Shell Moments 1- Joining Shell

[In the last 100 days with Shell, a company I have worked for over 26 years in 12 different roles and in multiple countries, I decided to journal down the Shell Moments and wrote 26 chapters. I then shared with my Asia Pacific teams in the last few weeks in Shell as part of my parting gift to the community, which I have been entrusted to lead for nearly a third of my career in Shell. The team surprised me by giving me a farewell gift - they made a 'book' out of the 26 Shell Moments I wrote, together with stories shared by my colleagues about me. On this last day in Shell, I decided to share with a large audience how my Shell journey started in 1995.]

1989 was a fateful year. I’d just graduated with a dual major in in English Literature and International Journalism. China Daily, where I’d been interning, just offered me full time position, and I felt like I was making good progress on my dream to become the “Dan Rather[1] of China”.

You could say that I’d found my “Ikigai”. I was strongly supported by my bosses. I was doing what I loved. I was very happy. When Hu Yaobang, the Party Secretary, ?passed away that spring, I was part of the China Daily delegation to pay him tribute at his home, and was involved doing stories during that period of time when it was rather free to interview anyone you’d like to. It was very meaningful work.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered that Dan Rather himself would be in China to cover Gorbachev’s upcoming historical visit, a pivotal moment in history. But that summer had other things in store. As the sun rose in the background, I watched as my idol, Dan Rather, reporting the chaotic situation of the thousands of students encamped on Tiananmen Square, some were my fellow schoolmates I’d been offering my moral support to just hours before. This was what I was meant to do and wanted to do, an investigative reporter.

However, we now know how that defining moment in history played out. As a result, I had to give up China Daily’s full-time employment offer, and my realisation that my dream of being part of an independent fourth estate was over.

HF, whom I’d been dating and would later go on to marry, received an offer to join the China Tianchen Chemical Engineering Company (CTCEC), a state-owned subsidiary of the then Ministry of the Chemical Industry. Taking my future mother-in-law’s advice, I joined him at CTCEC too, partly in search of a new career outside of journalism, and partly to maintain and strengthen our relationship.

Despite my initial reservations, it turned out that we’d joined the petrochemical industry at the right time. As China rapidly developed, CTCEC’s growing capabilities as a turnkey contractor gave me an introduction to the diverse world of international industrial and engineering conglomerates. And these organisations were hungry for employees that could speak both Mandarin and English.

One of these companies was Shell. In 1992, I supported engagements with them as a technology licensor for an ethylene cracker in Tianjin, and they asked if I‘d like to join the organisation. While attracted by this offer, there was an unspoken “bond” for those of us who had benefited from fully-subsidised tuition fees in university then. We were expected to serve the country in a state-owned entity for at least 5 years.

True enough, at an encounter with PS, then Chief Representative of Shell Beijing, and TC, project lead for the Nanhai Project at a technology conference just one year later, I was asked if I‘d finally completed my national obligations. Shell HR followed up with a phone call soon after, offering me an interview for a role as a Public Affairs officer.

I must admit – I had no idea what Public Affairs was. I had a vague idea of this profession from a show on national television, The Public Relations Lady, and it gave me an image of hosting banquets, effortlessly networking with senior businesspeople, and untangling sticky situations when they arose. And, armed with this slightly inaccurate impression of public affairs, I somehow made my way through the interview process and received a letter of offer from Shell.

Interestingly, that wasn’t my only offer. I also heard back from a German technology company, and a trading firm based in Hong Kong. Funny enough, Shell offered the lowest starting salary out of the three, with the trading firm, unsurprisingly, taking top spot. However, upon speaking with former colleagues and mentors in the industry, they all concurred that Shell took the lead when it came to the sheer depth of the organisation‘s technical expertise, and that the opportunities to build my professional knowledge were unrivalled there. I visited Shell’s headquarters at The Hague a year earlier on a business trip with CTCEC, and it aligned with the advices and impression from my engineering friends. I decided to bite the bullet, opt for the lowest offer, hopping out of the ‘iron rice bowl’ （铁饭碗） CTCEC represented at that time and into the unknown depths of this Anglo-Dutch company.

While it may not matter as much in less collectivist cultures, my father did not approve of my decision to join Shell. I was well recognised and rewarded for my performance in CTCEC – I was already promoted earlier than the ranks to a middle management role as the Deputy Director of the International Business Department. There was even a company-sponsored apartment for us! He felt that the company valued me, that it still provided ample opportunity for growth, and even opportunities for international exposure – I’d already travelled to nearly 10 countries, such as USA, Canada, Japan, Italy, Span, The Netherlands and Poland, etc. while working on large petrochemical EPC projects. Was his daughter just engaging in youthful ambition（青春饭） and making a rash decision to abandon a stable career for a ruthless MNC that could make her redundant at any time?

I understood my dad’s misgivings, and more importantly, the love, care, and concern that lay beneath his words. And that’s what made him the first external recipient of the first issues of the Shell Circle, a Shell Greater China newsletter, where I served as an editor as well. Writing to him shaped the way I wrote with stakeholders in mind, and taught me to clearly communicate our culture, strategy and purpose to an external audience.

Till today, I‘m often asked by mentees, friends and colleagues how they would know if a job or organisation is the right fit for them. I normally asked these two questions. Firstly, does the organisation have the potential to grow? Secondly, does the organisation give you space and support to learn and grow? They are two sides of the same coin – a learner mindset that should permeate the culture of the company you’re considering.

Of the 3 offers I‘d received back then, Shell offered the lowest starting salary, but had the deepest technical and organisational knowledge, history and brand equity. From my perspective today, 26 years later, I realised that Shell focused on developing its people, and that translated into opportunities to learn, transformational personal growth, and continued evolution of the organisation in response to the energy transition. Despite the non-existent internet back then, I’d like to think I stumbled upon the right choice, given the insights shared by my mentors and friends.

Just a couple of years later, my father stopped worrying about my choice. I realised I‘d unconsciously treated him as my very first key stakeholder outside Shell, figuring out his concerns and expectations step by step, and employing every channel I had at my disposal to reassure him, and to share with him the story of my job at Shell. In the summer of 1995, as I travelled to Singapore to attend a training session for Public Affairs colleagues in Asia, I found my definitive answer to his question of whether I‘d given up career stability for youthful ambition.

While I was a 3-month-old “Shell baby” then, other colleagues at the training session had been with the organisation for 20 or 30 years. Little did I know then that I would one day become part of that club of working in one company for over 25 years. I‘d not given up an ‘iron rice bowl’, but I’d started on a lifelong journey of learning and personal growth.

(??Pages from the 'Book' my team made as a farewell gift )

(??I asked colleagues whom I have worked with closely to describe me in 3 words, and I got a word cloud as gift!)

[Disclaimer: (1)The events/stories told are true happenings, nonetheless they are told from my perspective and in the context of the roles and responsibilities that I had at the time. (2) Names of colleagues/friends are abbreviated for privacy.]

[1] CBS Television Journalist