Attendance is good, morale is decent and sick leave is rare.
I was even fortunate enough to be chosen by the entire staff to study at MIT Sloan and MIT CSAIL.
The consensus was unanimous.
The head of HR supported the decision. The CEO approved the investment. The CFO accepted the cost, and the coffee-machine manager pledged full support.
Everyone agreed.
Perhaps because they are all me.
And that is where the trouble starts.
Who guides the boss?
There is a certain freedom in working for yourself.
Nobody tells you to show up.
Nobody decides what you should learn.
Nobody rejects your idea in a meeting.
And nobody calls you into an office and says:
“Vilbert, this simply cannot go on like this.”
Which is very comfortable.
Until that is exactly what you need.
When you are the employee, the manager, the CFO and the owner, it can be dangerously easy to explain to yourself why everything you do makes perfect sense.
The project that went over budget was “necessary development”.
Working late into the night was “only temporary”.
The purchase that was not supposed to happen was “an investment”.
And the idea nobody has asked for yet is, of course, “just a little ahead of the market”.
Accountability is hardest when nobody is above you
I think this is one of the bigger challenges of working independently.
Not the freedom.
But the lack of a counterweight.
When nobody has the formal authority to stop you, you have to build a system that allows someone to ask the uncomfortable questions.
Why are you doing this?
What was it supposed to achieve?
What did the plan say?
When are you going to admit this is not working?
And perhaps the hardest one:
Are you making a good decision, or are you simply very good at explaining a decision you have already made?
You do not necessarily need a board.
It could be a colleague, a mentor, a mastermind group, a friend or someone you trust enough to give permission to say:
“No. You are talking nonsense now.”
The HR department has therefore made a decision
Staff matters at Vilbert.is continue to go splendidly.
But the company’s management has decided to increase supervision of the employee.
Especially as there are suspicions that he can sometimes be stubborn, overly optimistic and unnecessarily persuasive when arguing for his own ideas.
The coffee-machine manager has declared his full support.
Admittedly, he has never said no to anything.