"The boss is talking about his plans after he leaves, and the tasks assigned to everyone are very specific to individuals!" Hao Jianguo said with a strange expression.
"Tasks! Then there's nothing to worry about!" The senior executives shook their heads dismissively, and some even rejoiced in their hearts. If Boss Huang assigned tasks in Chinese, then if they failed to complete the tasks in the future, they could simply claim they didn't understand, or missed something, or there were translation issues. It wouldn't be their fault, but Boss Huang's for being too demanding.
More importantly, they were not stupid. Their boss suddenly not bringing a translator to meetings clearly indicated his intention to forcefully promote Chinese within the company.
Although the boss was in charge, these senior executives were mostly over 40 years old and no longer had the perseverance of their youth when studying. Asking them to learn a new language now would be worse than killing them.
So, at this moment, they would rather play dumb, even if it meant failing to complete their tasks and the company's performance declining. This way, they could force Boss Huang to withdraw his damn idea of promoting Chinese within the company.
However, as soon as these thoughts began to form, they heard Hao Jianguo continue, "The boss first assigned you tasks, and then he talked about the punishment for not completing the tasks. It's not a very severe punishment, just a complete deduction of all year-end bonuses!"
"..." The executives present were collectively stunned. If Boss Huang had many shortcomings, one thing he did well was his generosity with money. None of the people present earned less than a million US dollars annually, which was comparable to the CEOs of many large companies.
More exaggerated than the annual salary were the bonuses. Not to mention the specifics, but it was estimated that the bonuses were usually about twice the annual salary. This was also why the Los Gatos Group could recruit people so quickly – because Huang He was willing to give bonuses.
Not to mention the major news that had come out this time, with global influence. The company was now preparing to invest $1 billion to expand globally, establishing Los Gatos Television branches and servers worldwide to capture the global market. If this succeeded, the bonuses would be at least four times the annual salary!
As a result, not completing a task would directly lead to the forfeiture of all bonuses. All the executives present collectively changed their expressions. Many people's first reaction was to check the tasks assigned to them by Boss Huang, to see if they were within their capabilities and what goals they needed to achieve, otherwise, it would truly be over.
But when they tried to ponder the goals, they realized they didn't even know what the goals were. They hadn't written down a single word. This was truly going to kill them.
Even more frustrating, Hao Jianguo continued, "The boss said his flight is tomorrow night at 9 o'clock. If any of you believe your goals are problematic, you can call him to discuss them before 7 PM tomorrow. Once he returns to the country, if he hasn't received your calls, he will assume you have accepted these goals!"
"I..." The executives collectively felt numb. There were only about 28 hours left until tomorrow evening at 7 PM. This meant they had to figure out their goals within 28 hours, analyze whether they could achieve them, and then find a way to persuade Boss Huang to agree to change them. Moreover, more than a dozen people were competing for Boss Huang's time, which was not something a person could accomplish in such a short period.
"Alright everyone, I also need to go back and think about my personal performance goals. Goodbye, everyone!" Hao Jianguo stood up, waved, and prepared to leave.
"Mr. Hao, you can't leave!" These people immediately surrounded Hao Jianguo, grabbing his clothes and saying, "Mr. Hao, you absolutely cannot leave. If you leave, we will all be finished. Even if you have to leave, you must first clarify our tasks before you go!"
Wasn't it that no one present had heard a single word? If Hao Jianguo left, they would have no idea about their tasks.
"No, I only heard my personal goals, and not yours. Even if I remembered some of them, I couldn't possibly remember all of them. Even if I remembered everything, what if I missed or misstated one or two points, causing problems with your task objectives? Wouldn't you hate me forever!"
"So I really can't say a single word about this, please let me go!" Hao Jianguo said with great difficulty. This was not wrong; if he misstated a goal, he would be hated forever.
But how could these people let Hao Jianguo leave? Just as Hao Jianguo was in a difficult situation, someone finally stepped forward to save him. Holding documents in his hand, he said, "Everyone, please don't trouble Mr. Hao. I just went to get the meeting minutes from the secretary and made twenty copies. Each of you take one and translate it into English!"
