Decision Load

Marko Ladis
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Decision Load is a show for leaders carrying too many decisions. Hosted by Marko Ladis, the show explores where companies get stuck when decisions, ownership, authority, and execution stop matching. Each conversation goes beneath the surface of scaling, AI adoption, founder load, team accountability, and operational complexity to examine the real decision patterns behind stalled execution. For CEOs, founders, COOs, operators, product leaders, engineering leaders, and anyone responsible for closing decisions that keep coming back.

  1. 1 day ago

    AI Founder: We Built Medicine Around Men. Now AI Is Learning From It!

    What happens when AI learns about women's health from medical research that has historically focused on men? Hélène Guillaume Pabis warns that the consequences can be deadly. Women's heart attack symptoms can be overlooked. Conditions like endometriosis can take years to diagnose. Even fitness trackers can mistake normal hormonal changes for signs of illness. On Decision Load, Hélène explains why medicine has long treated the male body as the default, how these blind spots can carry into AI, and why she built a company to challenge them. But solving the problem came with another fight. Investors dismissed women's health as a niche issue. She struggled to raise money through traditional channels, eventually attracting 92% of her funding through LinkedIn before selling her company to Zepp Health. Hélène Guillaume Pabis is an AI entrepreneur, speaker and founder of Wild.AI, a women's health technology company acquired by Zepp Health in 2025. Her work combines artificial intelligence, female physiology and wearable technology. Today, she advises founders and leaders on AI, personal branding and building sustainable businesses. In this episode, Hélène explains: Why women's heart attack symptoms and chronic conditions can be overlooked How male-centered medical research can influence AI health advice Why fitness trackers sometimes misinterpret ovulation and hormonal changes How she built Wild.AI to better understand the female body Why investors dismissed women's health, and how she raised 92% of her funding through LinkedIn How a business partnership with Zepp Health became an acquisition Why selling her company left her feeling lost, stressed and lonely What leaders misunderstand about energy debt, burnout and sustainable growth Why replacing employees with AI may be less effective than upskilling them Why founders who ignore personal branding could be missing major opportunities TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro: What Happens When AI Overlooks Women?01:28 Meet Hélène Guillaume Pabis, Founder of Wild.AI01:52 Getting Fired, Failed Startups and Becoming a Founder03:37 Why Women's Health Became Her Mission05:27 The Problem With Male-Centered Medical Research06:47 When Fitness Trackers Misread Ovulation and Pregnancy08:05 Women's Heart Attacks and Delayed Diagnoses08:35 Why Women's Pain and Symptoms Are Dismissed10:31 Building Wild.AI: Hormones, AI and Investor Rejection12:22 Why Women's Health Is Still Treated as a Taboo14:09 Culture, Masculinity and the Silence Around Women's Health16:21 Why Traditional VC Fundraising Failed Her18:44 How She Raised 92% of Her Funding Through LinkedIn20:41 Personal Branding, Trust and Social Proof22:26 How Zepp Health Acquired Wild.AI and What Came After24:11 What AI Can't Replace: Human Energy and Intelligence26:33 Why Leaders Need Energy Beyond Work28:45 Energy Debt, Burnout and Sustainable Business Growth30:53 Should CEOs Replace Employees With AI or Upskill Them?33:02 Why Founders Need a Personal Brand in the AI Era35:20 Her Final Advice to Founders FOLLOW HÉLÈNE Official website, speaking and AI insights:https://www.heleneguillaume.com/ Connect with Hélène on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/heleneguillaume/ Explore Wild.AI:https://wild.ai/ FOLLOW DECISION LOAD Get Decision Load: Unfiltered:https://decisionload.substack.com/ Explore Decision Stability — for founders and CEOs who are tired of being pulled into decisions their teams should own:https://decisionstability.co/ YouTube — @DecisionLoadShow LinkedIn — Marko Ladis Instagram — @decisionload

  2. 21 Oct

    Leadership Expert: Companies Cut Managers. Now They Want Them Back! | Dr. David Burkus

