The Day My Coffee Machine Became My Boss

It was 06:43. The coffee machine blinked at me with its smug little light: descale now. I hesitated. Not because I didn’t know how, three buttons, ten minutes, done, but because I simply couldn’t decide whether to do it before or after my inbox, before or after checking the financials, before or after prepping a compliance audit for a client who still thinks ESG is a tax scam.

I stared at the machine. It blinked back. I walked away.

That morning, like many mornings, I was not the head of GRC at ZENTRIQ™. I was not the strategist, nor the man shaping frameworks for CEOs.

I was a tired human avoiding one more decision.

And that, precisely, is the problem.

Why This Isn’t Just Personal, It’s Structural

We tend to treat “decision fatigue” as a lifestyle issue: sleep more, meditate, delegate. The self-help aisle is full of these hacks.

But from where I stand, in boardrooms, in regulatory trenches, and in the psycho-social underbelly of corporate dysfunction, decision fatigue is not a wellness glitch.

It’s a governance flaw.

If a system is truly well-governed, it doesn’t ask people to make 400 micro-decisions a day. It absorbs that complexity. It buffers it. It defends leaders from burnout by translating judgment into structure.

Governance, real governance, exists to protect cognition, not just compliance.

From CEO to Clerk in 200 Decisions a Day

Research from Cornell estimates the average adult makes 35,000 decisions per day. Around 200 of those are food-related alone. Now imagine a CEO of a small company, no Chief of Staff, no layers of middle management. They are not making strategic decisions all day. They are approving invoices, deciding if a supplier's logo should go left or right, answering WhatsApp messages at midnight from their accountant about VAT.

This is not leadership.

It’s cognitive erosion disguised as entrepreneurship.

And in micro and small enterprises, which make up 75% of all EU businesses, this erosion is epidemic. That’s not a mental health statistic. That’s a risk governance one.

Decision Fatigue Weakens Controls, and Ethics

Here's what I've seen over 25 years:

• Decision fatigue increases the likelihood of informal shortcuts: verbal approvals, skipped double checks, undocumented client changes.
• It causes compliance dilution: "We'll fix the policy later," becomes a structural norm.
• It opens the door to shadow governance: where trust replaces traceability, and “we’ve always done it like this” replaces due process.

All of this is invisible, until the audit. Or worse: until the scandal.

What Governance Should Actually Do

A governance system worth its name does not just create policies. It creates decisional relief.

Here’s how:

1. Reduce low-value decisions: Automate invoice matching, vendor due diligence, document reminders. A CEO should not approve lunch receipts manually.
2. Codify roles and escalation: The moment “Who decides this?” is unclear, friction begins. Friction erodes discipline.
3. Inject buffers, not bottlenecks: A good system slows bad decisions without delaying good ones.
4. Protect cognitive bandwidth: Every governance choice must answer: “Will this let the leader think better, longer, and deeper?”

This is not bureaucracy. This is cognitive design.

Personal Story #2: The Day I Missed a Red Flag

Years ago, I trusted a supplier who had impeccable charm and slightly less impeccable documentation. I had a gut feeling, but I was tired, had 4 overdue reports, and thought: "Just approve it. We’ll fix it if it breaks."

It broke.

Hard.

Today, that red flag is a training case in our ZENTRIQ™ compliance system. But it took failure to make me realize: even my judgment is not immune when my system is unfit.

What You Can Do Today (Even If You're Not Ready for a Framework)

1. List 10 decisions you make weekly that someone else could own. Then hand over 3 this month.
2. Audit your day: Are your most important decisions made before or after lunch? (Hint: aim for before.)
3. Create defaults. Decide once, not daily. (My coffee machine now descaling every 30 days, automatically. It wins.)
4. Say no to yes fatigue. The more “yes” you say to micro-decisions, the less clarity you have for strategic ones.

The Governance of Self Is Still Governance

To govern a company is to govern a mind.

To build trust in others, you must first protect clarity in yourself.

Decision fatigue is not a flaw in you. It’s a signal from your system. Listen to it. Restructure. Reclaim.

And remember: that blinking coffee machine may be more honest than most dashboards. It tells you something’s clogging the pipeline.

Flush it. Before it floods everything.