A (Very) Late Thank You Note

Five years ago today I received a wonderful gift that changed my life.

When I was a child, my mother always insisted I write a “thank you” note when I received a gift. Compliance was required within 48 hours. Grammar and spelling were checked. Postage was provided.      

The habit continued into adulthood although the notes today are normally sent by email, text or other form of messaging.

So today I am “righting a wrong” by writing this note:

Dear FMC:

Please accept my heartfelt appreciation for firing me on 9/10/2012. I can’t thank you enough for creating a “Reduction In Force” (RIF) "group" of one just for me. That was really special - above and beyond my wildest dreams.

I feel terrible that I have waited so long to let you know your kindness will never be forgotten.

All the best,

Joe

                                                              The “Backstory”

The true irony is I am very thankful to FMC. Don’t look for a sarcastic punchline. One isn’t coming.

In 1992, FMC allowed me to transition from a boring finance position to the commercial area. When their lithium mine in North Carolina was running out of ore before their brine project in Argentina started, they gave me the assignment to acquire lithium stockpile material from the company that originally outbid them. They were desperate for feedstock to keep the business going. That was just the beginning.

When SQM’s start-up changed the the competitive balance of the industry in 1997, I was sent to Santiago to “make peace” and set up a meeting for my boss. Months later I got to negotiate a tolling agreement with SQM which was critical to maintaining FMC's position in the lithium market. Once the details were agreed on, of course, the agreement became the “work” of my boss who got the credit but I got the experience. 

Extensive international travel came next as I was given global responsibility for FMC's upstream lithium business. Ultimately, in 1999, I was asked to move with my family to Japan which was the fastest growing market at the time. We arrived in early 2000.

I loved my eleven-year ex-pat life with FMC. So did my family. My time in Asia put me direct contact with the people who started Ganfeng and Tianqi. I dealt directly with all the major lithium battery companies in Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan from the time they were just getting started. I spent time with the major spodumene converters and made countless trips to Xinjiang to spend time with the original lithium producer in China.

While in Asia, we traveled from Tibet to New Zealand

I was also President of two Japanese Joint Ventures and a Chinese Wholly Owned Foreign Entity (WHOFE). Great experience.

I was “the lithium guy” in Asia long before lithium was cool. FMC enabled that and, yes, I am sincerely thankful. The fact FMC neglected me from an oversight perspective was a huge benefit. They always paid the bills. Actually at one point they paid my expense reports for nine years without any of them being properly approved. When an internal auditor discovered their process broke down they sent an audit team to Asia. When the multi day audit was over, they discovered they owed me some money based on how they did the currency translation.

They didn't play golf in Xinjiang 

I have written a couple of times about the mean spirited and petty way I was actually “let go” in 2012 but that is only how my FMC story ended. Most of my time there was fun, it simply ended on a sour note.

FMC didn’t have an effective process for handling ex-pats in Japan or China so I got to create many of my own rules which for me was an ideal situation. I didn’t like the ex-pat “handbook” from the company that FMC hired to “administer” my assignment so I got my direct bosses to agree to “side letters” – waivers to the parts of the policy I didn’t like. When corporate HR found out – they were not happy.

Our daughters embraced life in Japan

I had several bosses in the eleven years I was out of the country. Since my business area was growing fast and very profitable and my day was their night, I rarely communicated with HQ beyond sending a short monthly update.

We lived in an apartment in Japan overlooking Kobe Bay that cost the company 8 times more than my US house payment. Later, in Shanghai, we had a great house with a driver and maid. My daughters went to excellent international schools at company expense. My family also had the opportunity to travel extensively in Asia, Australia and NZ.  I had golf club memberships in Japan and China. What's not to like?

Given almost all my bills were paid directly by the company and I got a cost of living stipend, I saved  85% of my after-tax income for eleven years. That would never have been possible if I didn’t stay overseas when nobody else was willing to replace me.

In Cambodia we found the guy on the cover of the guidebook

 

In January 2010, FMC brought in a new CEO who changed the company and not in a positive way for many employees including me. FMC always tended to have a baseless arrogance but the new guy took it to a different level. I knew my days were numbered two years before I got the axe. On top of that, at the end of 2010, I moved back to the US after eleven years building the lithium business in Asia with little adult supervision from HQ. Reverse culture shock was about to hit me.

When I arrived back in North Carolina after eleven years outside the US, I was not prepared for what the US office had become: a more bureaucratic, politically correct place. A place where I didn’t want to be. I hung around because my younger daughter was attending one of the most expensive universities in the US and if I left on my own I would have had a non-compete agreement to deal with. The non-compete was void if the company let me go so really getting fired was “win-win”.

Towards the end of my ex-pat assignment, I worked for a very capable person who was extremely helpful to me then and continues to be to this day. He left the company a few months before I did and helped me transition to what I am doing now. Thanks, Jon.

A recap of the day I was fired and my wife's wise advice to me can be found here:  http://jpl-expatblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/moving-on.html but the point of this exercise was to make it clear that I do really appreciate the fact that, absent my experience at FMC, I would not have Global Lithium today.

I miss my former FMC team in Shanghai but am glad I stayed in the lithium business

On the evening of 9/10/2012 I called my daughters in LA and NYC to tell them I was no longer working for FMC. I was surprised and pleased that in both cases they said they felt bad it had happened but it was probably best and that they appreciated that FMC had enabled them to grow up overseas. Both my daughters graduated from high school in Shanghai. 

Of course appreciating the past doesn’t mean I won’t continue to express my feelings about the way FMC (Livent) runs their lithium business now.