We have never met before, likely never will, but as you have inherited the business from your forbearers and are chairman of Maersk and AP Moller Holding. I suppose the buck stops with you.As your executives have said to me in the past, this is nothing personal.I mean it.You may also never see this. But on the infinitesimal probability that you do, do not dismiss them as the words of a disgruntled former employee.I wrote most of this a while ago as part of a cathartic and necessary process of self-reclamation after choosing to exit a Maersk Group business unit whose toxicity had become too corrosive for me to withstand further.I am posting it on my blog as a practical example of how knowing and expressing your feelings and thoughts -&nbsp; even the unpalatable – is important in recovering from burnout and healing from mental distress.If you do read it.Take it as unvarnished feedback on the impact of the pointless changes the company you oversee makes and how it affects employees.Decide if the immeasurable and hidden human cost of constantly altering your business is something you care enough about, and if it will encourage you to make new choices.Let me start by asking you,Why does Maersk tinker with itself so much? Why the constant organizational shifting and changing?For the eleven years I worked in your group, I learned to tolerate the inconveniences, injustices, and chaos of working in an organization that could never really decide what it wanted to be.An organisation that restructured and adapted itself so frequently that nothing was ever stable enough to build anything lasting on.One where its success and longevity were driven primarily by the providence of being in an industry with high barriers to entry, limited substitutes, and the necessity of its services.One that was very difficult to disrupt through technological and financial innovation, so it has no real existential threat with which it contends.One that, regardless, still kept acting as if it was constantly under threat and has created an unhealthy, unstable, and uneven corporate culture, by manufacturing internal chaos and a false sense of urgency.Each new group CEO would formulate and launch “a new strategy”. Then mid-way through said new strategy, change course entirely for another one.Every two to three years, there is something new, each repackaging the same message under different tools, organizational structures, and workflows, giving employees whiplash and draining the will of the organization as it transitions to the next “new thing” even before the previous new thing had the time to solidify or stick.I started my now 17-year career in APM Terminals. While there, I learned to swallow my discomfort at how the chaos of leadership change after leadership change bred toxic internal politics, lack of accountability, hypocrisy and poor leadership and short-term thinking.All of which were left generally unchecked, ignored and even rewarded.I had learned to straddle the fine line of walking on eggshells and picking my battles and to keep internally motivating myself as promises kept being broken, worthy initiatives kept being abandoned for the next “quick win”, “cost cutting target”, “new vision and strategy”.I was able to do this for one reason:Whatever the new strategy, there was always that rare senior executive around me.Someone with the will, authority, and ambition to apply a long-term strategic view amidst the chaos. Someone who needed grunt work necessary to meet those strategic goals.Someone who needed my ability to remain independent in my thinking, challenge the status quo and submit myself for hard tasks that got them what they needed to prove their ideas and gain traction on a difficult agenda.I could make do with being given tasks with no blueprint and being an employee who fell outside the traditional sales, operations, finance, HR or IT roles within the organization.I was actually really happy with being asked by this rare executive to start a new thing, because I loved figuring things out, inasmuch as I could connect it to a long-term, non-self-serving objective.My natural curiosity was necessary for them to get answers; it meant that some autonomy had to be allowed in thinking and creative expression for those tasks to be accomplished. While my position and authority weren’t equal to theirs, my intellect and abilities to try could be regarded by their own merit.Most importantly, it meant I could still do meaningful work that stimulated my mind and could make a difference in the organization and eventually in my country.So, I learned to cope by complaining to close allies, learning to suck it up, developing my situational awareness, being quick in adapting to fluid situations, learning to identify those senior leaders with the will to do what was important long term, so I could provide them the support they needed, then sharing knowledge and encouragement with colleagues who had a similar genuine desire to learn and be productive, not just be political.My main tools were getting good at finding and using data, figuring out the connections between data and issues, then using my voice to speak those truths to power for the collective good, not just solely for my benefit. &nbsp;My rewards were promotions in the local business, interesting new projects to work on, access to senior management, relevance in defining and executing company strategy, and several but unfulfilled promises of opportunities to expatriate.As the musical chairs continued with the constant shuffling or exiting of the company’s management team, I remained useful. My strategy and tools worked.Until they no longer did.Another corporate strategy was launched in 2016. But this one was more brutal and sweeping; it gutted the smaller brands of the group, stripping layer after layer of authority, self-determination, and expertise from them to ensure that they worked to secure the position of the Maersk brand globally.People who understood the businesses of the smaller brands were replaced by those who “knew the mind and way of the company”.