After a few years of being mostly unplugged from global payments topics, I paused while scrolling through Linked In. McKinsey’s interview of Don Callahan, “Rewiring Citi for the digital age,” caught my attention. At the time, Callahan was Citibank’s Head of Operations and Technology.
Perusing the article, I felt nostalgia for the years I was singularly focused on global banking as a consultant. I also felt nostalgia for what I enjoyed about Citibank’s culture both as a full-time employee and a consultant.
Citi was, in my experience, more entrepreneurial and more genuinely global than the other big banks. Citi’s teams were smaller, smarter, nimbler, and more intimately connected across geographies than others.
Citibank’s solutions were informed by their unique culture and the will and ingenuity of their people. How not to admire a bank that, according to company lore, had delivered payments by rickshaw to accommodate the lack of infrastructure in an emerging market?
As I read the Callahan interview, I recalled a lunch with a Citibank Business Head years before–a rare quiet moment when we had time to talk in an executive dining room overlooking the sky and the Hudson River, the statue of liberty and a barge beckoning below.
We were reviewing a client presentation in which I had included a section on “The Future of Payments” and a quote from Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, about a digital innovation being pioneered by Japan’s leading cellular companies. Friedman had described how you could use your phone to scan a bar code on a Madonna poster to buy tickets for her concert.
“Mobile” and “digital” were not yet part of the payments vernacular in North America. No one was even talking about it in New York.
“New York needs to talk to Japan,” I advised my client, expecting her to cut the quote. Most clients would; the product didn’t exist, and the concept hadn’t been vetted.
“I’m glad you have time to read because I do not,” she said, as she turned the page.
The quote stayed. A few days later, someone mentioned, “The client liked the Friedman quote.”
Flash forward to 2024. What do we most need now that we are deep into the digital age?
We need space.
An executive who travels internationally, told me, “I have no space, mentally.” His lack of mental space and anxiety level had landed him in the emergency room.
I recommended a couple of “micro” practices he could do throughout his busy day to reduce stress. His favorite was the simplest one–pausing for a moment and bringing his awareness to the soles of his feet–to the soft rug, smooth wood, or cool tiles, in whatever hotel he was passing through.
As he focused his attention on the tactile sensations in the soles of his feet, he experienced a break from the thought stream that had landed him in the ER.
Moments of contentment started to seep into and permeate his days. He began to enjoy more of the “mental space” as he called it, that he longed for.
He also felt more grounded. The act of bringing your attention to the ground beneath you can bring you back to your center.
Another simple practice for cultivating “mental space” and coming back to center is to enjoy the breath.
As you bring your attention to the breath, you might notice there is a little pause at the end of the inhale and a pause at the end of the exhale. These pause points are a space of pure presence beyond thinking.
It’s in this pure presence, the space between the breaths, the space between thoughts, that we access “the still, small voice,” clarity, our deepest insights. From that space, skillful action emerges.
When we commit to daily meditation, mindfulness, or “embodied awareness” practices, we have more access to this space of pure presence.
We also become more aware of our thoughts, our conditioned thinking. When we do, we can choose to free ourselves from our conditioning and make a different choice, not one driven by habit.
There are many ways to cultivate space–and freedom–in the mind and body. If you would like to explore some of these foundational practices, please feel free to reach out.