The book

Managers as 'cognitive architects': when sustainability comes from the mind

In an increasingly complex and digital working world, cognitive sustainability emerges as the key to balancing organisational demands and individual resources

by Gianni Rusconi

4 May 2026

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

It is not enough for work to be sustainable in economic-financial or environmental terms if it consumes people in the process. It is from this observation that Cognitive Sustainability takes shape, a book published by Egea and authored by Alessandro Antonini (HR Executive expert in people strategy and change management, as well as lecturer at the LUMSA University in Rome) and Ilaria Buonomo (psychologist, associate professor of work psychology at the same university). The text proposes a little-explored key to interpreting the mental and psychophysical status of managers in an increasingly complex context such as the current one, marked by permanent decision-making pressure and devoted to "productivity" between smart working, continuous meetings and intensive use of artificial intelligence: the real frontier of sustainability passes through the mind, attention and cognitive energy, precisely because we live in an era in which the most precious resource is no longer time but is becoming the ability to concentrate.

Yet, many organisations continue to measure performance while ignoring the mental load and emotional sustainability of activities. Hence the need for a paradigm shift: managing work is no longer limited to the mere distribution of tasks, but includes the design of conditions that make performance sustainable over time. The concept of cognitive sustainability is thus defined as a dynamic balance between organisational demands and the individual's ability to activate adaptive resources. A framework that integrates psychology, neuroscience and management and that overcomes the dichotomy between performance and well-being, two dimensions that can instead reinforce each other.

At the heart of the model are three pillars - background, needs and mastery - that guide the relationship between the individual and work and fuel a transformation of the managerial role: the boss becomes a 'cognitive architect', called upon to balance human goals and limits, reduce information overload and create contexts that foster concentration, autonomy and recovery. This is how the two authors explain why supporting people becomes a determining factor for corporate competitiveness.

Describe cognitive sustainability as a balance between organisational demands and individual resources: how does this principle translate into a concrete governance model linked to KPIs?

Translating cognitive sustainability into concrete governance means re-reading the data already available - absenteeism, turnover, engagement levels, leave for exhaustion, but also data from the company's HRIS (Human Resources Information System, software that manages information on employees and HR processes, ed.) and engagement surveys - as cognitive load signals and not only as personnel management data. The model we propose works on three levels: the first is operational: the manager co-defines objectives taking into account the background, needs and mastery of each individual and monitors the load with periodic meetings. The second is intermediate: HR analyses aggregate company and departmental data and, together with line management, defines targeted actions. The third is strategic: cognitive sustainability enters into the explicit criteria of managers' performance evaluation processes. This structure makes it possible to understand whether to intervene on the individual's planning or on the load distribution in the team or even on management practices at organisational level. The model becomes operational when one begins to consider the cognitive weight of work in project and resource allocation decisions.

If the manager is a 'cognitive architect', what are the distinctive competencies a leader must develop to design cognitively sustainable contexts?

The cognitive architect is the manager who designs the conditions in which people work well and express themselves to the best of their abilities. His or her most relevant skills are reflected in the ability to read contexts and define priorities, foreseeing the complexity of tasks before assigning them, but also to be able to talk to colleagues and regularly observe the cognitive and emotional state of each one, building relationships in which confrontation fuels trust and continuous learning. What makes the difference is not just the technical competence of the leader, but the ability to plan flexibly, manage everyone's load and be able to recognise the signs of imbalance. Those who do not recognise the overload in themselves rarely see it in their co-workers. In many cases, the factors most related to a positive climate and effective collaboration are active listening and the quality of the questions asked by managers. But the most useful question to ask remains the following: Does the team work well even when the manager is not there?"

Is there a direct relationship between cognitive overload and the quality of strategic decisions?

Attention is a limited and non-renewable resource throughout the day. The relationship with decision quality is direct: when the working memory is saturated, systemic thinking and long-term perspective give way first. The first option is chosen, uncomfortable questions are avoided, the urgent is confused with the important. The paradox is structural: contexts with high complexity, speed or performative tension, multiple conflicting priorities, consecutive meetings and continuous notifications generate exactly the conditions that most undermine the quality of decisions needed to manage them. It is not a problem of individual competence. but a problem of design.

What organisational interventions have the greatest impact in reducing this risk at the executive level?

The most impactful interventions act on three levels. The first is structural and requires protecting blocks of uninterrupted work and separating strategic from operational decisions. The second is biological and involves respecting cognitive rhythms with scheduled breaks while the third is cultural and requires making prioritisation shared and explicit. To these is added a transversal enabling element: building psychological security so that signs of overload emerge before they become errors.

Let's talk about AI: does its implementation improve cognitive sustainability?

The discriminating factor is not the technology, but the question asked before implementing it. AI worsens cognitive sustainability when it is only used as a productivity accelerator to speed up existing processes, such as they are, in a task-based approach. In that case the cognitive load does not decrease, it shifts: the average manager begins to expect 'more output from the same processes' and the result is a different fragmentation and a higher degree of entropy. The real improvement comes when entire processes are rethought end-to-end (the 'process-based' approach) or even the entire activity system from scratch (the 'zero-based' approach). Only then does AI become an accelerator of innovation and productivity beyond mere automation.

What criteria do you suggest companies use to evaluate the effects of adopting artificial intelligence?

We selected three of them: measuring the impact on available attention and not only on stated efficiency, measuring the perceived load before and after implementation, and testing whether the technology actually increases people's autonomy or creates new dependencies. If the perceived load goes up after the introduction of a tool presented as simplifying, the problem is not only resistance to change, but also how we have designed the implementation and adoption, compared to the value we intend to generate.