The Business Emergency Room: For Leaders Facing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity (VUCA)

Maartje van Krieken | The Chaos Games Consulting
  • 5.0 (8)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Scaling a business isn’t just about strategy—it’s about navigating chaos, making fast but sound decisions, and keeping teams aligned under pressure. The Business Emergency Room helps leaders, founders, and decision-makers sharpen their decision-making mechanics, master people dynamics, and build resilience in uncertain markets. Host Maartje van Krieken shares battle-tested frameworks to eliminate bottlenecks, avoid analysis paralysis, and turn turbulence into traction. Tune in weekly for real-world insights to lead with confidence and thrive in turmoil. For leaders facing: High-stakes decisions, VUCA market conditions, crisis management, and rapid business growth pains.

  1. 2d ago

    Rowing Through Treacle: When Friction Becomes the Culture

    Companies spend $140 billion a year training leaders, yet trust in leadership keeps sinking. Jimmy Burroughes has a different diagnosis: the real problem is leadership friction built into the system your managers work inside. Jimmy spent years leading in the British Army before bringing that discipline into corporate consulting, working with organizations like Bank of America, Samsung, and Walmart. Then he burned out completely and lost his job, his relationship, and his home in quick succession. What he built afterward challenges a core assumption in leadership development, that capable managers who seem stuck simply need more coaching. What if leadership friction sits in the system around them instead? On this episode of The Business Emergency Room, Jimmy and host Maartje van Krieken unpack the forty-three friction points his team has identified across organizations, including unclear decision rights and the hidden cost of constant task switching. They dig into why experienced managers keep escalating decisions they already know the answer to, and why adding more process usually deepens the friction. Jimmy offers a blunt diagnostic any leader can run without hiring a consultant: ask a few people their top three priorities and listen for the pattern. The answers reveal more about leadership friction and organizational health than any engagement survey ever could. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Why $140 Billion in Leadership Training Isn't Working 06:18 Signs Your Organization Has a Leadership Friction Problem 10:12 The Real Root Causes of Workplace Friction 13:54 A Real-World Example of Decision Making Breakdown 20:47 Why Adding More Process Makes Friction Worse 22:47 The Hidden Cost of Multitasking and Task Switching 26:38 A Simple Way to Diagnose Leadership Friction in Any Team Connect with Jimmy Burroughes: Visit the JBL High Performance Website Jimmy Burroughes is a former British Army Officer turned global leadership transformation expert and the founder of JBL High Performance. With experience leading up to 110 personnel across European and Middle East operations, Jimmy has translated the precision of military leadership into a practical methodology that Fortune 500 companies around the world rely on. He has partnered with organisations including Bank of America, eBay, Samsung, Walmart, Fonterra, and SkyCity — designing enterprise-wide leadership programmes that have reached 1,000+ staff in single engagements across 8 countries. Jimmy is the creator of the "Simplify to Amplify" methodology, which helps exhausted executives escape reactive, firefighting leadership and reclaim significant time, without sacrificing results. His clients consistently report reclaiming 10+ hours per week and achieving measurable performance improvements within 90 days. He is the author of two books: Beat Burnout & Ignite Performance and Escape the Multitasking Trap, and is the host of The High Performance Leader Podcast, ranked in the Top 10% globally. Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Rowing Through Treacle: When Friction Becomes the Culture

