CHAPTER 704: RESPONSBILITY AND CABINET

"If you’re the one who’s constantly making the decision. Then everyone is going to blame you for the mistake."

"That’s just the burden of making mistakes... I picked the wrong workers to carry out the mistake, and it’s partially my fault for choosing them."

"Very selfless thinking. But that’s the exact thing you should be avoiding. Once people start attaching with negative image, you’re stuck with it."

"What?"

"Once a single failure gets onto your record. Everyone points to that exact failure and asks you to step down."

"Isn’t that what every government has to go through? It’s just another day. People are going to move right past it."

"You said it yourself. We’re a government. We are not a business anymore. You need to realize that sometimes we need to sack people."

"I fire plenty of people."

"Sure, you might fire those who fucked up a low-end job or even a department head. But that image of failure still sticks with you.

All of the office workers know you’re the one who constantly makes the decision and draws your own conclusion.

The perception of you being in charge of everything. Even if those department heads are the ones really making the suggestions."

"I’m in charge of everything... I mean, you’re in charge of everything, but I’m——"

"No need to sugarcoat it. I know you’re the one who does most of the stuff around here. But you need a scrapegoat, Yuqi."

"A scrapegoat?"

"Yes, a scrapegoat. More specifically, you need to make everyone, both the public and the government worker, think they are the ones who suggested it to you."

"Isn’t that what department heads already do? They’re the ones who suggest the solution, and I make a decision based on the information they give.

Everything is working fine. Xiaoyun, you’re even more paranoid than me. Just leave this work to me if you don’t want to——"

"Yuqi, you’re still not understanding me. Look, what does the government have that separates the leader from any responsibility?"

Xiaoyun’s argument only caused more confusion once again as she looked back at him as if she were looking at an idiot.

"Those people working below them? They only have partial responsibility, though. You said it yourself, the negative image sticks with the leader."

"Unless the department heads are the ones deciding, the beginning of the problem appears to be the solution being found at the end."

Xiaoyun paused for a second, then continued.

"You have to start realizing that sooner or later, your job is going to be oversight, not problem-solving.

You check to make sure everything is right, and that’s it. Not interpreting data and coming up with an answer of your own."

"Are you suggesting I should be a figurehead like you?"

"No, I’m saying you should leave more responsibility to the workers below you. Even more than what you had given them right now."

"I don’t trust them." Yuqi instantly answered this time.

"Doesn’t matter if you trust them or not. You had to delegate more responsibility. You’re not smarter than everyone in the office.

If we’re going to have a merit-based government, we need to act like it. Let people make their decision and promote or demote based on their performance.

Your current system of having people carry out what you want them to do is too stagnant. There’s no room for their own decisions.

Sooner or later, it’ll be impossible to micromanage everything. Even at the surface level, it’s going to be too much at some point."

"Then I’ll change when that time comes. I’m more than capable of continuing the status quo." Yuqi argued.

"Yuqi, you need to start developing cabinet positions, full stop. Two-thirds of the decisions shouldn’t be made by you.

They should have been done by experts. Technocrats who had years of schooling and personal experience, not you sitting in the office all day.

They shouldn’t even need to ask you for permission. Your whole decision-making from you is just redundant."

Seeing her still unwilling to back down, Xiaoyun pulls out his trump card.

"Earlier, I even called several of your department heads, and they stated they would have made the same decision as you."

"That’s just in hindsight. Who knows what decision they would have picked hundreds of suggestions they have for each plan?" Yuqi argued again.

"But with time, they’ll develop. They should start early to let them learn from their small mistake before we’re forced to transition responsibility to them."

"Forced to transition? By who?"

"By our size. Even the central government couldn’t wrestle absolute control and do everything. What makes you think you’ll be better than them?"

Yuqi fell into silence for once as she couldn’t argue back at all. She knew what Xiaoyun was suggesting, but she just didn’t want to face it.

"Do I really have to delegate even more power? Haven’t I already let them decide more on so many decisions than before?"

"If there’s a pile of papers on your desk you can’t finish every day, that means you haven’t done it far enough."

After a whole minute of silence, Yuqi let out a small sigh as if she had finally backed down from trying to grasp onto power.

"Fine. I’ll go call the department heads and arrange the meeting tomorrow. But you’d better be there as well."

"I’ll announce it if you don’t want to."

Seeing her shaking her head, Xiaoyun didn’t try to take it away from her. But he finally let out a small smile as she looked much more relaxed.

"If anything goes wrong during this process, I’m going to blame you for it," Yuqi murmured as she looked back at him right in the eyes.

"I’ll handle the transition. You don’t have to worry about it... Let me read the names of each department——"

As Yuqi turned on her monitor and switched to a spreadsheet tab, Xiaoyun froze as rows upon rows of names were displayed.

"Y-You serious? When did we have that many department heads?" Xiaoyun asked in shock as he finally recovered from the list of names.

"Since you started clearing Dongguan and Shenzhen... That’s why I don’t trust having so many different department heads making their own decision."

"This is not going to work. We have to consolidate these many groups of departments into... twelve or so."

"Who’s going to do that? Don’t tell me you’re just going to randomly elect them to give them the power to make the policy decisions."

"Their policy agenda still follows what we tell them to do. They’ll just be deciding how to carry it out to fulfill it rather than having us decide it."

"This is taking off your pants to fart. It’s pointless and unnecessary. We’re still telling them what to do at the end of the day." Yuqi quickly argued.

"You’re too young, too naive. You need to realize they’re going to be the one publicly perceived as the one making the decision.

And the people working in the government will also think they’re the ones at fault if something goes wrong.

It wouldn’t be our agenda at fault, but their mistake in carrying out the wrong solution to fulfill our policy agenda".

As Xiaoyun smirked with an evil smile, Yuqi felt a chill traveling down her spine as she began to realize what he had been planning all along.

"All this just to scrape off responsibility? This is ridiculous, Xiaoyun. You’re going to deal with this mess."

"That’s fine. I’ll interview them and organize everything in a week. You don’t have to worry about a thing."

Just as Yuqi moved her chair aside to let Xiaoyun take over, she suddenly felt a little guilty watching him work.

It was his birthday, yet he was being forced to work. At the same time, Xiaoyun barely working in the office left her with a sour taste.

"Xiaoyun... Did you let me do all this work in the office because you didn’t want to see me do nothing all day?" Yuqi suddenly asked.

"What makes you suddenly think that?"

Xiaoyun questioned without looking back at her, his hand still busy writing ideas for merging the department into cabinets.

"You can do this way better than I since the beginning. But you chose to give me this position as deputy governor rather than——"

"Did I ruin your self-esteem too much?"

As he turned around and looked right into Yuqi’s eyes, her heart couldn’t stop beating for some weird reason.

"N-No. I’m just curious."

"I don’t know what makes you think I can do this job better than you. I probably would make a lot more careless mistakes.

You just got too busy with office work that you don’t see the bigger picture... Like having a mindset of running a business rather than running a government."

"A government..."

"Yep. After all, we are called the National Reclamation Government for a reason... Me as the Governor and you as the Deputy Governor."

The moment Xiaoyun shifted his attention back to the paper, she tightly held onto her heart as a weird feeling began to develop.