    Dr. David Burkus wrote a chapter called “Fire the Managers.” Now the leadership expert has changed his mind. Removing management layers can leave the same responsibilities with fewer people to carry them. On Decision Load, David explains why delegation fails, how high performers become micromanagers, and why capable teams keep waiting for the boss to decide. He still believes self-managed teams can work. His warning concerns established companies cutting managers without changing how the work gets done—and the overloaded people left trying to do two jobs. Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist, bestselling author and Columbia University faculty member whose work focuses on leadership, teamwork and high-performing teams. His books include Under New Management, Best Team Ever and Leading from Anywhere. In this episode, David explains: Why cutting middle management can make teams less effective How to stop being the bottleneck and break the “it’s faster if I do it” habit How to delegate decision-making authority with clear boundaries Why open-door policies fail, and what Reed Hastings changed at Netflix How to build psychological safety so employees can disagree with the boss What AI can automate for managers, and the risk of outsourcing human judgment TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 01:30 David Burkus: Leadership, Teamwork and Challenging His Own Book 02:41 Why He Changed His Mind About “Fire the Managers” 05:15 The Player-Coach Trap: Why Managers Have No Time to Manage 06:57 How Many Direct Reports Should a Manager Have? 10:10 Why Companies Are Bringing Managers Back 11:47 Are Companies Using AI to Justify Layoffs? 12:41 Why Companies Resist Salary Transparency 14:14 The Management Work That Still Needs a Human 15:30 How to Delegate Authority: Steve Jobs and Pixar 18:53 Ritz-Carlton’s $2,000 Rule for Employee Empowerment 20:04 The First Sign You’ve Become a Bottleneck 22:14 The “It’s Faster If I Do It” Trap 23:23 How One CC Email Keeps Decisions Coming Back 25:40 Why Open-Door Policies Fail: The Netflix Lesson 28:42 Why Hybrid Teams Raise Problems Too Late 30:28 How David Gives His Own Team Autonomy 31:51 Teach Your Team How to Make Better Decisions 33:00 Psychological Safety and the Trust Loop 36:02 How Decision Journals Help You Learn From Mistakes 38:47 Can AI Replace Managers and Human Judgment? 42:03 Slack, Teams and the Cost of Constant Notifications 43:30 Where to Find David Burkus FOLLOW DAVID Website and leadership resources: https://davidburkus.com/ Connect with David on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus/ Explore David’s books: https://davidburkus.com/books/ FOLLOW DECISION LOAD Get Decision Load: Unfiltered:https://decisionload.substack.com/ Explore Decision Stability — for founders and CEOs who are tired of being pulled into decisions their teams should own: https://decisionstability.co/ YouTube — @DecisionLoadShow LinkedIn — Marko Ladis Instagram — @decisionload

  3. 14 Oct

    He Got the Results. His Own Team Turned Against Him | Peter Weiss

    Peter Weiss delivered the results his investors wanted. His team rebelled. He was asked to leave. He admits he became the toxic boss he never wanted to be: controlling, micromanaging, and pushing people until they turned against him. A ten-day silent retreat changed how he understood leadership. Years later, he built a factory management system around something remarkably simple: red and green cards. Green meant everything was fine. Red meant someone needed help. But what happens when employees are too afraid to turn the card red? Peter, a former factory owner, business turnaround leader and founder of Kaizen Institute Thailand, joins Decision Load to discuss the psychology of escalation, why good engineers become terrible managers, and how leaders accidentally teach their teams to hide problems. We also discuss how he transformed factory operations to fulfil an order nobody believed was possible, why employees escalate the wrong decisions, and what happens when a manager confuses control with leadership. FOLLOW PETER https://mindkaizen.com FOLLOW DECISION LOAD Newsletter: https://decisionload.substack.com/ Decision Stability: https://decisionstability.co/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DecisionLoadShow Instagram: @decisionload

