Dear Team,
Over the weekend I helped my son Luke assemble a bookshelf for his dorm. It looked simple. Six planks, a sack of bolts, and the classic IKEA Allen wrench. I figured we’d knock it out in under an hour and still leave me time to prep for our upcoming Town Hall in Jacksonville where I’ll be sharing the same five transformation slides in a slightly different order.
But Luke looked at me and said, “Dad, I want to build it myself.”
Now my first instinct, after years of stocking the dairy aisle at 5 a.m., running sub-7s before sunrise, and yelling “line change” from the bench as a volunteer hockey coach, was to just do it quickly myself. Efficiently. Quietly. Correctly. But I paused. I handed him the Allen wrench. And I watched him take ownership.
We made mistakes. Panel F was upside down. Shelf C split under pressure. Eventually we made the call. That shelf had to go. It simply didn’t fit the new structure.
And in that moment it hit me. We are that bookshelf.
At Citi we’re in the middle of rebuilding something leaner and stronger. That means removing pieces that once served us but no longer support our future. That means saying goodbye to some great colleagues. Not because they didn’t add value but because they don’t fit the updated blueprint that my highly paid friends at PwC repurposed from another client and swapped in our logo.
We’ve also had to make adjustments elsewhere. Like our 401(k) match, which is now more “market-aligned” (read: reduced). It’s not easy. But sometimes, in the spirit of driving our organization forward, you stop asking whether the structure is perfectly stable or whether everyone is still inside. You just rearrange the parts, declare it transformational, and leave the fine-tuning to whoever's in the seat after you.
Now we’ve heard your questions about raises. And while compensation structures remain under review, rest assured your feedback has been noted — possibly even forwarded to someone in HR. Of course, if you’ve ever emailed HR, you know that’s more of a symbolic gesture than a functional one. In the meantime, I’m pleased to share that this August we’re offering extra work-from-home flexibility. Part of our broader effort to promote work-life balance and reduce the electric bill at 388 Greenwich.
Yes it’s tough. Yes the bookshelf leans a little. But it stands. Because we made the hard decisions. Because we let go of what didn’t serve the structure. And because we trusted that a simplified foundation still supports strategic goals and senior compensation targets.
Thank you for all that you do.
Trim