Handing the presidency to Mori Shunzo, then in two stages to Saito Yasuhiko via Shintech (2016)

Testing a successor by vacating the seat

What Kanagawa Chihiro gave his successor was not instruction but a chair. He vacated the Shintech presidency he had held since March 1978 in January 2011 and seated Saito Yasuhiko in it. That this came six months after passing the parent company to Mori Shunzo shows which post he regarded as the real one. A man who said successors cannot be developed, and that all he could offer was on-the-job training, chose as his examination to make the candidate walk again the same road he had taken twelve years to walk himself.

The pattern is hard to repeat, however. A decade after becoming president, Saito still concurrently holds the Shintech presidency, so no seat is vacant with which to test the next successor. Kanagawa for his part remained chairman at ninety and kept his seat until his death at ninety-six, stretching the handover across thirteen years during which the phrase “post-Kanagawa risk” never went away. A succession that makes the heir walk the road you walked presupposes that you will be around long enough for it.