Don Dixon has held finance positions in startups and established organizations, been through acquisitions and IPOs, and is now CFO at DataStax. In his experience, rising to the CFO position requires understanding something much more complicated than finance: people.
Once you’re at that executive position, managing numbers is a smaller part of your daily job than managing the people on your team.
Don is so committed to empowering the people in the finance department that he doesn’t even think of it as managing.
He sees his role as closer to coaching. Instead of trying to mold each person to fit DataStax, he helps them improve their all-round skill sets so that they can achieve their career goals.
Even if that means employees end up leaving for a higher position the organization can’t currently offer, Don knows he’s done his job.
On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Don discusses how to help the finance department feel connected to customers and how to give everyone on the team just the right amount of transparency. He also explains why your IPO delivery team should be as small as possible.
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