In my early thirties, I worked with a Manifactur owner in Sondrio (IT) who swore his cousin “just helps with deliveries.” No contract. No payroll. No title. Yet every major decision, from hiring staff to changing flour suppliers, ran through this cousin.
One day, the cousin disappeared. Left for Spain with no warning. Within a week, the factory collapsed under supplier confusion, misfiled invoices, and one furious part-time baker who thought she was getting promoted.
That cousin never held a position. But he held the power.
THE WHY
If you run a business with 3 to 20 people in the Netherlands, chances are, you’re not only managing contracts and spreadsheets. You’re managing invisible lines of influence, partners, spouses, senior staff, even charismatic freelancers, who shape decisions more than your official org chart admits.
This matters for one reason: governance. Not the bureaucratic kind, but the kind that prevents chaos, protects trust, and ensures continuity. When informal power isn’t acknowledged, you risk creating blind spots, especially when things go wrong.
Oversight isn't a punishment. It's how we protect the people and promises we care about.
THE NUMBERS
Let’s get structural:
- €1,750–€4,200 is the average cost of replacing a key team member in a 10-person business. That cost triples if the person had informal authority no one else documented.
- In over 60% of Dutch microbusiness disputes, the conflict involved someone who had no formal role, yet influenced operations or decisions.
- Failing to disclose “shadow influencers” in internal policies or partner agreements can lead to compliance failures, especially under Dutch UBO (Ultimate Beneficial Owner) and AML regulations.
The absence of oversight doesn't remove liability. It just makes it harder to trace.
WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU
We glamorize informality.
“Family-run.”
“Flat structure.”
“Everyone pitches in.”
It sounds warm. Honest. Efficient.
But in reality? Informality can become a camouflage for power.
When influence hides behind trust, loyalty, or charisma, it escapes scrutiny. It also avoids accountability. The person you trust most might also be your business’s biggest unmonitored risk, not out of malice, but because no one ever named their role.
And if they walk away? The business often follows.
DECISION COMPASS
Ask yourself:
- Who really influences key decisions in my company, and are they formally recognised?
- If that person vanished tomorrow, what operational knowledge would go with them?
- Do my policies and agreements reflect actual roles, or just official titles?
- Have I mapped informal power in my organisation, not to control it, but to protect it?
- What parts of my business rely on trust alone, and could benefit from structure?
FINAL REFLECTION
In small businesses, we often confuse visibility with truth. We see who signs the papers, who owns the shares, who sits in meetings. But real power is quieter. It moves through relationships, assumptions, and routine gestures no one documents.
Oversight is not about mistrust.
It’s about honouring reality.
Because in the end, your business is not just a set of roles, it’s a system of consequences. And those deserve to be understood, not assumed.