&nbsp; Funny how this consistently turned out to only be those who rose through the ranks in Maersk line or executives recruited from other companies altogether.Leaders with the gravitas, knowledge, ambition, and politicking to champion strategic initiatives within the smaller brands were suddenly fired, retired or reshuffled to be replaced by more docile compliant people.I don’t know what the intention in the mind of the visioner was, but in APM Terminals, my end of the group, the strategy was executed as if the patriarch in an already dysfunctional family decided that the only way for the entire family to survive was for the younger less experienced siblings to focus solely on the success of the oldest already most successful sibling and to do so at all cost. Including giving up their own assets and aspirations in the service of the oldest. To do so completely and without question or be punished severely.I worked in a local business unit of APM Terminals and in that environment of chaos, suddenly no strategic thinking or actions was occurring anymore. The intimidated, incompetent or blissfully unaware who now ran the business wouldn’t risk their positions by sticking out their necks as they had seen how their predecessors had their ranks decimated, were stripped of authority or managed out to have their positions given only those who towed the line.Since the effective authority had shrunk for the senior executives around me, their ability to implement even the simplest and most necessary of things disappeared into the corporate ether of the new matrix organization and so did my opportunities to learn by doing, to deploy my curiosity to new things.Project after project became stalled, ignored or cancelledForget thinking ahead and trying to shape the future, even the basic operations customers paid for became so painful to carry out, they ground to a halt.Machines were emptied of fuel and stripped of parts.Ironically, the strategy that stripped APM Terminals of its will and authority provided a burst of innovation and creativity in the corporate HQ and the main brand. As the corporate announcements and new positions jobs kept being published, the rage I felt expanded till it almost suffocated me.There was no longer anyone around me who I could trust to attempt to do anything meaningful. It rendered useless the only tools I knew how to use for navigating my way through the company and still liking myself.Panic attacks became more frequent; I couldn’t breathe from the weight in my chest.I had also become drained and exhausted. I was bone tired from years of swallowing my anger, grinding my teeth in anxiety at the powerlessness I felt when new changes arose. The rage and cynicism expanded as I kept failing to get other positions in the parts of the group where innovation and creativity seemed to be permitted and backed by the corporate will.I watched with rising envy and frustration as the job portal kept posting opportunities in the main brand - opportunities which were always out of reach to me, for reasons no one seemed willing or able to tell me, even when I asked. &nbsp;So, I turned that rage inward, on myself. Whatever was left of my self-esteem, I decimated with a savage inner critic.Someone had to blame or take responsibility for my inability to deploy the only tools of survival and relevance that now worked in this wild place.Because try as I could, I couldn’t become stupid, blind, be a mindless ass kisser, someone who provided only excuses without results or an arsehole who threw people under the bus. This was not an adaptation I could stomach.For a time, I really believed it was all my fault for being unable to behave like that, for taking injustice and nonsense personally and wanting it to stop, so I was angry that I was naïve enough to try to retain principles the company’s managers didn’t really seem to care about.&nbsp;I had to also accept a painful reality. I had become useless there.The tools and skills I had learned from supporting equipment acquisition, port expansion projects, corporate strategy development, exploration of rail- connected and barge connected inland centers were now pointless.I was also now unsafe, because my health suffered from being exhausted, having panic attacks and from having the rage burn me up from inside out.It was only a matter of time before I imploded, hurting myself or someone else.I also knew that there was really no one around who I could tell these things.These people had mismanaged a business, how could I trust them not to mismanage me?No fake insincere motivational speech or unlikely promise was going to cut it this time. It had never in the past, I had only always stayed because I could see that there was space for me, and I really believed I could keep self-actualizing there. &nbsp;Now that the environment had become damaging to me, I didn’t have to stay. So after 3 years of inner struggle and without any back up plan or job lined up, I quit in July 2019.The uncertainty was scary, but the alternative was worse.When asked why I was resigning, depending on the audience I gave answers varying from “ It was time and I want to explore other opportunities out there”, To “This place is awful and I am tired”After 11 years in APM Terminals, from MISE Trainee, to Business Analyst, to Continuous Improvement Manager to Business Development Partner.It was time.My soul knew it before my mind and body did.On the day the project I was working on to develop a cold chain solution between Apapa port and northern Nigeria was formally cancelled, while going home, I had briefly yet seriously contemplated asking the cab driver taking me home to stop the car in the middle of the bridge, so I could jump off into the water.I knew it was time to hand in the resignation letter I had written the month before.I am healthier, happier, clearer-minded, now.I am grateful for every single thing I learned in APM Terminals and Maersk. It is an important part of my career and self actualization journey. Even the awful last few years now have an important context for the role they played in getting to where I am now, 6 years after I left.There is no longer any bitterness or anger left towards Maersk. As for your current employees, I cannot speak for themKind Regards,Ebun Mesaiyete

Expressing what has angered or harmed you, even in a letter that may never be read is cathartic

Open letter to Robert Maersk Uggla

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Open letter to Robert Maersk Uggla

Open letter to Robert Maersk Uggla

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