The Korean Thanksgiving Day passed by, and it was October already. Gun-Ho felt anxious.
“I previously made a goal to make 1 trillion won before turning 40 years old. But, what am I doing now? The companies that I own are still too small to achieve that goal.”
Gun-Ho was beating his brains out to figure out how to grow his GH companies.
“It’s October now, and I am 38 years old. Within 2 months, I will turn 39. Do I have to give up attaining my goal?”
While sitting in the car heading to GH Mobile in Jiksan Town to work, Gun-Ho kept thinking with his eyes closed.
“Sir, you haven’t had enough sleep last night?” Chan-Ho asked as he glanced at Gun-Ho through the rearview mirror.
“Huh? Oh, no, I was just thinking about something.”
Gun-Ho closed his eyes again. His Bentley was continuously driving on the expressway.
While keeping his eyes closed, the old days when he was studying at Zhejiang University crossed his mind. It was a day in the fall. The young and smart Professor Jien Wang was giving a lecture. He was talking about Maslow’s five basic human needs.
[We, as a human, have five basic needs which were first introduced by an American psychologist—Maslow. The most basic needs are physiological needs according to him. Once these needs are satisfied, humans are motivated to fulfill the next need—safety. Once these are met, they want to satisfy the needs of belongingness and love. The next one is esteem needs, and the last and the highest needs are self-actualizations. These five needs are hierarchically ranked, and humans move on to the next level once the needs at the lower level are fulfilled.]
‘That’s right. I haven’t reached the highest level of needs—self-actualization—yet. I’m probably on the fourth highest rank—esteem needs—where I desire to be respected by others. I can tell that because all I can think of these days is to achieve my goal of making 1 trillion won as I become the chairman of a group of my companies.
Which level of the needs in the hierarchy would Chairman Lee be now? He has everything already. He has enough money, and he is well respected. But, he is spending a lot of time running that facility for the children with special needs, in Pocheon City. He is probably at the very top in the hierarchical rank—being motivated to fulfill the self-actualization needs.’
When Gun-Ho arrived at GH Mobile in Jiksan Town, he went straight to the production sites in the second factory and the first factory in the order. Despite Director Jong-Suk Park’s absence, the production managers were genuinely working hard. They were all motivated by the possibility to be promoted in a few months. The only problem that was noticed was that there were unresolved conflicts and discords between those production sites, probably because there was no director at the production department who would require them to cooperate, at the moment.
Gun-Ho asked, “Why are those waste piled up over there?”
“Oh, those are not our production site’s, sir. They belong to the production site 2. I will ask them to move them out of this location.”
“How come the trucks over there from our vendor companies are parked in a disordered manner?”
“Those trucks came from the production site 2. I will give them a warning.”
Whenever hearing the production managers pointing fingers at each other, Gun-Ho was tempted to antedate the year-end promotion.
Gun-Ho went to his office on the second floor. Secretary Hee-Jeong Park seemed to be glad to see Gun-Ho since it had been a while.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hmm, how are you?”
“Would you like to have a cup of coffee, or do you feel like having green tea today?”
“I will have a coffee, please. Also, please bring me an economic newspaper too.”
“Yes, sir.”
A moment later, President Song entered Gun-Ho’s office.
“Currently, our sales revenue from A Electronics and H Group equally takes up more than 30% of our total sales revenue respectively.”
“Hmm, really? I guess our monthly revenue must be about 15 billion won then.”
“At times, we make 16 billion won, but I can tell that we do make at least 15 billion won for sure on a monthly basis. We often generated 12 billion won per month in the first half of this year, so we anticipate that this year’s annual sales revenue would be a bit more than 180 billion won.”
“How many employees would be promoted to an executive officer position this year?”
“The directors in the departments such as the general affairs, the accounting, and the quality control were promoted to the current positions not long ago. So, we just have one executive position to be filled, which is for the production department. We will select one of the two production managers and place him in the position.”
“Hmm, I see.”
“I think we should promote the production manager at the production site 1 to the director’s position, and send the other production manager at the production site 2 to our second factory.”
“What are we going to do about the production manager’s position at the production site 2 then? It will be vacant.”
“We have a low-level manager in the second factory. He is a candidate for the promotion this year. I want him to take the production manager position at the production site 2.”
“Wouldn’t the current production manager at the production site 2 have a grievance about his relocation to the second factory, because he has to keep the same job title, but he will be moved to another location?”
“We will hire more and more workers at the production site 2. Once we send him there, I will give him the job title of plant manager for the second factory.”
“That means that he would be the plant manager holding a manager level.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“I will talk to him in private, telling him that we need him in the second factory to oversee the entire work in that location since we will increase the number of workers there soon and that we will place him in the plant manager position. A plant manager gets paid an additional monthly fund of 300,000 won, so he would probably be content with it.”
“Hmm, it sounds good enough.”
“And, our chief research officer is at the director level right now.”
“Hmm, that’s correct.”
“He has contributed tremendously to our product developments for not only S group’s products but also for A Electronics’ new product and H Group’s new product. I want to promote him to the managing director level.”
“Hmm…”
“He has a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich in Germany, and he used to work at BMW’s research center. And, he had worked at H Group’s research center before joining our company. Most of his colleagues from his previous employment are in the position of either a managing director or a vice president right now. Given his extensive work experience in the field and his level of contribution to our company, I believe that he deserves the managing director position.”
“Okay. Well, please proceed as you suggested. And, we both know that we shouldn’t reveal any of this to anyone until the day of the promotion, right?”
“Of course, sir.”
At that moment, Secretary Hee-Jeong Park brought two cups of green tea to Gun-Ho’s office. And she picked up the empty cup that Gun-Ho used to have his coffee earlier in the morning, on her way out of the office.
President Song said after taking a sip of his green tea, “I visited GH Machines the day before yesterday.”
“How is Jong-Suk Park doing?”
“He already hired workers in the production site and started building the machines for Dyeon Korea. Since he just began his business, I told him that he didn’t have to pay us for the twin screws right now, but he could do so a month later after he sells the machines, that they are building, to Dyeon Korea. He looked so relieved and happy.”
“Hmm, I see.”
“I also told him to buy a die casting machine.”
“A die casting machine?”
