re hired to do. The way you differentiate and the way people give you permission and really embrace you to take on new roles and challenges is how you engage, how you ask questions, how you show up, how consistent you are in doing what you say you’re going to do. Do not underestimate the value of that.
If people do that with an organization like Cox, then, for example, a finance leader gets caught up in staying in the lane of quote, really hardcore traditional finance. Someone who started with a CPA does internal audit, then they go to financial reporting, then they’re an FP&A, then they’re in biz ops or something. They don’t ever get out.
At least in an environment like Cox, you could go from Cox Communications to Cox Automotive. You could go into the treasury group. You might go into the finance group. You might go into the strategy group, the Corp Dev Group. At least at a company like Cox, we want the broad experienced CFO, and we’re going to err on a CFO that hasn’t done the career ladder to get where they are.
They’ve done the career jungle gym. They’ve done a variety of things because it means they’ve built different skills, different neurons have connected different challenges, not just finance challenges, more strategic challenges. We think that makes a CFO candidate better prepared to be that advisor to the CEO, that partner to the CEO, and help to navigate new challenges.
What we’re finding in the real world is that new challenges every day, things that you could not have prepared for. There wasn’t a class that said, “How do you prepare for COVID?” There wasn’t a class that said, “How do you prepare for AI?” We want people to build their portfolio skills in a variety of ways so that they’re more dynamic and can problem-solve in any situation.
That makes a lot of sense. You’re doing a fine job of anticipating my questions, but I was actually going to ask you, and you led to it, but connect the dots a little bit because you’ve been there decades, and now senior role in finance, and you’ve had a lot of different roles in there. Automotive connect that to broadband, and connect it to recycling and to technology. It’s a pretty diverse group of companies that are part of Cox Enterprises.
I’m happy to do that. When I came in 1990, I reported to the CFO of the Cable Division, and the Cable Division at the time was just analog video, but we also happened to be the third largest franchisee of Blockbuster, if you remember the Blockbuster stores. I was a chief of staff analyst. We were in the midst of re-regulation, and I was just helping the CFO with whatever came up that was out of the ordinary that he needed help with.
I helped with budgeting for the Blockbuster stores. I helped understand the regulations and figure out how we could price set-top boxes for the marketing group. A variety of things. McKinsey came in to do a big study on Cox Enterprises around advertising technology regulation. I was the liaison to the McKinsey group out of the Cable Group. We went public in 1995 via a reverse Morris Trusts structure, and we didn’t have anyone who did investor relations.
By that time, I had built a reputation for A, understanding the business, asking good questions, communicating, understanding the finances and understanding the culture. We could have hired someone from the outside who knew investor relations but didn’t know the management team, or take someone internally who knew the management team, could work with the management team, and teach them investor relations, and leadership decided the latter.
I became the investor relations person and led us, had 26 different sell-side analysts covering us, and I engaged with them. To this day, I have several whom I still talk to strategically about what’s going on in the marketplace. In 2000, after we had launched these home run platforms, digital video, digital voice and high-speed internet, I moved over and became a direct report to the CEO, Jim Robbins, to run strategy and product management.
For the next 10 years, I shepherded what we were doing in product and also launched our effort in strategy. At the same time, our media businesses were starting to be dislocated. The newspaper was starting to fall off, and cable was now the biggest business. We had launched Autotrader.com, and it was seeing heavy growth. We kept it separate from Mannheim because they were at different stages of the life cycle.
Cox Enterprises had a Mannheim business, the largest wholesale auction company in the world. Autotrader, and that was in automotive. We had these media businesses, radio, television and newspaper, but the newspaper was starting to decline. There was uncertainty in radio and television, but they weren’t declining yet. We pulled all those together into one media group. By the time we got to the late teens, we had a media group, we had Autotrader in Mannheim, and then we had Cox Communications. Cox Communications 2004, 2005.
We did the largest take-private at that time of any large company, spent $8 billion in Cox Enterprises, leveraging the Cox Communications balance sheet, spent $8 billion to buy back the public shares of Cox Communications, and took it 100 percent private. We get to 2013 or so, and we merged Autotrader and Mannheim to create Cox Automotive. We finished the teens with media cable and automotive. The media was starting to see real dislocation, and we made the hard decision to sell our television and radio stations.
