Titans of industry may deal in billions of dollars, thousands of employees, and dozens of class-action lawsuits, but that doesn't mean their issues are that different from those of the common man. While my wife and I were doing a gut renovation of my loft apartment in downtown Manhattan, I took note of several familiar business issues we encountered and kept track of our own attempts to wrestle with some of the same problems that continue to vex America's C.E.O.'s—namely: procurement, accounting, dealing with regulators, and hiring the right people.

1. Supply-Chain Management
We opted to go with an ultraefficient, just-in-time delivery system for our fixtures, appliances, and kitchen-countertop stone, recalling that Japanese carmakers ran Detroit off the road with this approach in the '80s and '90s. But we encountered unforeseen implementation issues, as it turned out that nothing was delivered on time—ever.

In particular, our Italian bathtub maker did not seem to understand the brilliance of our just-in-time plan, or even wish to communicate with us at all once we placed our order and paid our deposit. After waiting a month, we ended up buying a completely different bathtub from a different supplier, which also has not yet arrived. Phil Knight faced a similar supply-chain mishap in 2001 based on a flawed new "planning system," forcing Nike to take a $100 million revenue hit that year. The full budget impact of our own planning system has yet to be calculated.

2. Accounting
We elected to do the accounting for our project with an unconventional "zero-entry bookkeeping" system (no annoying spreadsheets). The more quantitatively inclined among you might scoff at our simplistic method, but what it lacks in transparency is more than made up for in ease of implementation.

However, flaws in the system became apparent when checks to suppliers started bouncing, indicating that the zero-entry method had failed to alert us to the fact that our capital reserve had reached zero. The resulting run-up in credit-card debt has created some valuation complications, such as, how do you price a project when the cost of capital has reached 24.5 percent a month?

While few of America's C.E.O.'s have been bold enough to implement the zero-entry method, quite a few, notably Enron's Jeff Skilling and C.U.C.'s Walter Forbes, have tried the related fake-entry bookkeeping system, with results similar to our own.

3. Regulatory Issues
My wife and I felt that the various regulatory issues regarding our project would best be dealt with by pretending they did not exist or claiming to not be aware of them—a "don't ask, don't ask policy," you might call it. Readers may again be tempted to scoff at our decision, but when you are running a ruthlessly efficient, just-in-time supply chain and accounting for it all with a sloppy mental ledger, you really can't afford to get bogged down in legalese. The executives at Exxon who allowed a relapsed alcoholic to pilot a 200,000-ton oil tanker through the Prince William Sound in 1989 probably know what we're talking about.

However, since our loft is situated in a cooperative apartment building and our fellow shareholders had deeply held beliefs (stated in building by-laws) about what should be allowed in their building, we were very quickly forced into compliance with a host of regulations regarding such things as electrical load, Jacuzzi power, interior soundproofing, and grout-density specifications. The resulting delays have been both costly and catalyzing of certain process inefficiencies. Who knows? Had we been more compliance-minded, perhaps we would have hot water in our unit by now.

4. Management
On this crucial issue, my wife and I elected to manage on a consensus basis, allowing important decisions to be delayed or forgotten about and then hastily resolved by my wife at the job site at the last minute. This system consistently resulted in late, ill-informed, and badly thought-through orders that tended to backfire, bringing on later, even worse choices (the consensus approach seems to have worked much better for Google's Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page).

More specifically, there was a complete breakdown in horizontal, vertical, lateral, peripheral, and even collateral communication between all parties on the management team, leaving the downstream managers like the architect, the contractor, and various subcontractors to make decisions on their own. These field-level orders often resulted in costly order changes that our zero-entry system did not account for and that the management team discovered when we found out a creditor who hadn't been paid on time was threatening to take out a lien on our property.

5. Staffing
Our human-resources strategy was to approach the best in their fields, and when they turned out to be prohibitively expensive, hire anyone willing to do the job at our price point. The resulting head-count issues caused considerable delay in the project. Middle management itself was often unavailable and seemed completely uninterested in manpower issues—that is, when we were actually able to reach them on the phone. Staffing continues to be an area for improvement, and we intend to bring this up with our contractor when and if we ever see him again.