Every week your hidden loops run. The cost compounds. I stop that.

I work with leaders responsible for execution.

The ones carrying deadlines, scope, and accountability that never ease up. It often looks like Founders, VPs, Directors, or Product and Project Leads.

But the role is not what matters, the weight is.

The problem is not effort. The problem is loops you cannot see.

They look responsible in the moment but they drain time, slow decisions, and eat into the trust you’ve earned.

You know the signs:

• A decision pushed off until the opportunity is gone
• A hire delayed until the best candidate walks
• Work you delegated pulled back onto your plate

These aren’t small habits.

I do not coach in the way you think of coaching. I cut the loop at the source so it stops running you.

My clients walk out with:

• Decisions made in hours instead of weeks
• Teams that move without being pushed
• Projects delivered instead of delayed
• Opportunities secured before they slip away

We do not polish symptoms. We cut the loop.

No journaling.
No endless talk.
No drawn-out processes.

You can read what my clients say in the "Recommendations" section below.

Roshan Chander

There is a point many capable people never name. 

Work they once cared about starts to feel heavy, not because it became harder or because they lost skill. It changes when the work stops closing. 

Decisions stay open longer than they should. Simple calls accumulate instead of resolving. Ownership blurs. What used to move forward starts cycling back for review, reassurance, or reconsideration. Over time, the work itself becomes associated with friction rather than progress.

This shift is often misread. People assume they fell out of love with the work, that interest faded, or that they need a new direction. In most cases, none of that is true. What changed was not the work itself but how decisions get handled.

When actions no longer lead to closure, effort begins to feel heavier than it should. Tasks remain unfinished. Forward movement slows even though capability remains intact. 

Avoidance creeps in, not because the work lacks meaning, but because unresolved decisions stack faster than they clear.

This is why capable people start dreading work they were once drawn to. The issue is not purpose or motivation. It is unresolved interference inside how decisions move.

When that interference is corrected, the relationship to the work changes. Not through motivation, reframing, or renewed passion but through closure.

Decisions settle, work moves again, and the weight lifts because the loop is no longer running.

I Fix Decision Loops That Slow Execution | Structural Fixes, Not Motivation Work

A client described something that had been happening for a while.

His mornings kept starting with the same items, even though nothing new had occurred. Decisions he believed were done kept requiring attention again.

One of them was a commercial lease add-on he had decided months earlier to stop using. The agreement was no longer useful, but it was never formally exited. Every month it showed up as a charge. Every time it did, it pulled him back into the same loop.

There were others like it. A responsibility he had stepped back from but never clearly reassigned. A commitment he had agreed to review and then kept postponing instead of ending. 

Each one made sense on its own but together they caused the day to restart.

The work was not about pushing harder or planning better. It was about identifying which decisions were still active without reason and finishing them instead of letting them linger.

Once that happened, the mornings changed. Fewer things came back after being handled. Less time was spent revisiting choices that had already been made.

What changed was not what he added, but what finally stopped following him into the next day.

Scaling problems show up when old decisions never fully closed, not when the market shifts.

Before locking in your Q1 plan, look back at last quarter and ask one question. What work returned to your desk that should not have?

Not crisis work. Not strategic calls. Regular operational work you believed was delegated, approved, or complete, but kept coming back for review, confirmation, or reassurance.

That's what's actually slowing you down.

By the time Q1 arrives, the issue is rarely demand or competition. It is the accumulation of work that never actually closed. Responsibility taken on instead of routed. Decisions revisited instead of finalized. Ownership stays with you instead of moving to the structure.

None of this feels irresponsible in the moment. It often feels careful. Sometimes necessary. That is why it persists.

Over time, the pattern shifts how the business moves. Work collects at the same points. Fewer things move without touching the same desk. Execution narrows because nothing closes without you.

This is not a motivation issue. It is not a workload issue. It is not a people issue.

It is unresolved decisions accumulating inside the system. Until those points are addressed, adding tools, hires, or pressure only feeds the same collection points.

Look at what kept reopening last quarter. That usually tells you what needs to close before anything can scale.

There was a stretch where I kept getting stuck on decisions that did not deserve the time they were taking.

