A planned handover from founder Shoji Numata to Hirokazu Numata (2012)

Inherit the core, not the speed

What marks this succession is that the founder did not force his own success formula onto his successor. Shoji Numata knew that his own speed — thinking while running — was a one-generation gift. Precisely because of that, he told his successor not to do the same, and while refusing to put two helmsmen at the tiller, he left room for the successor’s own judgment. The more successful the founder, the greater the temptation to leave one’s own mould behind as the company’s correct answer. The design of this succession lay in deliberately declining that temptation.

What was handed over, however, was not speed or instinct but the company’s core — making it ourselves and selling it ourselves. Hirokazu Numata’s career differs from his father’s, yet he did not change the make-and-sell foundation; rather, he tidied up the food-service business the founder had over-expanded and returned resources to the core. By separating what should be inherited from what may be changed, this succession offers one model for the generational handover that is hardest at companies bearing a strong founder’s stamp.