Episode 132: Craig Clay, President, Global Capital Markets, DFIN

Sure. My story starts like many: I got a job after college through relationships, and then quickly after that I was introduced to a company called R. R. Donnelley. It was my second job, but I joined them in 1995, so a long time ago. I moved to California from Texas as a pricing analyst, so I joined the company in the finance organization and had a really terrific succession of opportunities. One of the things I would say to folks listening is to listen and look for those opportunities. They presented themselves through finance, which was my background, then moved into sales and into marketing through the pricing organization. I moved to New York quickly after I joined, in 1997, where I spent most of the rest of my career. We were at a business unit of R. R. Donnelley that was doing SEC reporting and document management. Over the years we had several acquisitions that really accelerated the company. The business units we bought included an outsourcing company called Office Tiger, which was incredible to have that experience of a large acquisition, multinational, and being able to run and integrate it. We bought our largest competitor, Bowne, during the financial crisis, and then most recently in 2016 we spun out as a standalone public company where we're really focused on being a software company, turning our long legacy into software products across a number of business opportunities in governance, risk, and compliance. It's been a long time in one place, but I was always on the move.

Well, outside of the stock tips that I wish I had taken or not taken, from a career perspective, it's to step into the biggest problem areas, to be on the lookout for things that are transformative. I had a number of opportunities because I stepped into things that others saw as problems, whereas they almost always are opportunities. I think that's the way to have a quick progression of a succession of promotions and opportunities: to take things that are complicated, big, and hairy, dive into them, chunk them up into smaller pieces, and be successful.

Yeah, actually somebody on my first day of work said, 'Why did you take this job? This industry is over.' I think it's a good call out that when someone thinks one thing is over, something else is beginning. It's that ability to see through that. The great story of our company and of my time here is that transformation. Things could have been over, and we had competitors that are no longer in business, but there's something else that's needed and something else that we have an opportunity to provide a solution to. It's classic transformation. When there are companies that do it well and people that do it well, and those that don't, you have to take what you have today and focus on the future so that you have a future. You can't just deliver where you are today.

From that perspective, the ability to drive transformation versus the current business: it's really easy to get wrapped up in all the current things that are put on your plate. I often tell people that answering email is not work. Answering the constant ringing of what just has to happen for the current business isn't what's transformational. I think it's also assembling a diverse group of people, diversity of opinion and experiences, who think boldly and really focus on that larger strategic goal. It's identifying roles that are needed to reimagine and deliver on the company's purpose, making sure everybody understands and knows the company's purpose. That allows us to take ownership of the total team's behavior, which fosters trust and collaboration and a commitment to leading the company forward rather than dwelling on personal advancement. It really has to be a team advancement and a company advancement.

Well, the whole world has been upended in the last couple of years. To me, this COVID post-COVID environment is really the start of the new economy, the turning of the page of the way things always work. Where I've seen success is companies and individuals who step into this moment in time. We as a company are permanent work from home. What does that mean? Last year we started to be together again, so we started to have a cadence of meetings, team meetings, not just Zoom but in-person leadership meetings. It's an opportunity to do both, to meet people where they're at. They've figured out, I mean I'm in my third-floor office, I have a lot more time without commuting to New York City. There's something I miss organically about seeing people and being with people, so I'm trying to ensure that I schedule and replicate that. I'm trying to do the same with travel: when I travel, I don't just show up in a place and go to a room and get on a bunch of conference calls or Zooms. You actually want to travel and be with people, meet with people, people work for and with people. In this post-COVID environment, it's a real opportunity to do both, to give people a real gift: the lack of commuting, working from different locations, while still having a company that's connected and has a strong culture.

I think it's a few things. The first is recognizing people. There's a lot of goodness happening, a lot of positivity, and you have to bring that to people. We have a system here at DFIN for how we make that happen and how I can personally be a part of recognizing directly or recognizing those who have been recognized. I think it's also having a culture of candor, one where you can bring feedback, ideas, and ways that people can improve things. Having that constant feedback loop of conversation is far superior to any annual review process. It keeps things from festering and keeps people alive and moving forward. I think you have to ask people about themselves, have a personal relationship, and understand what's happening in people's lives. It's really a challenge, especially right now with the holidays, the post-holidays, an enormous population that had COVID dealing with the complexities of that and what it means for their own family, the lack of holiday they may have had, coming back to work while potentially still not feeling well. It's a real challenging situation, and just owning that, stepping into it, and being honest and real with people goes a long way. They talk about the Great Resignation. I think if you're close to people, that's the most important thing. People work for people. They want to feel valued, they want to feel transparent, they want a way to measure their success. Then all the other factors come into play.

