At the end of a project, you look back. What went well, what didn’t go so smoothly, and what will I do differently next time? For me, this invariably results in a list of things I need to handle better: start earlier, plan more carefully, and define things more clearly.
I often still miss something, because by definition, you can’t see your own blind spots. That’s why I’m a proponent of 360-degree feedback—not because of the form itself, but because colleagues and clients point out things I overlook. Without exception, this results in insights I would never have written down myself.
And yet something still doesn’t feel quite right. Because the question “What can I do better?” implicitly assumes that, no matter what, I’ll keep doing it myself.
“Something else” can also mean “someone else”
You are responsible for your own cases, your own schedule, and your own quality. That makes you independent, and that is also the strength of a good accountant. But it automatically turns every challenge into a personal problem.
The result of an honest reflection is a list that’s entirely about you. Plan more carefully. Say no sooner. Prepare better. Each of these points is valid, and yet you’re the constant in the equation in all of them. Only the way you do things changes.
There’s one outcome I rarely consider seriously myself: that the task needs to be done, but not by me. Not because I can’t do it, but because someone else can do it better, do it faster, or simply enjoys it more. That feels uncomfortable. It sounds like admitting that you’re falling short. Yet it might actually be the sharpest insight that reflection can yield.
If I don’t do it, who will?
This is my biggest pitfall. So many good ideas and initiatives, and still just as many hours in a day as last year. Slowly, my schedule fills up until it’s too full. In my role as team leader, I often feel like there’s no one available because everyone’s already swamped. So I just end up taking it on myself. But does that really mean there’s no one available?
What I actually think is this: there’s no one who can do it the way I do it now, at the pace I’m doing it now. That’s something else entirely. Sometimes the answer is that the task can wait, or can be scaled back, or isn’t necessary at all. And sometimes there is someone who could do it, but I never asked them because I’d already decided it wouldn’t be a good fit. Sometimes the answer is still that I’ll do it myself. And that’s okay, as long as it’s a choice and not something that happens to me because I never asked the question.
Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness
For a long time, I viewed networking as a kind of weakness. As if asking for help meant you couldn’t do it on your own. Now I feel exactly the opposite. Knowing who or what you need to complement yourself isn’t a weakness—it’s a strength. After all, it requires you to take an honest look at yourself and acknowledge your limitations.
Taxes were never my strong suit during the audit. I managed to get through it, but it took me a disproportionate amount of time, and the result was, at best, just adequate. At some point, I just started being honest about it and involved the tax specialist earlier in the process. This improved the quality of the work, and it freed up time for the tasks I’m actually good at.
The funny thing is that we’ve long since come to accept this as normal in auditing. No one expects you to fully understand the IT environment yourself or to substantiate a complex valuation. That’s where you bring in the IT auditor or the valuation specialist. We readily accept that specialization improves the quality of the report. Yet when it comes to our own work, we do exactly the opposite and keep muddling through.
“Someone else” can also refer to someone outside the organization
An organization, too, may ask itself what it needs to do better, and forget to ask who can do it better. I see this with firms that want to keep everything in-house: their own tools, their own consulting division, handling every issue themselves. That feels comfortable, because you’re in control.
That’s also the decision we made at Milestones. We deliberately limit ourselves to the core and leave the rest to parties that are better at it than we are. An all-in-one solution sounds appealing on paper, but in practice, everything ends up being just okay, and no single component is truly excellent. And “just okay” is a comfortable place to stay, but it’s rarely the place that helps you improve.
Who can do this better than me?
Collaboration isn’t the opposite of being independent. It’s what independent professionals do once they’re honest enough to admit that they need each other.
The hardest question in this entire piece, then, isn’t what you can do better, but who can do it better than you. And as soon as you ask that question out loud, you give everyone around you permission to ask it, too. That’s the moment when change becomes greater than what any one person could have achieved on their own.
