If you’re operating with sustained responsibility, constant decision flow, and expanding scope, overwhelm often shows up not because of poor time management, but because of how decisions, expectations, and work are structured.

In this episode of Grounded and Aligned™, Karen Gombault addresses why senior leaders remain cognitively overloaded even when they are experienced, disciplined, and committed.

She outlines three pragmatic strategies drawn from her personal experience as CEO and her work with executives who have limited recovery time, and who need effectiveness that holds under pressure, not theoretical productivity models.

Karen looks at

1. How delayed decisions consume disproportionate cognitive capacity and keep senior leaders stuck in analysis rather than execution

1. Where unclear decision rights between leaders and their teams create rework, escalation, and unnecessary involvement

1. The cost of vague task-based scheduling versus explicitly defining outcomes within fixed time constraints

1. Why senior roles require deliberate boundary-setting rather than reactive availability

1. How structuring decisions and expectations reduces ongoing mental load without reducing accountability

Overwhelm at senior level is rarely a volume problem. It is a structural one. When decisions linger, roles are ambiguous, and work is framed as activity rather than outcome, leaders absorb unnecessary load that compounds over time. Effectiveness comes from how judgment, authority, and attention are designed into the role, not from working longer or trying harder.

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