Hiring Fujimori Yoshiaki from GE, and handing over execution (2011)

Reading it as a decision by the side doing the hiring

It was Ushioda Yoichiro who set the target of taking overseas sales from ¥40 billion a year to ¥1 trillion; Fujimori was called in to execute it. A second-generation owner who had deliberately recruited outside directors capable of putting a brake on him concluded that he could not move the organisation himself, and gave up the executive seat. The appointment came just after five companies had merged into the operating company LIXIL, with the domestic new-build market having contracted by 30% in a few years.

What Ushioda gave up, however, was the executive seat, not the position from which strategy is drawn. When the acquisition line frayed — the Shanghai curtain-wall company sold for one Singapore dollar, the roughly ¥66 billion of losses at Joyou — it was Fujimori who took responsibility and left, while Ushioda remained on the board. The man who had said that the ability to dismiss a manager is the essence of governance remained without ever becoming the one who was dismissed.