"Call the boards of FedEx and UPS. Tell them they need to provide the highest level of service for all express deliveries from Google. If they can't manage it, I'll find people who can!" When news from Google reached Goldman Sachs headquarters, Dr. Cooper, the elder, angrily ordered his secretary.
The secretary's attitude was slightly hesitant. After a moment of deliberation, he finally said, "Boss, this might be a bit difficult. It can't be done in such a short time!"
"Are you kidding me?" Dr. Cooper blinked in surprise. "We at Goldman Sachs are major shareholders in both companies. Don't they dare disobey me?"
"They will listen, of course. They listened very obediently when you asked them to cooperate with Wan Bao Ge. But asking them to improve their internal operations and give more attention to Google's deliveries, that might not be possible!" the secretary said softly.
"Are you joking with me? It's just asking them to pay more attention to a certain product. What's so difficult about that? It's just a matter of saying it," Dr. Cooper stated.
"Boss, the situations of these two companies are quite complex. They are both enterprises over a hundred years old, and their internal operations have developed their own logic. All employees operate according to this logic. If you want to forcefully break this logic, it will definitely lead to opposition from the entire company!"
"We have actually issued similar orders before, about 10 to 20 years ago, when television shopping was very popular, and we invested in the largest television shopping company."
"The products sold by the television shopping company were almost all transported by express delivery. At that time, the television shopping company we invested in proposed a slogan: zero lost packages and zero shipping damage, to solve one of the persistent problems in the entire television shopping industry, which is the issue of shipping damage during transportation."
"The company's boldness in proposing such a slogan at that time was because they knew we also invested in FedEx and UPS, hoping that we could pull strings and have these two express companies give special treatment to this television shopping company's deliveries, providing the highest level of service."
"We agreed to this reasonable request at the time, and the boards of both express companies also agreed. They simultaneously issued orders to their internal staff to give special attention to the goods sent by this television shopping company, to not drop them, lose them, or tamper with them. Everyone thought it was a trivial matter then."
"In the beginning, the order was implemented. However, as time went on, this television shopping company found that the damage rate reported by users had increased again, and the final damage severity was even higher than before the special attention was given, with about 40% of packages being damaged during transportation!"
"Because of the guarantee of compensation for shipping damage, this television shopping company was losing money every day. They sought our help, and we further pressured these two express companies, demanding that their boards properly resolve this issue!"
"As a result, the board later told us that they could not solve the problem. Because this television shopping company had a large volume of shipments, and giving special treatment to their goods meant increased workload for the delivery personnel, but their salaries would not increase. This led to resentment among all delivery personnel, who, regardless of the company's fate, doubly damaged and mistreated the company's products!"
"Especially when they discovered that the company later started selling valuable goods like mobile phones, during the picking process, they directly opened all packages, and the employees themselves stole the mobile phones to exchange for high profits. In their words, this was to compensate for their previous losses."
"After learning about these circumstances, we asked the board to severely punish a group of employees and middle management. However, the board told us it was impossible to execute."
"First, the board itself made every effort to protect those middle managers, saying they had made no mistakes and that the errors were committed by their subordinates, the delivery personnel, who should not be punished. The entire board directly refused our punishment request."
"As for the lower-level employees who were also asked to be punished, the board did not refuse and tentatively carried out punishments, but this immediately triggered a strike by almost all employees of the entire express company. At its peak, 200,000 delivery personnel from both companies were on strike, bringing the operations of both companies to a complete standstill, with losses of tens of millions of dollars per day!"
"Later, through our actual investigation, we discovered that the two companies had formed a tightly bound interest group internally. Every director on the company's board had their own middle and upper management within the group, who united to exclude outsiders. If middle management could not find a director on the board as a backer, they could not ascend to management positions."
"This also meant that all middle and upper management were people from the board. Unless you completely removed a director from the board, you could not touch the management personnel under these directors!"
"And because these middle and upper management positions were not promoted based on performance but on the power of their bosses on the board, they focused almost all their energy on helping their bosses contend for power and profit, and never truly cared about improving the company's operations."
