The Mech Touch

Good leaders were hard to come by, especially for an organization as young as the Larkinson Clan.

"Our leadership deficit is caused by several reasons." Gavin explained. "First, our clan is far too young and we grew way too fast. A more reasonable growth rate would have given us more time to train our existing managers and hire external ones that can quickly plug our gaps."

Ves nodded. "I'm aware of that. We can't help it, though. We need to keep growing if we want to do well in the Red Ocean."

"Second, our clan doesn't have much of a reputation in the areas we are traveling with. If we were based in a fixed location, we would have been able to integrate in the regional community and become a known entity in the job market. Yet because we are constantly on the move, our clan simply hasn't been able to gain any traction in the local scenes we visit."

"That will change once our clan will develop a greater reputation in the Red Ocean over a longer period of time. Right now, we're just passing through."

"I hope that will be the case, but that doesn't address our current setbacks. Now, the last major reason why we aren't able to attract enough senior leaders is because we set our standards way too high."

Now this was an interesting reason. Ves grew curious.

"Aren't they supposed to excel at their jobs?"

"They are, but we are asking more out of them than many other organizations. They not only have to be senior professionals, which are already in smaller numbers, but they also have to pass our loyalty test. That alone cuts down the majority of these folk. With older and more successful people like these, it's a lot harder to earn their loyalty right away. They need to take office within our clan first before we can truly win them over."

This was the trouble of hiring old dogs. They were not as naive as kids fresh out of school. They were also highly desirable and had access to a lot of lucrative job prospects.

"Shouldn't we be able to buy their loyalty by offering higher wages and benefits?" Ves asked.

"That's not possible for these types of people." Gavin shook his head. "Raising the remuneration to higher levels will only cause us to attract a greater proportion of talents who are mainly motivated by their greed. These are exactly the people who are least likely to pass the loyalty test. What we seek are earnest applicants who want to become a part of us because they believe in our cause and care about family and so on. There are actually quite a number of people like that out there but hardly any of them apply to join the Larkinson Clan."

"Why so? What scares them away?"

"We're heading into completely foreign territory. Not only that, but we're heading into a very dangerous territory that has already become notorious for the amount of pioneering fleets that disappear every day."

Those who valued family and were less driven by greed were not as attracted to the prospect of traveling to the Red Ocean. Instead of abandoning everyone they knew to travel hundreds of thousands of light-years away, they would rather settle for working for a more boring company that was closer to their current homes.

Gavin mentioned several credible factors why the entire Larkinson Clan was having trouble with recruiting enough senior managers and executives to fill up the upper hierarchy.

"The Larkinson Army suffers from this deficit the most, with the LMC coming second." Gavin mentioned. "The clan administration is better off at the moment due to the participation of all of the Purnessers, but that will only help us for a while."

Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "This is a difficult issue, then. What do you suggest we do to resolve the shortage?"

"Well.. how about rescuing other fallen influences like the Purnesse Family? This seems to be the easiest way for us to obtain a batch of highly capable upper management types."

"We're not going out of our way to pick another fight, Benny. Any confrontation is dangerous and I don't want to delay our journey to the Red Ocean. It's also unreasonable for us to keep butting into local affairs all of the time."

The incident with the Purnesse Family proved that no one was as innocent as they looked on the surface. Ves did not want to risk the lives of his Larkinsons yet again just to bail out a bunch of bastards who held no sincerity towards the Larkinson Clan.

"Besides, I don't think we'll be able to find a suitable organization that is conveniently in need of rescue."

"The galaxy is quite big, boss. Who knows what you'll find in the local star sectors."

"We're not going to adopt this strategy of recruitment again. We need time to develop in peace."

Once they ruled out this option, they didn't have any easy answers left. Eventually, Ves just threw his hands up and let out a loud sigh.

"Whatever! Let the chief ministers handle this problem. That's what they are for, after all!"

Ves felt much more at ease once he made this realization. Before this moment, he primarily placed his attention on how much control he would lose. It was only now that he acknowledged the benefits of these arrangements.

He could just dump every difficult leadership problem onto their laps and let them sort out the mess!

If the chief ministers failed to do a good job, then they could just take all of the blame!

In just a single minute, Ves turned from feeling reluctant about appointing the chief ministers to embracing their coming!

After finishing his briefing session with Gavin, Ves handled a few other chores before heading over to the design lab.

The Sentry Project had already progressed quite a lot under Gloriana's motivated drive. It had reached feature completion a while ago and was now in the process of refinement.

If everything went well, then the Journeymen would be able to fabricate their next expert mech within a couple of weeks!

Surprisingly enough, Gloriana hadn't dove into her design work at this time. Instead, she was looking over the lab section where the second batch of assistant mech designers were in the process of studying essential subjects.

Due to his wife's high technical standards, she demanded that every member of a design team possess at least a minimum amount of competence in technical design and quality control. She didn't want anyone with a poor foundation in those areas to botch their future assignments and cause delays because of their sloppy approach.

Ves approached her side and looked in the same direction. "How are they?"

"Hmm, there are some mildly promising seeds, but I'm not seeing anything exciting yet." She casually replied. "The good news is that they're all young, so they might be able to surprise us in the future."