  4. 7 Oct

    AI Is Making Companies Better Informed — and Worse at Deciding

    Gia Laudi explains why AI can make a company better informed and worse at deciding, how endless AI-generated insights create “strategic quicksand,” and why the hardest thing for teams now is not finding more options — it’s deciding which ones should never make the table. Gia has spent roughly 25 years in marketing, including around 15 years working with tech and SaaS companies. Today she runs Customer Led, where she helps B2B and product-led companies make better decisions about positioning, customer research, product growth and go-to-market strategy by understanding why customers actually buy. In this episode, Gia explains: ◼ Why AI-generated research can leave teams with more information but less confidence ◼ What she means by “strategic quicksand” ◼ Why an LLM saying every opportunity is possible makes focus harder ◼ Why 50 insights reports are useless if the team still cannot agree what matters ◼ What AI can tell you about customers — and what it still cannot tell you ◼ Why customer data can show what people do without explaining why they decided to buy ◼ Why recent customers may know more about your market than another strategy deck ◼ Why product onboarding still sits in a “no man’s land” between product and marketing ◼ How valuable customer experiences get lost between teams when nobody clearly owns them ◼ Why research only becomes useful when it creates shared meaning across a team ◼ How customer research can become a decision-making tool instead of another document ◼ Why fear and lack of alignment stop companies acting even when the evidence is there ◼ Why maintaining the status quo may now be more dangerous than making the wrong move ◼ How a customer journey map changed who was able to make decisions inside Gia’s team ◼ Why building has become cheap — but building the right thing is still expensive ◼ Why companies need to understand the circumstances that caused a customer to choose them ◼ Why “more activity is not more progress” ◼ Why focus and saying no may be the most important competitive advantage teams have left Gia’s central argument is deceptively simple: companies are not short of information. They are drowning in it. The advantage now comes from knowing which evidence to trust, what deserves focus, and which opportunities to deliberately leave behind. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Intro 01:05 — Gia Laudi: Customer-Led Growth and Better Decisions 03:07 — Why Product Onboarding Still Lives in “No Man’s Land” 07:29 — What Gia Sees in the First Week With a New Company 11:59 — Companies Don’t Have an Information Problem 16:32 — How AI Creates “Strategic Quicksand” 19:16 — Why AI Makes Saying No Harder 20:51 — Turning Customer Research Into Actual Decisions 27:11 — Why Teams Still Freeze Even When the Evidence Is Clear 32:09 — Why the Status Quo May Be the Most Dangerous Option 33:08 — The Customer Journey Map That Changed How the Team Decided 38:15 — Building Is Cheap. Building the Right Thing Isn’t 43:07 — 4,000 Support Tickets, 50 Insights Reports — Now What? 44:51 — Why Focus Is Still the Hardest Thing 45:19 — Knowing What Should NOT Be on the Table 46:29 — Where to Find Gia FOLLOW GIA Customer Led — https://customerled.com/ Forget The Funnel — https://forgetthefunnel.com/ FOLLOW DECISION LOAD Get Decision Load: Unfiltered: https://decisionload.substack.com/ Send me one decision that should not need you and receive a free private breakdown: https://decisionstability.co/ LinkedIn — Marko Ladis Instagram — @decisionload

  5. 30 Sept

    Dwight Braswell: The Habit That Makes Capable People STOP Taking Initiative

    Leadership coach Dwight Braswell explains why one sentence can teach an entire team to wait, how high-performing managers accidentally turn themselves into the bottleneck, and why constantly rescuing people can quietly train ownership out of a team. Dwight Braswell coaches and mentors leaders through Complete Leadership Academy while also coaching flag football — two worlds that, in practice, have far more in common than they should. After being thrown into coaching his son’s team with no real playbook, he began seeing the same pattern on the field that he later saw inside companies: people perform better when they know what they own, where the boundaries are and when they are actually allowed to make the call. In this episode, Dwight explains: ◼ Why six-year-olds can sometimes follow a playbook better than managers ◼ How “Who approved this?” teaches capable people to start playing it safe ◼ Why managers become the bottleneck and then blame the team for waiting ◼ Why the instinct to rescue someone can quietly create dependence ◼ The difference between accountability and genuine ownership ◼ Why “what you tolerate, you teach” applies to leaders too ◼ What may actually be underneath “That’s not my job” ◼ Why delegation fails when decision boundaries were never made clear ◼ How to decide who owns the work when two good people both have a point ◼ Why people do not automatically take ownership just because you gave them responsibility ◼ The phrases managers use that make people defensive instead of curious ◼ Why “let’s figure it out” works differently from “here’s what you need to do” ◼ When a leader absolutely should take control and call the play ◼ Why spending time with your people is one of the most important things a leader can do ◼ What Dwight himself still struggles to delegate ◼ Why the first thing a CEO may need to do is simply stop telling people what to do TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Why Managers Accidentally Become the Bottleneck 00:41 — Dwight Braswell: Coaching Leaders On and Off the Field 02:23 — Thrown Into Coaching With No Playbook 03:51 — Getting the Title Before You Know How to Lead 05:42 — Clarity Removes the Guessing 06:28 — When the Player Starts Calling the Play 08:17 — Why Managers Keep Doing the Work Themselves 10:19 — How “Who Approved This?” Teaches People to Wait 13:08 — The Rescue Loop: When Helping Creates Dependence 16:04 — “What You Tolerate, You Teach” 19:18 — What “That’s Not My Job” Is Really Telling You 22:36 — Delegation Needs Clear Decision Boundaries 24:10 — When Nobody Wants to Own the Work 26:41 — Why People Don’t Automatically Take Ownership 29:31 — The Leadership Language That Changes the Conversation 33:25 — When the Leader Should Call the Play 36:16 — The Most Important Time You Can Spend as a Leader 37:35 — What Dwight Still Struggles to Let Go Of 39:51 — Letting His Son Take Over After 10 Years 41:02 — The First Thing CEOs Should Stop Doing FOLLOW DWIGHT LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwightbraswell/ Complete Leadership Academy — https://completeleadershipacademy.com/ Get Decision Load: Unfiltered: https://decisionload.substack.com/ Send me one decision that should not need you and receive a free private video breakdown: https://decisionstability.co/ Follow Decision Load: LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-ladis/ Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/decisionload/