I would turn them over again and again, trying to be sure I was not missing something. The strange part was that nothing new was showing up. The inputs were the same. The context had not changed. 

Still, the decision stayed open.

What finally clicked for me was realizing that I was treating every decision as if it were permanent.

I was acting as though once I moved, there was no way back. No adjustment. No correction. That assumption made every move feel final and kept the loop running.

In reality, many of those decisions were reversible. If they did not work, I could change course. If something went wrong, I could correct it. But I never stopped to separate those from the decisions that actually could not be undone.

That is what kept me stuck.

Once I started separating decisions that could be adjusted from the ones that could not, decisions that had been sitting for days started moving. The work behind them moved too.

This is about knowing when the cost of waiting is higher than the cost of adjusting later.

I see this same pattern with the leaders I work with. They are not unsure what to do. They are unsure whether they will be able to recover if they are wrong. So the decision stays open longer than it should.

That is the loop.

It comes from a misread about the nature of the decision itself. Once that gets corrected, decisions that have been sitting for days start closing. 

Everything behind them starts moving too.

At some point, leaders stop fixing problems and start compensating for them.

They step in to keep things moving. They work around friction. They take responsibility for gaps that feel too small to redesign and too important to ignore. None of this looks wrong in the moment. It looks like leadership.

Over time, those compensations harden into patterns.

Work that should move through the system starts routing upward. Decisions that should settle begin circulating. The leader becomes the point where unresolved work accumulates.

Effort, commitment, and capability are all present. The slowdown comes from interference being managed instead of removed.

When leaders rely on reassurance instead of clear boundaries, or absorb responsibility instead of correcting the structure that created it, execution slows. Fewer things move without involvement. Decisions wait longer than they should. The system keeps working, but only because someone is manually holding it together.

That loop accumulates decision debt.

Until those patterns are corrected at the structural level, every external fix adds pressure to the same internal weak points. 

More tools. More hires. More urgency. Same outcome.

If you are stepping in more than you used to, look at what you are compensating for. That usually shows you what the structure has been avoiding.

There’s a moment when a timeline looks set but doesn’t actually hold. 

The date gets agreed on, the plan is shared, and work starts moving. On the surface, it appears settled.

A few days later, the timeline comes back into view. Someone asks if it’s still realistic. A related task gets pulled back into discussion. A small adjustment is talked through. 

Nothing officially changes but the date becomes conditional.

A week later, it’s reviewed again. Just to make sure it still makes sense. At that point, the timeline exists on paper, not in practice. Work continues but decisions downstream slow because no one fully trusts where things stand.

This is how timelines stretch without ever being formally changed. Not through delay but through re-entry. The same date keeps getting touched instead of held. 

Uncertainty seeps into the work, and execution starts routing upward for confirmation instead of moving forward.

If timelines have been reopening more often lately, it’s worth noticing. Once a date stops holding, everything tied to it starts hesitating too.

There are moments when a decision looks final, but it does not actually hold.

The approval happens, direction is set, and work begins. On the surface, everything appears to be moving forward. Then a few days later, the same question appears again. The topic returns to a meeting. Someone asks for another look. The work pauses or gets adjusted, even though nothing new has surfaced.

This usually traces back to the moment the decision was made.

Often, the call was reached without defining what would count as success or failure. Sometimes ownership was implied rather than named. In other cases, the decision depended on alignment rather than commitment. The group agreed to move forward but no boundary was set around what would not be revisited.

Because those conditions were never set, the work advances while the decision remains unresolved. Reviews repeat. Leaders re-enter. Direction shifts, then shifts again.

Progress feels heavier than it should. Time gets spent returning to things that were already decided. People hesitate because they sense the decision is still open. 

If work keeps coming back after it should be moving on, the place to look is not the execution. It is the moment where the decision was made without defining the conditions that would keep it closed. 

That missing piece usually explains why the issue keeps returning.

I watched a YouTube video from a senior software engineer who had spent over two decades in big tech and was recently laid off.

What stood out was not the layoff itself. It was what happened once the structure he had been operating inside for years was gone.

