The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3146

Chapter 3146: Leadership Deficit

The choice of deciding who got to be in charge of the Larkinson Clan or the Living Mech Corporation was not a trivial matter. Either of them were incredibly influential to the lives of Ves and many other Larkinsons.

The right people in charge could lead them into prosperity while the wrong people could easily collapse everything that Ves had ever built!

Though Ves would have preferred to be in charge of everything, he was only one person and he did not wish to compromise his mech design career any further.

He had no choice but to embrace the necessary evil of trusting others to perform all of these jobs on his behalf.

Ves had no fundamental objection to raising Novilon Purnesse and Raymond Billingsley-Larkinson as two of the three chief ministers of the Larkinson Clan.

As the first ones to hold these new posts, they would be able to wield a wide amount of influence. They also had the privilege to set up a lot of precedents that subsequent chief ministers would feel compelled to follow.

It was therefore critical that the first batch of chief ministers were completely sound. While Raymond was not quite the perfect candidate that Ves had in mind, the current COO's age, pedigree, demeanor, prior performance and trustworthiness completely met his approval.

He was okay with letting Raymond take charge of the clan at large. In fact, he had already been doing this in a limited capacity as a member of the soon-to-be-defunct Executive Council.

The Executive Council was basically a weaker version of the body of chief ministers. Both of them were supposed to be the main executive branch of the Larkinson Clan, but the former proved to be inadequate due to the lack of strong leadership emphasis. It was quite difficult for the clansmen to get excited about being ruled by a glorified committee.

Therefore, changing Raymond's second responsibility into his primary one was not that drastic of a change. The only difference was that a chief minister was a lot more authoritative than a mere member of the Executive Council.

What Ves wasn't so sure about was who Raymond had in mind as a replacement.

Raymond's projection adopted a serious expression. "There is no easy way to say this, but the Living Mech Corporation has long suffered from an increasing shortage of executive talents. It's easy enough to fill up the vacancies at the middle and lower level of the hierarchy with existing clansmen who have been studying hard to increase their qualifications, but there are limits to how much you can improve. For a company as big as the LMC, you can't promote any average middle manager to a crucial executive position. We need to draw from a different pool of manpower, but the issue with that is that this pool is incredibly tiny within our clan."

Ves saw where this was going. "So you decided to draw talents from a larger pool."

"Correct. When our fleet was parked in the Pelsa Ryndover System, we instructed the recruiters to allocate some resources to headhunting potential executive talents. Talulah Silver's manpower pool is much more extensive than ours, so we had no problem finding plenty of decent executives. Still, when we brought them to our fleet, we encountered quite a bit of issues when we tried to induct them into the clan."

"Let me guess. These guys failed the loyalty test, right?"

"Yes." Raymond sighed. "Unlike the bulk of the recruits who have yet to achieve success and are sincerely grateful to our clan for giving them an opportunity to rise, those who already feel as if they are winners are considerably less committed."

"So all of those prospective executives you picked up were selfish bastards who only cared about filling their pockets and taking advantage of the LMC's lack of senior leadership talent to land a cushy job that allows them to play around with trillions of hex credits, is that right?"

"…Close enough. In the end, only a fraction of our selection managed to get through, but that makes them all the more remarkable. They are less selfish than others and developed a genuine bond with our clan and people."

Ves didn't care too much about the executive positions these newcomers took up. What he did care about was making sure that the person at the top was firmly in his pocket. As long as this was the case, the LMC probably wouldn't harm his interests.

"Tell me about the person you think is a worthy candidate to lead the LMC."

Raymond transmitted a brief record over the communication channel. Ves quickly read through the material. He was mildly impressed.

"Dr. Gilbert Hantler studied to become a mechanical engineer in the Ivena Federation and graduated with honors." The elder Larkinson said. "He went on to work for a major mech company that was founded by a Senior Mech Designer. He slowly climbed his way up the ranks before switching over to a management track. He did well in this capacity and continued to study in order to increase his leadership qualifications. In his last years at the company, he served as the company's chief production officer."

This was quite a solid track record. Dr. Hantler had managed to accomplish more than almost any other citizen of the Ivena Federation in the sixty years of his life. What impressed Ves the most was that the man possessed a common civilian background and slowly climbed his way up through his own efforts.

"Why him?" Ves probed. "Why not another recruit? I doubt he's the only candidate that is acceptable to you. What puts this guy ahead of your other choices?"

"There are several reasons why, but if I have to pick the most important one, it's that Dr. Hantler is the most steady and conservative out of all of the other choices."

"Oh?"

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