Boonsithi Chokwatana is chairman of Saha Group, Thailand's leading consumer products conglomerate. This is part 16 of a 30-part series .

I should now discuss the management structure of the Saha Group.

So this is the big question: Whenever we entered a new business, why did we establish new companies one after another to handle operations?

As Saha Pathanapibul, the core of the group, gradually grew, some of the old executives' sensitivity inevitably dulled. New businesses should be left to young people with new sensibilities -- that was my father's thinking.

My father had originally proposed the idea of a business handling daily necessities to his father, but my grandfather was opposed to the idea, leading my father to go independent.

"Don't teach your subordinates about business," my grandfather apparently told my father. "Teach it to your son, but not your daughter. If she teaches it to her husband, he'll become a rival."

However, my father believed he could not grow his business by himself alone, so he passionately trained his own subordinates. My uncle Damri was the best example of this. The same was true of my siblings. My father had six sons and two daughters. All of them, with the exception of his eldest daughter, Siriyol, who died young, found what they wanted to do and their roles in the group.

My eldest brother, Boon-Ek, studied engineering in Australia and worked in stationery sales for Sakura Cray-Pas, a Japanese stationary maker. The second brother, Boonpakorn, studied economics in England and opened up a fashion business. The company he founded, Newcity Bangkok, became the first listed company in the group.

The fourth brother, Narong, studied chemistry at Chulalongkorn University and established Bangkok Rubber. The company makes sneakers for U.S. sportswear maker Nike on consignment, and Narong is known as the "Shoe king" in Thailand. My father's second daughter, Sirina, studied advertising in the U.K. and after returning to Thailand to help with Newcity, she became a successful owner of Boutique Newcity.

My brothers Boonchai and Boonkiet, who are twins, both attended high school in the U.K. and graduated from college in the U.S. My father ordered me to take them under my wing as subordinates. Currently, Boonchai is the chairman of Saha Pathanapibul and Boonkiet is the chairman of ICC International. They both support me.

This process of growth was not limited to members of our family. Employees who were deemed capable, or who volunteered, were allowed to start their own businesses, like Pipat, who was entrusted with the instant noodle business. Saha Pathanapibul and my father personally invested in them. Those employees also invest in the new companies so that they would be fully committed.

It became Saha's style to split up to speed the growth of the group.

There are also cases where group companies compete with each other. My father welcomed that. Competition offers lessons, whether one wins or loses. We will grow faster if we compete not only with other companies, but also with ourselves. However, I kept an eye on the bigger picture and made sure that no part of the group would collapse.

We established a holding company in 1972 because there was a limit to how much of the company my father could watch over by himself. That company is now known as Saha Panthana Inter-Holding. I proposed the idea and my father told me to serve as president.

There was another reason to create a holding company. The joint ventures with Lion and Wacoal were going well and we began to receive calls from Japan, one after another, about partnerships. But the structure of the group was complicated and some people said they did not know which company to approach. We wanted to centralize tie-up negotiations, with SPI as the main point of contact.

Unlike a typical holding company, SPI does not necessarily own or control any of the group companies. Each company has different shareholders, different management styles and its own management team. However, SPI plays a key role by underwriting debt guarantees and managing the group's overall investment strategy and direction.

This column is part of The Nikkei's "My Personal History" ("Watashi no Rirekisho") series of autobiographies. The series first appeared in The Nikkei in 1956. Since then, a wide variety of world-changing individuals have written or dictated their life stories for publication.