For most of his career, the system did a lot of invisible work. 

Roles were clear. Expectations were set. Decisions closed quickly because the environment closed them for you. Long hours and heavy tradeoffs felt tolerable because the path forward rarely needed to be renegotiated from scratch.

When that structure disappeared, he described entering what felt like a wilderness. Not because he lacked skill or experience, but because the external container that had been holding decisions in place no longer existed.

That shift exposes something many people in similar positions run into. 

When the system that once absorbed uncertainty is removed, decisions that used to resolve automatically now sit open. What to pursue, how hard to push, and what is worth the cost all move back onto the individual at the same time.

This is not confusion and it is not a lack of capability. It is the absence of decision closure mechanisms that were previously embedded in the environment.

Until new ones are established, even highly experienced people find that effort spreads thin and progress feels uneven longer than expected.

Nothing is broken. The structure that once carried those decisions simply is not there anymore.

Some weeks feel busy without much actually moving.

Calendars fill up fast. More check-ins get added to stay aligned. Meetings show up to unblock work, review work, or prepare for other meetings. 

By the end of the day, very little has been finished.

By midweek, the same topics are back. Decisions that were already discussed resurface in the next meeting. Context has to be rebuilt because half the room was doing something else when it was last covered. Five minutes get spent recovering the previous five minutes.

Work gets pushed later in the day to after meetings, but there is less energy left by then. Actual execution shrinks to a few narrow windows between calls. The day feels full, yet unfinished.

Decisions do not settle. They get revisited and stay active longer than expected. Work continues but forward movement depends on repeated confirmation.

This is why teams can add hours without adding output. The time goes to coordination and recovery, not execution. More meetings create the need for more meetings.

If your week feels crowded but unfinished, look at which decisions are appearing in multiple meetings. That's usually where the cycle is draining capacity.

I used to believe my issue with delegation came from high standards. I cared about the outcome, so staying close to the work felt responsible. If something slowed down or did not move the way I expected, I stepped back in and fixed it myself.

What I could not see at the time was the pattern I was creating. Work did not actually move forward. It circulated. Decisions stayed open longer than necessary. Tasks that should have stayed delegated found their way back to me. 

Over time, the team learned to wait instead of act, not because they lacked capability, but because my behavior signaled that ownership was temporary.

This was not a trust problem in the emotional sense. It was a control reflex that fired when certainty did not arrive quickly enough. The moment uncertainty showed up, my mind treated it as risk and responded by taking control back.

That reflex felt justified in the moment. It was costly over time. I became the bottleneck. Execution slowed. The system relied on my attention instead of moving on its own.

That is one of the execution patterns I work with now. Not by teaching people to delegate better, but by identifying the exact internal moment where the loop fires and disrupts execution.

Most leaders do not realize this is happening. They just feel heavier weeks, more involvement than they want, and progress that depends too much on them.

I Cut Hidden Decision Loops that Drain Revenue, Time, and Authority.

Urs Koenig

Executive Coach, Leadership Coach

When companies need to inspire, engage, and develop their people while at the same time delivering stellar results in today’s hyper-competitive and complex business environment, they call URS KOENIG. Urs is an internationally renowned keynote speaker and leading expert on humble leadership. 

His message of Radical Humility in leadership draws on his world-spanning career as a UN military peacekeeper and NATO military peacekeeping commander, a highly accomplished ultra-endurance champion, a widely published professor, and a seasoned executive coach. 

Urs shares cutting-edge research insights, inspiring leadership stories, and no-nonsense, practical tools to attract and retain top talent, engage high-performing teams, and create a psychologically safe culture that is ‘Tough on Results and Tender on People’ at world-class organizations like Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft and the Society of Human Resource Management. 

Urs’ research-backed Radical Humility Framework is packed with tangible tools and practical takeaways, leaving audience members with the ultimate actionable blueprint for a new type of leader for a new type of world.

Leadership Expert, Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach

urskoenig.com

Most movie sets make a production out of starting.

Megaphones. Big voices. Yelling "Action!!!”

Clint Eastwood does the opposite.

He barely gestures.
He stands right next to you.
And quietly says, “Go ahead.”