That closed in 2019. As we entered the 20s, it was cable and automotive, and we were developing and delivering free cash flow, and the family wanted to continue to operate businesses. We had to decide, “What? We can invest in anything.” Back to what the governor said, wanting to do right by our communities that we serve, our employees and our customers, if I hone in on communities, Alex Taylor, Jim Kennedy, both family members are huge outdoorsmen.
Jim Kennedy, back in 2007, started Cox Conserves, and Cox Conserves was all about making our operations more sustainable. We had big goals in zero waste, zero water and zero carbon footprint. In fact, we were the first multidisciplinary company to reach zero waste across all of our businesses. We hit that designation back in 2024. I was really excited by that.
Alex Taylor, my current boss, fourth generation of the family, about six years ago said, “Can we punch above our weight and can we start to look for businesses that do good by the environment, clean tech?” We went and evaluated strategically the clean tech environment and prioritized those areas that were seeing more change. Those areas that didn’t already have an obvious winner that we could start to invest and build businesses or acquire businesses over time.
We’ve happened on a couple of different ones, but in the controlled environment agriculture, next-gen greenhouses, we started with an investment in a company called Bright Farms, which is doing leafy greens. We then looked at a company that does vine crops called Mucci Farms. Today we own both, that’s part of Cox Farms, and we’ve done some follow-on acquisitions. We now have next-gen greenhouses that grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, strawberries and all kinds of leafy greens.
More sustainable water uses 80 percent less water, depending on the source of energy, is green, has less waste and produces fresher produce. We think it’s a win-win and much more resilient in an environment where you have floods, droughts, etc. We’re excited by that. We’re in a business called Nexus Circular, which is using pyrolysis to recycle hard-to-recycle plastics back down into the base oil that goes into crackers to create plastic, to create new plastics.
It’s ultimately circular. We looked at other areas where we could get involved and do something, align with our purpose, and leave the world a better place. We have a strong passion for media, but the media in the form of newspapers is struggling with the advent of the internet. We really loved what Jim VandeHei and his founders were doing with Axios and had an opportunity to make a small investment.
They liked the partnership we brought to the table, and now we’re the majority owner of that. The founders are still very much involved. We love that. We did the same thing in government software, a company called OpenGov, which is essentially helping local governments take the technology, the ERP, the platforms off-prem, move to the cloud.
OpenGov has a wonderful partnering platform to help those cities and municipalities manage more efficiently. We’re building out this diversification over time, bringing on new leaders, new blood back to my community. Before, these leaders of these other companies had very much aligned values with Cox. They’re at a different stage of the life cycle. They have different personalities. The culture of their business is a little bit different, and that’s okay.
What a fantastic company.
That’s a lot of fun. I’m very fortunate to be at one company for 35 years, but in a variety of industries, a variety of roles.
Other than when I worked at KPMG, I don’t know that I’ve ever worked for a company that has as many as 200 employees. It’s a trade-off, and it’s good and bad. As a small company guy at heart, I find that just absolutely fascinating what a complex and diverse set of businesses you have under the Cox Enterprises roof.
It’s fun. It’s not without challenges. It’s every business in every situation has that mix.
That’s fantastic. Anyway, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this little thing called generative AI.
I’ve heard about it somewhere.
That was one of those things. One day, I hadn’t heard of it at all. The next day, it was like the dominant thing in my life, but I’m required to ask you about generative AI to keep my license as a podcaster. How is Cox using gen AI within the finance organization and maybe beyond as well?
You said gen AI, and oftentimes people will say, “What about AI?” To which I always say, “You know, I view gen AI not necessarily as a step function, but as a continuation of quote AI. If you think about AI, and people forget, for AI to be effective, you have to have your data house in order. If you have your data house in order, that means you have strong protocols relative to privacy. That means you have strong cyber protocols.”
We’ve been on a journey in all of our businesses around that. If you have your data, and if over time you’re going through processes, there’s this little thing called robotic process automation that now no one ever talks about because it’s all gen AI, but it’s automation. Robotic process automation is automation. Before gen AI, there were new iterations of intelligent automation.
