On a recent Monday, a Johannesburg executive stood in front of his wardrobe and reached for the same navy suit, a small choice that reflects a larger truth. Barack Obama once said he limited his wardrobe to grey and blue to conserve mental energy for the decisions that actually matter. Strip away the trivial, and you keep your mind for the consequential. Given the current challenges facing South African executives, that instinct isn’t just common sense; it’s survival.
Across boardrooms, leaders describe a growing struggle. It’s the back-to-back early calls, the constant stream of messages, the meetings that expand extend of resolve.
Add the complexity of shifting client demands, economic and geopolitical volatility and the emotional loads leaders carry for their people, and the result is an ever higher cognitive load, with less recovery time and more scrutiny.
Decision-making depletion
Decision fatigue is no longer the occasional end of quarter slump; it’s pervasive.
The more decisions leaders make, the more depleted they become, and the more likely they are to fall back on mental shortcuts and reactive thinking. You can hear it when conversations start sounding recycled and see it in the “let’s push this to next week” reflex that feels safe but slows organisations down.
Physiology play a key role here as the brain runs on glucose, and complex, high stakes thinking draws heavily on that fuel. Over long stretches of intense concentration, the brain’s chemistry shifts; the mechanisms that keep our executive function crisp begin to tire.
When fatigue builds, clarity blurs, small issues grow unnecessarily large, and leaders drift toward delay or delegation not because they’re disengaged, but because the system is overloaded. It isn’t weakness; it’s biology that has a significant business impact.
Domino effect
You see the consequences quickly. One delayed decision creates uncertainty downstream, teams are forced to duplicate efforts, frustration rises, and trust thins. A simple lag can turn into rework, overtime, and strained relationships. In a market already under pressure, these ripple effects cost time, money, and morale.
Decision fatigue at the top rarely stays there. It rolls downhill, with middle management absorbing most of the impact. When leaders hesitate, people below compensate. They guess. They do double the work. They also become tentative, or worse, cynical and over time, the culture drifts toward risk avoidance and superficial consensus, and people quietly burn out.
But it doesn’t have to spiral. Leaders who regain clarity do so with small, disciplined shifts that protect their cognitive energy.
Becoming energy smart
It starts with knowing your sharpest hours in the day and guarding them like a scarce asset, which they are, providing the space to make the decisions that shape markets, people, and capital. Pushing the non consequential to lower energy times or handing them over to someone better placed to execute.
Routines are key, just like the wardrobe choice, having uniformity and consistency removes a hundred micro choices that tax your focus before you’ve used it where it counts. The same is true of writing things down to remove mental clutter. The executive who records everything is not old school; they’re energy smart.
Boundaries create buffer zones where clarity can breathe. A brief shutdown ritual at the end of the day—review, prioritise, close—signals to the brain that it can stop spinning. Time blocks that include real breaks aren’t signs of softness; they are how high performers reset. Moving your body is part of this. A short walk between meetings does more for your next decision than another five minutes rearranging slides ever will.
Frik van der Westhuizen 15 May 2026 Organisational audit
Then there is the organisation itself. Excess inputs degrade leadership just as surely as poor sleep does. Audit your meetings and take a critical view. Cull the recurring sessions that exist because they exist. Ask for succinct updates; reward clarity. If your team knows that a two minute brief beats a 10 minute ramble, the quality of information you receive will change and so will the quality of your decisions.
Delegation also needs a rebrand in many companies. It is not letting go but rather enabling momentum. When leaders set clear decision rights and expectations, operational calls can move at the speed of the problem, not the speed of a diary. Teams also become better at framing the choices that do rise to the top. That, in turn, means fewer ambiguous escalations and a more even distribution of cognitive load.
Learning how to carry the weight
None of this negates the pressures or demands that executives face. But there is a difference between carrying weight and carrying it badly. Decision fatigue blurs that difference until everyone is working harder and achieving less.
The leaders who endure are the ones who treat attention as a finite resource and energy as an asset to be invested, not spent. They show up to the week knowing which decisions deserve their best brain and which can be standardised, simplified, or shared. They design their days with recovery in mind. And they model for their teams a truth we often say but seldom organise around: well-being fuels performance, not the other way around.
In the end, it isn’t about how many hours you have. It’s about what your mind is capable of inside those hours - focus, mental capacity, and energy. Protect those and you strengthen your organisation’s ability to move with clarity, resilience, and trust.