No ego.
No spectacle.
No unnecessary noise.

Why?

Because early in his career, Clint was working on westerns.

Actors were on horses.

Horses that were already on edge.

And directors loved the megaphones.

The buildup.
The shouting.
The spectacle.

Horses started jumping. Actors got tense.

Everyone braced for what might go wrong.

So Clint asked a simple question...

"Could you just tell us to go?"

• Less noise.
• Greater trust.
• More direction.
• Calm presence.

That lesson stuck.

And it applies far beyond film sets.

→ Loud leadership creates tension.
→ Quiet leadership creates focus.
→ Calm leadership creates trust.

The best leaders do not need to announce their authority.

They create an environment where people feel steady enough to do their best work.

RADICAL HUMILITY in Leadership | Keynote Speaker | Best Selling, Award Winning Author | UN Peacekeeper | Ultra Endurance Champion

Now that we are all busy making 2026 a great year, I like to stop once in a while and look back.

Specifically at that stretch from mid-December to mid-January.

Because it was full.

Really full.

Some highlights I want to remember:

• My older son Luc home from college for his first break since starting UVM this fall

• My younger son Liam being accepted to UVM as well, with a big, fat scholarship (thank you from the 529 plan!)

• The boys being back under the same roof together again. Not all of it pretty. All of it real.

• A short-notice trip, just the three of us, chasing snow in Whistler. Incredible skiing for the boys and a health challenge that sidelined dad (all good now).

• Steamboat for the boys with mum, while I enjoyed Big Sky with my partner. One of two new travel destinations we are excited about for 2026.

• A low-key New Year’s Eve in the room with NA bubbles, followed by a 5:30 am ski mountaineering uphill workout on the 1st to start the year right. The moon included.

• An impromptu one-day powder trip to Alpental with Liam after a big snowfall, capped off by a spectacular dad crash into deep snow. The Apple Watch was concerned.

• Sending Luc back to Vermont for the next chapter of college life, and Liam off to Guatemala for his senior school trip

Busy season.
Grateful season.

And a timely reminder:

Progress forward feels better when you pause long enough to look back.

New year, big question - I recently got asked during a leadership panel in Australia...

What will leadership look like over the next 20 years?

My honest answer?

I don’t know.

No one does.

The world is moving too fast with AI, global change, complexity...

For any one person to have all the answers.

But here’s my best guess.

Leading into the future will require two things above all:

1. 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

The leaders who thrive will be the ones who never stop learning.

They’ll surround themselves with people smarter than them.

They’ll admit what they don’t know and stay curious enough to find out.

Because the minute we think we’ve “figured it out,” the world will have already moved on.

2. 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

The more complex and interconnected our world becomes, the less command-and-control leadership will work.

We need teams who can make decisions, take risks, and execute on the front lines.

And that only happens when there’s trust and psychological safety.

People can’t take smart risks if they’re afraid to fail.

They can’t innovate if they don’t feel seen, heard, and respected.

The best leaders of the next 20 years won’t just be experts in strategy or technology.

They’ll be experts in human connection.

They’ll know that the only way to lead in a world of uncertainty is with humility, trust, and strong relationships.

That’s the future.
And it’s already here.

As a die-hard Euro sports fanatic (think soccer, skiing, and bike racing), I don’t pretend to follow college football super closely…

…but Fernando Mendoza’s speech after winning the Heisman trophy, stopped me in my tracks.

He held up the trophy and said:

“This is not my trophy… this is OUR trophy.”

That’s Radical Humility.

And it’s rare.

Here’s what it looks like in real life:

✅ When there’s success, you look out the window.
You share credit. You spotlight the team.

✅ When there’s failure, you look in the mirror.
You take responsibility. You own the outcome.

This is what wins championships.
This is what breaks records.
This is what achieves goals.

Because when humility sits at the top, it doesn’t stay there.

It spreads through your team.
Your organization.
Your culture.

And suddenly… people don’t just work harder.

They work together.

Just like how the IU Hoosiers worked together to bring home the trophy! 🏆

#nationalchampions #hoosiers #mendoza

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