I once visited a region in the Netherlands where the land had a history of flooding. The fields carried silent scars of water that had overflown its boundaries, seeping into homes, gardens, and roads. Some locals told me how much damage it caused, how every flood felt like an enemy at their door. Others, though, spoke of the water as a resource, collected in barrels, nourishing the soil, strengthening the land. The same event, two radically different outcomes.
THE WHY
As an entrepreneur in the Netherlands, it is tempting to think of your business as a bubble, sealed, self-sufficient, protected. But the truth is harsher: you are part of a watershed. Your clients, suppliers, staff, regulators, even the tax office, all of them are tributaries feeding into or flowing out of your small enterprise. If you treat your business as a bubble, you risk suffocating in isolation. If you see it as part of a watershed, you understand the constant flow of risk, trust, and responsibility.
THE NUMBERS
Consider this: the average Dutch SME loses between 5 and 8 percent of annual revenue to preventable inefficiencies, late invoices, unmonitored contracts, staff turnover. In a team of ten, even one disengaged employee can cost upwards of €40,000 annually in hidden costs. A missed VAT filing? Penalties can easily reach €5,000. Now multiply this by the years you’ve been in business, and you’ll see that isolation is not just a mindset, it is an invoice you’re already paying.
WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU
Here is the uncomfortable truth: the Dutch entrepreneurial culture quietly celebrates independence, but often confuses it with detachment. Many small business owners believe they must face compliance, digital threats, and financial risks alone, because asking for alignment or governance feels like surrender. Yet this myth of self-sufficiency is precisely what leaves many drained, cynical, and vulnerable. A bubble looks strong from the outside but bursts at the slightest touch. A watershed, however, survives precisely because it is connected.
DECISION COMPASS
Ask yourself today:
- Which flows into my business are clean, and which carry hidden toxins (unreliable clients, unsafe digital practices, unclear contracts)?
- Where does my enterprise leak value, time wasted, unpaid invoices, knowledge lost?
- Who are my tributaries, staff, advisors, partners and do they strengthen or weaken my current?
- What do I need to stop treating as “my private problem” and instead address as part of a shared system of trust and governance?
- Am I building a bubble that will pop, or a watershed that will endure?
FINAL REFLECTION
The river does not ask whether you approve of its current. It moves, it floods, it nourishes, it destroys. Your business exists within the same inevitability. To believe you can operate in a bubble is to deny reality. To recognize you are part of a watershed is to accept the responsibility of flow, sometimes resisting, sometimes redirecting, always aware. The choice is not whether the current exists. The choice is whether you learn to swim with it, or continue pretending you can float in isolation.
Co-Creator of Xtroverso | Head of Global GRC @ ZENTRIQ™
Paolo Maria Pavan builds systems that balance rules with freedom, clarity with transformation. In his third life, he writes and speaks openly about markets, governance, and risk, not as a trader chasing price, but as a reader of patterns, behaviors, and distortions. A serial entrepreneur shaped by failure and reinvention, he sees governance as a living force for trust and progress, and refuses to avoid the hard conversations that make it real.