As soon as Little John said this, everyone else suddenly realized they had forgotten about the meeting minutes. They quickly let go of Hao Jianguo and each took a copy of the meeting minutes from Little John.
However, after just a glance, they felt an immense headache because the minutes were entirely in Chinese, with not a single word of English. They had to find a way to translate them into English.
So, everyone first thanked Little John, and then they rushed out to find someone to translate the Chinese.
"..." Just as everyone was about to leave, Hu Jing walked in and said a lot of things in Chinese before turning and leaving, leaving the executives in a state of great confusion.
"What did she say?" someone asked doubtfully.
"Don't worry about what she said, hurry up and find someone to translate these meeting minutes into Chinese!" another person said. Just as they were about to rush out again, Hao Jianguo could only helplessly stand up and say, "Everyone, if the secretary said something, you absolutely cannot ignore it, or there will be big problems!"
"Then what exactly did she say? What kind of big problem could there be!" someone said impatiently.
"Secretary Hu said that these meeting minutes are the company's most confidential documents. If anyone takes these meeting minutes out to be translated by non-company personnel, or by personnel within the company who do not have sufficient rank, and the content of these meeting minutes becomes known to others, it will be considered a serious commercial crime, and the company will directly report it to the police and initiate a lawsuit!" Hao Jianguo could only translate Hu Jing's words with helplessness, which made everyone present freeze again.
"What does the boss mean by this? Not only assigning tasks in Chinese, but also not allowing us to take the meeting minutes to find someone to translate them. Isn't he forcing us to accept the task objectives he set? And he still talked about giving us a chance to discuss!" someone said indignantly.
"That's right, Mr. Hao can help us translate them. He's not an outsider, and his rank is sufficient!" someone smart at the scene said, and all eyes then focused on Hao Jianguo.
"I can't!" Hao Jianguo immediately put down his phone and shook his head.
"Why?" Everyone looked at Hao Jianguo fiercely. This was their only chance!
"Because the boss called just now!" Hao Jianguo said helplessly, holding up his phone. "The boss said he's coming to my place to inspect work and wants me to accompany him throughout, until he gets on the plane. So I'm afraid I won't have time to translate such a tens of thousands of words meeting minutes for you all!"
After speaking, Hao Jianguo quickly slipped away. If he didn't leave, he would be torn in half.
"What exactly does the boss want to do!" someone said angrily.
"Don't you understand? This is the boss forcing us to learn Chinese ourselves!" Donald, the head of Los Gatos Television, sighed. "We can't let outsiders see these minutes, and we can't let people within the company with insufficient rank see these minutes. That means we can only find people within the company who have sufficient rank. But besides President Hao, who understands Chinese, there is no one else with sufficient rank in the company!"
"But now the boss has specifically called President Hao away, saying he wants him to accompany him on an inspection. But who inspects work before leaving? It's obvious he wants to take President Hao away from us to prevent him from giving us the opportunity to translate Chinese."
"And once Mr. Hao leaves, we only have one last possibility..." Donald paused, and the expressions of others were also extremely stiff. Because this last possibility was quite obvious, which was to learn Chinese themselves and try to translate their own tasks.
This was truly forcing them to learn Chinese!
Everyone left the conference room with splitting headaches, and looking at the entirely Chinese meeting minutes in their hands, their scalps tingled. Then, some people acted quickly, like Little John, who directly asked his secretary to buy a whole set of English-Chinese dictionaries and then translated each Chinese word, trying to understand the meaning behind these Chinese words.
But the problem was that it was difficult to buy an English-Chinese dictionary anywhere in the United States. Little John's secretary ran for two or three hours before managing to get one.
Some people might argue that there were plenty of English-Chinese dictionaries in the United States, so how could there be none?
This was not wrong, but the problem was that those were English-Chinese dictionaries for Chinese people to learn English, translating Chinese into English. If you wanted to translate English into Chinese, English-Chinese dictionaries were almost impossible to find in the United States because there was no market for them. Finally, Little John's secretary went to a Chinese school and managed to get a rarely used English-Chinese dictionary that was not for sale.
After Little John, a number of other executives also had to bite the bullet and start poring over the pages of Chinese, trying to figure out what their task objectives were.