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program in Washington, D.C. After the event, I caught up with David and asked him a few questions:
Can you tell us a little bit about your role as Citi's Head of Productivity?
I am often delighted, though not so surprised when people ask me what "Productivity" means. It gives me the opportunity to talk about the work we are doing every day across Citi, taking our execution to the next level, and delivering on our mission as an enabler of progress. It makes for a lively, engaging conversation on new enterprising ideas we should scale across our global organization.
I am most grateful for the relationships I've developed working with smart, passionate, globally-minded leaders. It's one thing to deliver exceptional results responsibly. It's another to deliver them with imagination and determination. These are important characteristics that I value as I think about how to find and create more opportunities for our future global leaders.
Why is productivity so critical to an organization?
Productivity's goal is to tap into the strengths of our franchise and seek to continuously improve how our bank operates – for our clients, our shareholders, our communities, and for all our employees. This means helping the firm meet its financial targets by digitizing our core franchise processes, developing new capability-building tools to make better informed decisions, and creating new development opportunities for our best people.
At Know Your Value in Washington, D.C., you offered key tips for a successful interview. Can you highlight your top three?
The Know Your Value event is focused on actionable lessons for becoming your own best advocate, and women's advocacy in particular. What advice do you have for increasing women representation at the senior level?
Whenever I hear a question like this, I immediately think about the advice I would give my daughter when she enters the work force. I would tell her to align herself with someone who is effective and understands that his or her achievement is reflective of hers; to always look for assignments that make her uncomfortable enough that she can develop and learn the skills for the next job; and finally, to focus on her potential and where she wants to be next year versus where she fits today.
At the same time, as my daughter has many more years to go until she starts a career, I think about the things I can do as an individual to pave the way. As someone who has seen his fair share of tough problems and turnaround challenges, I can tell you that this is a philosophical and tactical challenge that will require patience and a great deal of effort from everyone. First and foremost, this requires a commitment from all levels of an organization, particularly at the top, for meaningful change. I am encouraged by much of what we're doing across the company – women represent 52% of our workforce, 24% of senior managers (C15+) and 25% of Manager Director promotions this year – and we have an opportunity to make even greater strides and set the benchmark for other financial institutions.
If I can be potentially provocative philosophically – we often focus too much on the diversity of the C-Suite, and not enough on the opportunities that lead to more female representation there. In fact, there are so few C-Suite positions for both genders to begin with; it is in our best interest to focus on actions to prepare women for the C-Suite before they hit what I call the "C-suite glass ceiling." I think we are making progress – and can make even speedier progress as a company, if we continue focusing on where we can create opportunities for women that will be the stepping stones to the C-Suite in the coming years.