When he swept his gaze towards the hundred men and women who were still not ready yet to participate in the design projects, Ves wasn't quite as hopeful.

"It's not that easy to become a Journeyman, as I'm sure you know. We can train them and push them all we want, but at the end of the day, they have to find it in themselves to reach beyond the boundaries of what is possible."

Gloriana smirked at Ves. "Aren't you helping Maikel and Zanthar do just that? The latter has been especially enthused about his studies lately. I think that at least some of these assistants will be able to stand out as long as we nurture them correctly."

"The two can't be compared. The seeds that I'm raising are younger and more malleable. These new recruits all come from different backgrounds and they're not even the cream of the crop of their respective states. We'll have to invest a lot of time in mentoring them if we want to see an actual difference."

"I don't think we have to waste so much time and effort to achieve results. We already have a robust reward mechanism in place, but I think we can expand it a bit in order to motivate the assistants into working even harder."

"Oh? What do you have in mind?" Ves asked.

"We need several different Journeyman-level specialists in order to expand our versatility. For example, we need an energy weapon specialist, a kinetic weapon specialist, a neural interface specialist, a heavy mech specialist and so on. We don't have to obtain them all, but it would be a considerable help if we can get two or three additional specialists."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Don't you realize it, Ves? Since we already have a firm idea on which specialties we need, we can split the assistants in different groups based on their specialties and force them to compete against each other. We can offer them attractive rewards such as tutoring, exclusive textbooks and even opportunities to publish their own mech designs however bad they might be compared to our own work."

Ves looked skeptical.

"I'm not sure about this. You'll pile up too much pressure on their shoulders. Also, the camaraderie of the assistants won't be as good if they have to treat each other as competitors."

"Then we can just skip that." Gloriana simply replied. "We can still keep them grouped together in order to encourage them to swap ideas and gain new inspiration from their exchanges. The main point is that we can encourage them to study specific topics and complete specific assignments that will lead them to developing the specialties we need."

Ves immediately frowned. "That sounds too controlling for my tastes. We should give them the choice to pursue their own specialties without interference from above. What you're doing is pushing them onto a path they might not be truly passionate about but aren't able to recognize this due to their youth and inexperience."

"Hey, that's not the case! In my plan, the assistants are free to choose which specialty group they want to join. It can be related to their current interests or not. As long as they have made their decision, they will receive thematic instruction in one of several broad categories of specialties."

For example, an assistant mech designer who joined the heavy mech group would be able to learn all about heavy armor systems and receive exercises related to heavy mech design.

What exact specialty the more talented assistants ended up developing was up to them. The chance was likely that their choice directly reflected their specialty group.

As Ves thought this over, he felt that it could work. While it provided the assistants with more direction than he liked, as long as the Larkinson Clan would be able to produce a handful of extra Journeymen this way, then he did not object.

"It's kind of like a virtual game…"

Gloriana nodded. "That's exactly the inspiration that I got. In some games, you have characters that can choose to specialize in several different classes or professions. I think that we'll be able to cut down on their confusion by a large margin if we structure their development in this fashion."

"Choice…"

There was something about this approach that Ves found compelling. When he looked down at the rows of silent mech designers who were quietly immersed in their studies, he realized why he felt this method was so significant.

"Classes… choice… specialties…"

What if.. the person that Ves and Gloriana wanted to nurture was their daughter instead of a lowly assistant mech designer?

What if the different classes and specialties were spiritual specialties instead of mech design specialization?

Inspiration suddenly dawned upon him. He merged Gloriana's idea with his ideas on how to give his future children a spiritual advantage and came up with a bold merger!

First, he could implant companion spirits in his children when they were still young. These lifelong partners would grow alongside the kids, but wouldn't show a lot of power at the beginning.

It was only when the children reached their teenage years and already experienced some spiritual development that they had to make a choice.

Which spiritual specialty should their companion spirits acquire? Should their spiritual cats help them become more empathic? Should their companions be able to summon defensive shields in order to protect them in battle?

It was not possible to impart all of these abilities in a single companion spirit at full strength. However, if Ves only included the basic seeds of them at the start, they could slowly gestate and grow in line with the childhoods of the children until they were on the cusp of reaching maturity!

To put it in a simpler analogy, the companion spirit of his daughter would start off as a blank sheet. While this companion spirit would be able to acquire several special abilities based on the ability seeds that Ves put in, they weren't too impressive when his children were still young.

It was only after they had 'leveled up' to a certain age or stage that their companion spirit was ready to evolve.

At that moment, his children would have to choose which evolution form or specialty their companion spirit should develop!

It was a two-stage growth process! One that sacrifices some power at the first stage, but allowed for greater fit and power at the second stage!

Compared to his original idea, this two-stage growth process offered his children much greater choice in determining their own futures. After all, Ves would no longer be making that choice in their children's stead when he decided upon the abilities of their companion spirit.

Only they had the power to choose!

"What a brilliant idea! I can even apply it on a wider scale!"

This spiritual augmentation approach was not only applicable to his children, but anyone else he wished to provide with the same treatment!