The Somatic CEO: Why Your Q4 Fatigue Is a Mandate for Redesign, Not Rest

Summary

Louisa Loran argues that the familiar end-of-year exhaustion leaders feel isn’t just tiredness — it’s a signal that your organisation is fighting its own speed. Rather than pausing, she recommends a somatic redesign: deliberately rewiring the company’s structures (technology, processes and people) so work flows without costly friction.

The piece names the core problem as “neural friction” — the mismatch between a leader’s required tempo and the organisation’s slower, entrenched rhythms. Loran outlines three common structural anxieties (the strategy/journey gap, capability fog and the AI integration illusion) and offers three practical levers to rewire organisations before the new year.

Key Points

Q4 fatigue often reflects structural friction, not simply overwork.
Neural friction is the gap between leadership speed and organisational wiring.
Three structural anxieties: the Strategy/Journey Gap, Capability Fog, and the AI Integration Illusion.
Three levers for somatic redesign: deconfigure into capabilities, redraw connection points around actual work, and create shared reflexes at key decision choke points.
Practical examples (Renault, Maersk) show how reframing capabilities and connection points can unlock speed and coordination.
Winning leaders use quiet windows to build new muscle memory, not to revert to familiar but brittle patterns.

Why should I read this?

Look — if your exec team feels sluggish and the daily grind keeps tripping up strategy, this is the quick wake-up you need. It’s not another pep talk about working harder: it’s a playbook for changing the wiring so effort actually turns into speed. Read it if you’d rather redesign systems than keep asking people to run faster on a broken track.

Author style

Punchy. Loran writes with clear, actionable urgency: this isn’t academic theory but a hands-on prescription. If you run a business that must move fast next year, the article is worth reading in full — it points to structural fixes that pay off far faster than incremental exhortations or blunt cuts.