I spent three years as an apprentice to Chip Heath.

He's brilliant at making complex ideas clear. But what I learned most wasn't about frameworks—it was about the invisible load of being the person who carries the thinking.

Here's what I noticed:

Chip held a massive mental model in his head. He was the one who saw the big picture. He was the one who could see where things connected. He was the one who had to keep track of what we were doing and why.

And that burden was exhausting.

Why does this matter at your workplace?

In every team, someone becomes the person who carries the mental model. The person who remembers the big picture. The person who sees how all the parts connect.

That person is carrying an invisible burden that nobody else can see.

They're not tired because they're doing more tasks. They're tired because they're holding more complexity in their head.

The pattern I see everywhere:

• One person (usually the senior person or the owner) becomes the mental-load carrier
• Everyone else gets to forget about the big picture
• That one person burns out because the load is never shared
• When they leave, nothing gets transferred because nobody else knows the full picture
• This is why companies are fragile

What we could do differently:

Make the mental model visible. Write it down. Share it. Let others carry parts of it.

The softest skill—and the most important for retention and culture—is learning to distribute the cognitive load.

If you want your team to stay, stop hiding the mental model in one person's head. Make it visible. Share it. Let others carry it too.