Yeah. Anybody who's joining our company right now, we are giving them somebody at a peer level who's a mentor to make sure they're checking in and bringing that person along, to connect and have a connection especially when people aren't seeing each other as often or at all. We're really fortunate that we chose to have our first global meeting in May of 2022. We were considering February at one point, happy that's not the case. People knowing that we'll hopefully be together, and we have a nice virtual cadence in the run-up to that, I think will be helpful. Another thing I'm doing, which the idea came from a Brené Brown podcast where she was encouraging reverse mentorships, is setting up individual and sometimes smaller group calls with new people who are selling a product or new people who are designing or going to market, really getting the client-facing part of the organization that's out there selling and talking to our clients. Me getting with them to understand more clearly what they're seeing on a day-in, day-out basis, to take some of those ideas and hopefully put them into larger action.

I think it gets back to really understanding what the company's purpose is: why are we here, then why am I here to contribute to that, and my team, what are we here to contribute? It's having a real purpose-driven mentality. In our case, we're a public company. We have investors with aspirations for us, a board, a management team. We have a clearly defined destination about where we're going and what we're doing. To me, that's incredibly exciting because it's a transformational story of what we had been to what we will be. That gives me individually purpose, it gives my team purpose, and I think it gives us something to unify behind as we look forward to what we're going to achieve. Part of that is that we've seen enormous success as we look back over the last year or two. We've seen it with our company performance, with our stock performance. When you see it resonating, it certainly is very motivational as well.

My first book that I still give out, I'm not sure who actually gave it to me, but it was a gift when I got my first big new role back at R. R. Donnelley in the early aughts, is a book called 'So You're in Charge, Now What?' It's a checklist of really preparing yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally about time management, managing the expectations of you, your family, your boss, your colleagues, the people who work with you. It's shaping the team, talking about inheriting a team versus building a team and the levels of decision rights you have. It's how to communicate and what to communicate. There are things to avoid: never criticize your predecessor, because somebody is always going to have been a fan of that person. It's a terrific guide for anybody in a new role, an expanded role, or a new company, to jump in and be highly successful based on some common practices. Another book: I'm a huge Adam Grant fan. Last year he had 'Think Again,' which I have given to my team this year because it talks about the need to rethink and unlearn. Those skills are more important than intelligence. It requires much more. In a transformational situation, we're having to not disavow the past but celebrate it and move forward. It's a real good call out of how you can unlearn some behaviors while learning how to potentially do them in a different way. Everybody talks about digitization, but there's very little difference in digitization of the past to the future. It's surprising how many don't take the necessary steps to unlearn some of the past in order to move forward.

Yeah, again my big Adam Grant fan. I love, I think I've linked on our Instagram, he's putting out his quotes. We talked about people and connecting with people. One that I actually use today is 'Talented people are attracted to those who care about them.' If you just take a little bit of time to understand and care about somebody, ask questions, manage that process and the communication, people are going through so many things: dealing with elderly parents, children, college. You never know where people are. If you just understand that, you can have empathy, follow up, it creates an incredible connection. He also has one: 'Don't get stranded at the summit of Mount Stupid.' The underlying story is about making a mountain out of something that shouldn't be there, doing things that shouldn't happen. Also, 'Don't carry the mountain, you're supposed to climb the mountain.' A lot of people sort of say, 'I'm going to take hold of this.' He has a lot of good metaphors.

I love to ski. I love being outside. I ski, I play winter paddle. I love being out and about. My kids thankfully ski and play paddle, and they're in high school and soon to be college, so they're all playing various sports. I'm now finding that I don't dread their sports anymore because I can see how it's going to end: they'll all be gone. So it's fun to be with my family and connect with them and do as much as I can while they're still here.

I was fortunate enough that someone took us to an offsite and it was a class about preparation. I have this thing called the Preparation Planner, and it's seven questions. I have found that being prepared is not very difficult, it doesn't take a lot of time, and so few people do it. The advice I would give everyone is to take just a little bit of time to be prepared when you have a call or a meeting. Just a little bit of time to understand the why: why would that person have invited you, if it's your boss, a peer, or you're serving in some other capacity. Understand the why. Just a little bit of time to read some of the information. I find that people who do that are just geniuses in the room, just because they've prepared a little bit, done a little bit of research, come with a question, having read anything that's been distributed previously. It takes minutes to be a little bit organized and a little bit prepared. I think it completely sets people apart from those who just sort of show up in this Zoom, next one, click and run, and sort of 'Why am I here?' It really sets people apart and moves organizations forward.

Absolutely, thank you so much, Mark.