"Therefore, they allowed the entire company to operate according to its established logic and never made any improvements. If they wanted to do anything, they would try to interfere in certain areas where they could extract benefits, and then seize those benefits for their own enjoyment, or offer them to the directors in exchange for more power."
"These middle and upper management personnel can no longer be described as people; calling them a pile of shit would not be an exaggeration."
"The situation with the delivery company employees is even worse. Because the benefits of both express companies are quite good, employees rarely leave these two express companies. At the same time, to ensure their benefits, the unions of both companies are very mature, tightly uniting all employees of both companies to strive for their own interests."
"Thus, this led to a situation where dismissing just one or two employees would trigger a collective strike by all employees!"
"After understanding these circumstances, even we had to admit that we could not interfere too much with these two express companies, as it would lead to more trouble!"
"Ultimately, to quell this strike, both express companies had to announce an increase of $0.3 per hour for all employees. After this, even we no longer dared to ask the boards of the two companies to take any internal actions, at most we would only ask them to cooperate with our actions on the overall company strategy!"
The secretary's capability was indeed strong; even Dr. Cooper had forgotten about this incident, but the secretary was able to clearly explain the situation in a short time.
"You mean that even if we put pressure on the boards of these two express companies, the middle and upper management of the express companies would not care, and the lower-level employees would unite and resist? So, even our Goldman Sachs Group cannot interfere with these two enterprises?" Dr. Cooper's expression was as if he had eaten something unpleasant.
"Wait, I remember I was aware of this matter back then. The company's president ordered you to come up with a solution to prevent this from happening a second time. Do you not have this plan ready?" Dr. Cooper asked quickly.
"We have prepared it. Our think tanks have analyzed and judged that to solve the problems of these two express companies, we first need to obtain absolute controlling interest in the companies, which means acquiring over 51% of the shares of both companies. Then, we can convene a board meeting, suspend the rights of some directors, and then we can begin to clean up the company's thoroughly rotten middle and upper management personnel."
"That's easy. I can contact some friends from large investment banks. We can join forces to obtain absolute controlling interest in these two companies!" Dr. Cooper nodded.
"This is just the first step. After gaining control, we need to conduct a thorough cleanup from top to bottom. Because these two companies, from employees to middle and upper management, have become completely rigid and rotten, we need to dismiss over 70% of the middle and upper management, and also dismiss about 40% of the die-hard employees, especially union members, who must all be dismissed. Finally, we will retain 60% of the employees, who will basically be intimidated and can cooperate with our reforms!"
"Then we will recruit fresh blood, excellent management personnel from the talent market, thereby completely revitalizing these two express companies!" the secretary said.
This was a very complete plan, and its effectiveness was palpable just by listening. However, Dr. Cooper did not show much joy on his face. After a long period of contemplation, he said, "If this plan is executed, how much money will we need to spend?"
"Preliminary estimate, around 3 billion US dollars!" the secretary licked his lips.
"First, it's to clean up middle and upper management, as well as ordinary employees. Since we don't have the energy to find fault with so many people, the only way to dismiss them is through the normal departure procedures, which means we have to give generous severance packages to all middle and upper management and ordinary employees."
"The average tenure of these middle and upper management and employees is almost over 20 years, and they need to be given severance pay equivalent to 23 months' salary. The final compensation amount could reach 3 billion US dollars!"
"In addition, because a large number of middle and upper management and ordinary employees are dismissed, the operations of the two enterprises will inevitably slow down, or even completely stagnate. It is estimated that it will take at least three months to start recovering, and at least one year to completely return to normal. During this year, we may suffer losses of over 5 billion US dollars."
"Currently, the financial reports of these two companies are not good, and their account funds cannot support the expenses required for this reform. To carry out such drastic reforms, we would need an initial investment of at least 3 billion..."
"Enough!" Dr. Cooper waved his hand directly. "Although we are major shareholders in these two companies, we only hold a little over 20% of the shares in each. What business do we have spending a lot of money to reform them?"
"You should think again. Is there any way to help Google sell their PT? Stop worrying about Wan Bao Ge!" Dr. Cooper said without hesitation.