Gen AI does one set of tools. It’s different than machine learning and analytics. That’s a different set of automation. Gen AI is a particular automation, but it still needs to have your data house in order, and you need to have your protocols for privacy, protecting data, etc. What I love about Cox, speaking specifically about gen AI, is that we have leaders in automotive, we have leaders at Axios, we have leaders at OpenGov, we have leaders at Cox Enterprises, who have different use cases and reasons to use gen AI or any automation.
They have permission and are leading how to engage it in the way that is relevant for the businesses they serve and for the problems they’re trying to solve. The way Cox Automotive uses it may be a little different than the way OpenGov is using it. That’s okay. If you were to abstract up, and then you’re saying, “Give me some examples.”
Even before gen AI came, we were already using the Azure and AWS Cloud. Because Azure is more open AI-oriented and AWS is more anthropic-oriented, we’re getting exposure to both of those. Because Axios has engagement in their AI newsletter, they’re talking to the leaders of all these AI companies. They’re also recognizing that even with digital journalism, there is still disruption that is happening for that business, and they have to be more efficient.
Jim VandeHei and the founders of Axios are saying, “Everyone has to embrace AI in every role to be more efficient, to be more effective.” They are very much leaning in. What we do at Cox Enterprises is we say, “Let’s bring all those leaders who are engaging together so that we can share best practices, how people are doing it, how are you doing code development? How have you evolved what you’re doing in Agile using gen AI?
How are you thinking about development environments versus production environments in a new world of gen AI, and how can we move faster?” For those who are in customer care, maybe we’re not ready quite yet to use gen AI to engage face-to-face with a customer, but we can certainly use it to read through the recordings or listen through the recordings at the end of the day, come up with summary reports, what worked, what didn’t work, etc. We can certainly use it and/or machine learning to create real-time remediation plans for a customer who has a problem, and in terms of them wanting to call a disconnect, and what’s a relevant package for them to try to keep them to be a customer.
We’re using it for all those. We’re using it for creative. In our automotive group, we have direct marketing on behalf of dealers that we develop, and so we’re using it to create those direct marketing scripts for our dealers to be able to use with their customers. We’re using it all over. I’m excited by our decentralized way that we use it and think about it, and engage it in a way that is relevant for the businesses that are part of the Cox family.
You’re right. Gen AI was probably a little bit too specific.
It’s okay.
I want to change gears because there are two questions that I get asked a lot. One of them is about AI and advanced technologies generally. The other is, and I get asked this a lot by first-time CFOs. It’s like, how do you build a relationship with the CEO? There’s a lot of talk about sure, one does report to the other, but it’s a strategic partnership.
What’s interesting in recent years, CEOs, CFOs have said this for a decade, probably longer, but lately, CEOs are saying it too, that yes, my most important strategic partner in my business life is my CFO. Alex Taylor, whom I think you previously mentioned, is a descendant of the founding family, and he’s been in the role for seven years, but how do you build that trusting strategic relationship with the CEO so he doesn’t think of you as just the numbers guy?
I think of credibility. I think of reliability. I do what I say I’m going to do, but then, that’s the easy one. Do what you say you’re going to do. The credibility, what I would say about the credibility is, over time, he has to believe I’m not going to tell him what he wants to hear. I’m going to come up with my own point of view based on facts that on what I think is the right thing to do.
It’s not meant to challenge him. It’s meant to be on behalf of the company and what’s in the best interest of the company. He might still want to do what he wants to do. In which case, I’m going to jump on board with that because he is the CEO, and/or if I have to have built that credibility such that he knows this isn’t an agenda for Dallas, Dallas’s only agenda is what’s on the back.
What Dallas thinks, based on what he knows and the analysis he and his team have done, is in the best interest of Cox. Over time, he builds that confidence, that trust. I think more and more examples of that help to build that relationship over time. I think the other thing is, how do I show up? The how. How do I show up in terms of how I support other leaders in the organization? How do I show up in supporting my team?
How do I show up in supporting him? Do you think the CFO, like any other leader, thinks that how is important, especially as you get to be a more senior leader in an organization, because you are an ambassador on behalf of the company, and he wants good ambassadors, people who show up who, if other people see, will think highly of Cox.
