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.