Leveraging Global Expertise to Shape a Financial Future

In 2021, ADP’s HR leader reached out to Don McGuire, then the company’s globe-trotting EMEA president, to gauge his interest in stepping into the firm’s CFO role. McGuire was surprised, inasmuch as it had been nearly two decades since he had veered off the traditional finance career track. During this interim, McGuire had taken on various global leadership roles far removed from the typical CFO pathway.

However, as the former CFO of ADP Canada, McGuire was by no means an unlikely candidate. Still, the leap from being CFO of a single geography to being CFO of an entire publicly traded corporation would be significant, and McGuire’s experiences along his unique previous journey served to make the unexpected offer to him only more intriguing.

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry. Take the time to listen, learn, and challenge—in that order. Not everything goes your way, but even when it doesn’t, there is still a learning opportunity.” –Don McGuire, CFO, ADP

As it turns out, back in 2002, while serving as CFO of ADP Canada, McGuire had come to a similar crossroads. Although his career in finance had been progressing smoothly, his curiosity about the broader business landscape had led him to consider a different direction. Encouraged by his superior, ADP Canada’s president—who had noticed McGuire’s strong rapport with clients during joint meetings—McGuire took a leap of faith, stepping out of his finance role and into a client services leadership position. Taking on this mission—devoid of a “C” title—was a calculated risk, but McGuire believed that by immersing himself in the operational side of the business, he could gain valuable insights and broaden his leadership skills. Very consequentially, this move allowed him to engage directly with clients, manage teams, and drive business outcomes in ways that traditional finance roles seldom offer.

This bold decision set McGuire on a unique career path, ultimately equipping him with the diverse experiences that would make him an ideal candidate for ADP’s CFO role nearly 20 years later.

CFOTL: Tell us about today’s ADP … what sets it apart from its competitors?

McGuire: ADP is a great company. When I first got the call to interview “way back when,” I was at Black & Decker. I didn’t know a lot about ADP, but I did some research and became surprised to learn how they were everywhere and just had so many opportunities in so many countries around the world. The big things that are really important to ADP are simply its focus and dedication. We are very mindful of the importance that we have in people’s day-to-day lives and very cognizant of how what we do allows the economy to continue to hum in the U.S. and other markets.

I believe that everyone at ADP has this mind-set of being fully committed to what we do, which is really just the starting point for a culture in which there is so much shared vision around what we need to do to make things better for our clients and continue to grow the business.

Our company is very unlike most others. This year, we’ll be celebrating not only our 75th anniversary but also, hopefully, our 50th consecutive year of dividend increases, which would make us a dividend king. We’ve had only seven CEOs in our entire history, starting in 1949 with our founder, Henry Taub, who had an accounting background. Over time, I think that our finance-oriented CEOs have outnumbered our non-finance ones only by four to three. We have always been a very tight-knit organization, and the people who have run this company have done so for extended periods of time. This has been not only because the right people were hired to take on these roles but also because they had been around long enough to have been themselves embedded with the culture that they expected to be able to continue to promulgate within the company. We have always been very, very consistent in delivering what we do, and one of the reasons for this is that we have always made sure that we had consistency in our leadership at the top.