I know of a contractor who was very respected in his business. Successful guy. Always busy. Construction, primarily. At any given time he had at least three large projects going. People depended on him.

One weekend he went to his country home, as he did almost every weekend. Except this time he hanged himself. And suddenly everybody discovered just how much of those projects existed inside one man's head.

Now what? The buildings didn't disappear with him. Neither did the deadlines, contracts, subcontractors, materials, buyers or future tenants. Somebody had to come in cold, figure out what had been done, what hadn't been done, what had been ordered, what had been promised, who was responsible for what, and somehow get three construction projects moving again. By the time it was sorted out, the additional cost worked out to around $200 per square meter - costs that ultimately had to be absorbed by the future tenants.

Two hundred dollars per square meter because one man was suddenly gone. That's a hell of an expensive way to discover that your contractor wasn't merely your contractor. He was part of your operating system.

Most of us discover this dependency in less dramatic ways. You finally find a good contractor. He answers the phone. His prices are fair. He knows your properties. He knows what kind of work you expect and what kind you don't. After a few years, conversations become wonderfully short.

“Same problem at Oak Street.”

“I know.”

“When?”

“Thursday.”

Beautiful.

He remembers which roof was patched three years ago. He knows what the previous plumber screwed up. He knows which supplier has the matching tile. He remembers what's behind a wall nobody has opened in ten years. Eventually, he knows things about your properties that you don't know.

And that's where a good relationship can quietly become a dangerous dependency. The obvious answer seems to be: never depend on one person. Have three plumbers. Three electricians. Three HVAC companies. Three general contractors. Spread everything around so everybody is replaceable.

Sounds smart. It may also be a great way to make sure you're nobody's important customer. The contractor who gets most of my work has a reason to answer my call on Friday evening. The guy I call twice a year doesn't. Relationships have value precisely because they're relationships. Trust, history and accumulated knowledge save enormous amounts of time and money. So I don't think dependency itself is necessarily the problem. Unrecognized dependency is.

There's another side to that contractor's story that bothers me, too. When everything pivots around one person, responsibilities have a tendency to accumulate. Another project. Another problem. Another phone call only he can answer. Another decision only he can make. Everybody says: “Ask him. He knows.” That may feel like indispensability from the outside. From the inside, it can become an unbearable burden.

I don't know what drove that particular man to take his life, and I wouldn't pretend that business pressure explains it. But his death made the business vulnerability brutally visible: too much knowledge, authority and responsibility had accumulated around one human being.

And contractors aren't the only example. Property manager. Bookkeeper. Insurance agent. Loan officer. Attorney. Employee. Partner. The dangerous sentence is: “Don't worry. Mike knows how that works.” Great. What happens when Mike isn't there tomorrow? Who has the keys? Who knows the vendors? Where are the warranties? Who has the drawings? Where are the invoices? What's been ordered? What was agreed verbally? What's the actual maintenance history? Could another competent person walk in tomorrow and figure it out?

I don't want to make everybody replaceable. That's a terrible way to think about good people. I want the business to be survivable without any one of us. Because people retire. They move. They get sick. They get overwhelmed. Relationships break down. And occasionally something happens that nobody imagined was even on the list of possibilities. The time to discover that one person is holding your entire operation together is not the morning that person is gone.

So here's my uncomfortable question: if your most important contractor disappeared tomorrow, would you lose a contractor - or would you lose part of your business?