That’s great. I want to ask a little bit about underrated aspects for CFOs, work-life balance, because I’ve been a CFO, not a company anywhere near the complexity level as Cox, but it’s a stressful job. It’s not the type of job you can go home and leave at the door. I’m looking at a list of five philanthropic activities that you do, Woods Hole Oceanographic, My Home State of Massachusetts, Junior Achievement and a few others. You also mentioned the fact that you’ve got four daughters as well. Plus, being the CFO of this huge company. If anyone knows how to do it, it’s probably you. What’s your advice for achieving that elusive work-life balance?
You’ve clearly just explained to everyone that I don’t do any of those very well, but save that. I guess, A, you do the best you can. B, you do need outlets. Part of my outlet is that I love to travel with my family, and I take the time to travel with my family. Part of my outlet is exercise. I’m a huge racket person. I play squash. I play this new game that you may have heard of called Padel, and I have my buddies that I do that with.
When I’m playing those games, it’s my own version of mindfulness. I cannot stress about anything because I’m in the heat of the moment. I know that whether it’s traveling with the family or exercising, it allows me to sleep better. If I’m sleeping better, I’m eating better. If I’m sleeping and eating better, then I’m thinking better, and I show up better for work. I also show up better for the family. It’s a virtuous circle. That’s what I have found over time works for me.
If I may ask, how old are your girls? They’re young enough that you can still take vacations.
23 to 29.
They’re a great age. Good for you.
They’re a great age, but I forgot when I was in my 20s how much angst there is in deciding where you want to live, who you want to be with, what you want to be.
No matter how old you all get, they’re always going to be your girls, right?
That is true.
I’m not going to ask you to prove it because it would be inappropriate, but do you know all four of their birthdays?
I do.
That is really impressive. Anyway, just took a couple of questions that I’d like to ask of you to wrap things up. The first one is, how do you see the CFO role evolving? It went from, you mentioned back in the day, a lot of us were accountants. I got my first CFO job because I was a damn good controller, but the job has changed, and it’s continuing to change. When you look into your crystal ball, what do you see?
It’s hard to get away from the numbers and what I think the numbers do, and it’s hard to get away from the numbers, and sometimes people get lost in the numbers, and they don’t know what the numbers say. I think the CFO of the future has to understand the numbers well enough to know what they say, what they don’t say. That means you’re linear enough and you’re global enough to be able to provide insights to the right audience.
Those skills, call it critical thinking, communicating, are really important, not just about the numbers, but also about the company’s strategy, about solving difficult problems, disruption from gen AI, etc. The numbers piece is a wonderful learning ground, but take those skills of understanding the details and understanding the implications of the details and use that to help your boundary partners, to help your CEO, to help your organization. I think more and more organizations will be looking for the CEO to bring those kinds of skills to bear.
That’s great. This whole conversation has been advice for the next generation of CFOs. It’s practically a masterclass. I often like to close with that question. What is some advice that you’d like to pass on to the future CFOs, the people who are going to achieve that role in the next year or two? A lot of you have already said, but maybe the most two or three.
I think the piece that maybe I didn’t say specifically, I alluded to it a little bit, the what and the how, but more specifically, when you have the CFO title and you ask questions in a meeting, people tend to have a perspective that you’re going to slash their budget or you don’t trust them. As a CFO, you have to figure out the right body language, the right how to be able to ask the questions without people being threatened by it, because you need to be the one who understands how the business, how the operation, how the department works.
What I have found is that you have to figure out that break the ice situation so you can ask the questions, because once you ask the questions and once people are comfortable with you asking the questions, I just think there’s better thinking, better problem solving, people have better trust, but you got to get past that first distrust because you have CFO on your title. People can learn that skill from the earliest age, how to ask a question without it appearing threatening, dismissive, etc. It’s particularly on us when you have the CFO title.
That’s interesting. No one’s given that answer before, so that’s great. Dallas, you’ve got a lot going on, I mean, with 37 boards that you’re on and four daughters and just your job. I really do want to thank you for taking the time to be with us. I would just like to give you the final word.
Jack, I just want to thank you for the opportunity and thank you for what you’re doing to help the CFO community. It’s important to have these kinds of conversations that are balanced in this crazy world. I appreciate the hard work that all of your CFO viewers and listeners are putting in. I wish everyone the best of luck in the coming years.