  6. 23 Sept

    13-Year Executive Assistant: “Keep Me In The Loop” Is Why You’re Still Doing Everything

    13-year executive assistant turned Director of Communications Katie Hessler explains why “keep me in the loop” is often a control request, how founders accidentally teach people to bypass the systems they created, and why staying copied on every decision can leave you doing everything even after you thought you delegated it.Katie Hessler is a Director of Communications who spent 13 years working behind the scenes with founders as an executive assistant. She began working remotely as an EA in 2013 and went on to support founders across multiple industries, giving her an unusual view of what actually reaches a founder, what gets filtered out, how trust is built and what happens when leaders delegate the work but never really let go. She later earned a master’s in strategic communications and now applies many of those same skills at an organizational level: deciding what information matters, who needs to hear it and how it should be communicated.In this episode, Katie explains:◼ Why “keep me in the loop” is often about control, not information◼ How founders sabotage delegation by answering the email they handed off◼ Why one reply can teach everyone where the real door to the founder is◼ What executive assistants are actually deciding when they manage an inbox or calendar◼ How trust moves from “I trust you to do it” to “I don’t need to look”◼ Why protecting someone’s attention is decision work, not just admin work◼ How to protect a founder from noise without protecting them from reality◼ Why constantly being CC’d quietly consumes the attention you were trying to protect◼ Why micromanagement can survive even after the work itself has been delegated◼ When “ask Katie, she’ll handle it” stops being a compliment and becomes dependency◼ Why a founder answering around their EA creates backdoors into the organization◼ How time away exposes whether you built a system or made one person indispensable◼ Why executive assistance and communications rely on the same skill: deciding what information mattersTIMESTAMPS00:00 — “Keep Me In The Loop” Is a Control Thing00:55 — 13 Years Behind the Curtain With Founders05:20 — The Decisions Hidden Inside Inbox & Calendar Work09:17 — When Admin Turns Into Judgment12:22 — Noise vs What the Founder Actually Needs to Know16:24 — How Founders Learn to Trust an Executive Assistant21:26 — Protecting Attention Without Formal Authority23:30 — Who Decides What Becomes a CEO Problem?27:56 — How Founders Sabotage Their Own Delegation30:16 — The Problem With “Just Keep Me In The Loop”34:31 — When “Ask Katie” Becomes a Dependency38:21 — From Executive Assistant to Director of Communications40:25 — Marketing Earns Attention. Communication Earns Trust.FOLLOW KATIELinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/khessler/Get Decision Load: Unfiltered:https://decisionload.substack.com/Send me one decision that should not need you and receive a free private video breakdown:https://decisionstability.co/Follow Decision Load:LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-ladis/Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/decisionload/

  7. 17 Sept

    Blitzscaling Author Chris Yeh: Why Great Founders Deliberately Leave Some Problems Unfixed

    Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh explains why smart founders become decision bottlenecks, why teams learn to escalate instead of taking ownership, and why waiting for certainty becomes more expensive as a company scales.Chris Yeh is an entrepreneur, investor and co-author of Blitzscaling with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. He is a General Partner at Blitzscaling Ventures and has spent decades working with startups, founders and high-growth companies. He also helped start a company that was later sold for $130 million. Today, Chris invests in entrepreneurs around the world and is working with Reid Hoffman on the next Blitzscaling book for the AI era.In this episode, Chris explains:◼ Why founders sometimes have to let fires burn◼ Why escalating problems can feel safer than making the decision yourself◼ How leaders accidentally train teams to escalate everything upward◼ Why responsibility without authority creates stress and dependency◼ Why delegating work means little if you never delegate decision authority◼ Why your company’s escalation history can reveal more than its org chart◼ Why repeated fires are often evidence of a badly designed system◼ Why founders lose access to the truth as organizations get bigger◼ Why AI becomes dangerous when you outsource judgment, not just work◼ Why waiting for more information rarely produces the certainty founders want◼ What Mark Zuckerberg’s mobile reversal teaches about decisive leadership◼ Reid Hoffman’s rule for making better decisions◼ Why empathy can sometimes push leaders toward the wrong customer decisionTIMESTAMPS00:00 — Why People Stop Talking to Founders03:31 — Let Fires Burn: How Founders Prioritize08:14 — When Founders Lose Front-Line Visibility11:35 — Why Teams Start Escalating Everything15:30 — Delegate Decisions, Not Just Work19:41 — AI, Sycophancy & Outsourcing Judgment22:00 — When Repeated Fires Reveal a Broken System27:06 — When Delegation Becomes Theater30:00 — The Cost of Waiting for Certainty31:34 — Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman & Better Decisions37:20 — Why You Sometimes Have to Ignore Customers40:29 — Blitzscaling 2 & Scaling in the AI EraFOLLOW CHRISWebsite — https://www.chrisyeh.com/LinkedIn —   / chrisyeh  Get Decision Load: Unfiltered:https://decisionload.substack.com/Send me one decision that should not need you and receive a free private video breakdown:https://decisionstability.co/Follow Decision Load:LinkedIn —   / marko-ladis  Instagram —   / decisionload

