I was at an event on Monday and got talking to the CEO of a biggish company. He’d been there a year, during which he’d had to get rid of a fifth of the workforce because it was doing so badly. This made me think two things: one, I’m very glad it hasn’t been necessary for me to sack that many people, given how stressful it is to sack just one person. And two: I wonder if I’d actually have been able to do that, even if it was necessary?

The thing is, this guy came in at a time when it was clear the company was struggling. Results hadn’t been great, and we were clearly on the verge of a nasty recession. He himself had no emotional ties to the company; in fact I think he was specifically recruited because in his previous job he’d had some success in stripping out costs. In other words, he more or less had a mandate to do whatever he thought was necessary. He could look at everything dispassionately, make a call about what worked and what didn’t – and nobody would blame him for whatever he decided because they all knew what was coming.

Compare your average entrepreneur coming into this downturn. Some of us – including me – probably haven’t experienced an economy this bad. In fact, if we’ve made it to this point, the chances are that we’re largely used to managing growth. What’s more, having built our little companies from scratch, it’s hard not to feel a degree of emotional attachment to the people you’ve hired, and the way you’ve set the whole thing up. To me, that means it’s almost impossible to look at your business dispassionately, and even harder to decide that you need to chop one-fifth of your staff.

I spent most of the next day thinking about what this guy would do if I persuaded him to come and run my company (admittedly this would be a fairly big step down for him, career-wise, but bear with me). Coming into it with a fresh pair of eyes and no vested loyalties, what would he think needed to be changed? Who would stay and who would go? What would he think about the new venture? In fact, at one point I even started wondering if maybe I should make this a regular exercise – every six months, I could sit down and pretend to be a brand new CEO.

But the problem is, you can’t really do it. It’s just not possible to dissociate yourself from your own company. Not that I have kids, but I imagine it’s like trying to decide whether your kid is objectively good-looking; there’s too much of you in there for you to be objective about it. Besides, maybe entrepreneurs ought to trust their instincts; if they think something will come good, even if it’s not showing any signs of doing so, then perhaps it should be given time. OK, so corporate bosses might not be so forbearing – but then maybe that’s why they’re salaried employees, and not company owners.

So much though the idea of a new broom sweeping clean sounded appealing at the time, I’m clearly not going to be able to replicate it. And since I’ve no intention of appointing an outside CEO any time soon, I guess the business will just have to lump along with my instincts, for better or worse.