  8. 9 Sept

    Leadership Coach: Helpful Managers Create Dependent Teams — Then Wonder Why Nobody Takes Ownership

    Leadership expert Susanne Madsen reveals how good managers accidentally become the bottleneck, why teams stop taking ownership when the leader keeps rescuing them, and why delegating the work means very little if you never delegate the decisions.Susanne Madsen is an executive coach, author and project leadership expert who spent 17 years running complex technology and banking programmes before moving into leadership coaching. After experiencing the power of coaching herself, she left corporate life in 2013 and has since focused on helping project managers and senior leaders move from being the expert with all the answers to building teams that can think and act without them.She explains:◼ Why the most helpful person on the team can quietly become its biggest bottleneck◼ Why taking work back the moment someone struggles teaches people not to take ownership◼ Why delegating tasks without delegating decision authority keeps everything dependent on the leader◼ Why teams immediately recognise “false consultation” when the decision has already been made◼ Why AI can broaden our thinking — but should not replace the reflection and judgment leadership requires00:00:00 Intro00:00:50 Susanne Madsen Joins Decision Load00:01:28 Who Is Susanne Madsen?00:03:51 The Coaching Moment That Changed Her Career00:06:17 Why She Walked Away From Banking00:07:04 “You Ask for Their Opinion — Then Decide Yourself”00:09:08 Why Leaders Need Real Feedback00:11:45 How Big Projects Actually Make Decisions00:13:26 Who Should Have Decision Authority?00:14:21 What Leadership Bravery Really Looks Like00:15:43 When Should You Escalate a Decision?00:16:27 The Bad Hire That Changed Her Thinking00:17:37 The Expert Trap00:18:00 How Good Leaders Become Bottlenecks00:21:02 When Being Helpful Creates Dependency00:21:56 What Is a Leader Actually There to Do?00:22:22 What Happens When the Expert Steps Back00:23:14 Questions That Build Ownership00:24:42 Are We Delegating Our Thinking to AI?00:28:39 Where AI Can Actually Help Leaders00:29:51 “Whose Decision Should This Be?”00:31:31 Founders Delegate Work but Keep the Decisions00:33:21 Why Teams See Through False Consultation00:34:03 What to Say When You’ve Already Decided00:35:03 Which Decisions Should Be Made Together?00:36:27 The Bike in Bruges00:38:33 Are You Solving the Wrong Problem?00:40:42 When Your Team Escalates Everything to You00:42:41 Who Gets the Work Nobody Wants?00:43:15 One Thing Every Leader Should Try This Month00:44:37 Why Behaviour Change Starts Small00:45:35 What Susanne Is Working on Now00:47:15 ClosingFollow Susanne:Website — https://www.susannemadsen.co.uk/LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanne-madsen-1134312/Get Decision Load: Unfiltered:https://decisionload.substack.com/Send me one decision that should not need you and receive a free private video breakdown:https://decisionstability.co/Follow Decision Load:LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-ladis/Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/decisionload/

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About

Decision Load is a show for leaders carrying too many decisions. Hosted by Marko Ladis, the show explores where companies get stuck when decisions, ownership, authority, and execution stop matching. Each conversation goes beneath the surface of scaling, AI adoption, founder load, team accountability, and operational complexity to examine the real decision patterns behind stalled execution. For CEOs, founders, COOs, operators, product leaders, engineering leaders, and anyone responsible for closing decisions that keep coming back.

Information

  • Creator
    Marko Ladis
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Marko Ladis
  • Show Website
    Decision Load