  2. Aug 12

    Drill It On Paper: The Pre-Mortem Exercise Every Leader Should Know

    60% of employees swallow a concern serious enough to derail the whole plan, and Maartje van Krieken has a 60-minute exercise designed to surface it before it becomes an expensive surprise. Most business failures trace back to something someone already knew. The signal was there. Nobody moved it to the right table. Maartje calls the fix a pre-mortem, an eight-step exercise borrowed from industries where getting it wrong isn't an option, adapted for anyone about to commit to something big. What if the plan you're about to execute is only one version of success, and nobody in the room has said out loud what happens if the assumptions underneath it don't hold? Maartje walks through why most plans collapse under a single path forward, why an outside facilitator changes everything about how honest the room gets, and why naming who has the authority to stop execution matters more than most leaders want to admit. She also makes the case that this exercise builds trust and sharpens a team's ability to improvise when reality diverges, which they usually do. The next time you're about to greenlight something significant, ask yourself one thing. Has anyone actually been given permission to say what could go wrong? Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Why 60% of Employees Stay Silent on Workplace Concerns 06:47 The Data Behind Failed Strategy Execution 07:44 What a Pre-Mortem Is and Isn't 10:22 The Single Path to Success Problem 13:30 Defining What's Actually Being Stress Tested 16:56 Naming Decision Points and Go, No-Go Criteria 19:47 Running What If Scenarios on Major Risks 23:30 Naming the Stop Work Authority 26:48 Three Hidden Benefits of Time, Trust, and Improvisation 30:22 When to Use a Pre-Mortem and When Not To Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Drill It On Paper: The Pre-Mortem Exercise Every Leader Should Know

  3. Aug 5

    Could You Afford to Be Sick for a Week?

    Ask yourself this: could your business survive a full week without you, no phone, no email, no decisions from you at all? That's the question behind Maartje van Krieken's conversation with Cory Blumenfeld, founder and CEO of BlueMoso, who built and exited multiple companies before landing on his 90/10 rule. Ninety percent of what most leaders do daily can be handed off. The other ten percent, the vision and judgment calls that actually move a business forward, is the real job. Cory learned this firsthand when a sudden illness pulled him out for a week, and the business ran fine without him. Maartje ties this straight to valuation. A company that can't function without its founder is worth less than that founder probably thinks, and the usual culprit is unclear ownership rather than a lack of trust. The conversation then turns to AI, and Cory is direct that it can't fix a delegation problem for leaders who never learned to delegate to people in the first place. AI clears out busy work. It doesn't replace judgment. Maartje pushes back with an example from her own experience, where a polished AI-assisted report turned out to rest on a completely wrong assumption. What happens when a tool built to move faster just moves a mistake faster too? They close by flipping the lens toward investors and board members to ask what separates a leader still buried in the weeds from one built to scale. The answer, they argue, shows up in small things: how a leader talks about their team, their time, and what they're willing to admit they don't know. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Could Your Business Survive a Week Without You? 02:57 The 90/10 Rule of Leadership Delegation 06:13 How to Build Processes You Can Hand Off 08:31 Warning Signs of Poor Delegation on a Leadership Team 10:59 Delegating to AI vs Delegating to People 16:20 The Risk of AI Errors at Scale 18:24 What Investors and Board Members Look For 25:42 Final Leadership Advice From Cory Blumenfeld Connect with Cory Blumenfeld: Connect with Cory on LinkedIn Visit the BlueMoso Website Cory Blumenfeld is a 5x founder with two exits and more than a decade of experience across startups, operations, sales, and product. Across his companies, he has helped raise nearly $5 million and built an audience of more than 67,000 followers on LinkedIn. Having started businesses in industries he knew nothing about, Cory learned that success rarely comes from having all the answers. Today, he is the founder of BlueMoso, which helps business owners get their time back with high-performing virtual assistants matched to how they actually work. Cory is on a mission to help one million business owners spend less time buried in day-to-day tasks and more time focused on what matters most, whether that's growing their business, serving more clients, or building a life outside of work. Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Could You Afford to Be Sick for a Week?

  4. Jul 29

    The Most Avoided Diagnosis in Business: Who Is Managing Your C-Suite?

    Nearly half of company boards never regularly evaluate their CEO, and Maartje van Krieken explains why that silence at the top quietly costs organizations far more than any bad quarter. Most leadership teams look calm from the outside. Meetings run smoothly, decisions get made, and everyone seems aligned. Maartje argues that calm can be a warning sign rather than a strength. When a senior team stops disagreeing about anything important, has it really reached alignment, or has it just learned to avoid the hard conversations? She breaks down the three layers of accountability that should exist at the top of every organization. The board should hold the CEO responsible. The CEO should hold the C-suite responsible. And the C-suite should hold each other responsible. Maartje explains why each layer tends to fail quietly, from boards with a personal stake in the CEO they hired to executives who stop challenging peers because their own career depends on staying in favor. She draws on two real cases. One is a public company unraveling under a founder-led board. The other is a mid-market business where every department performs well alone but nothing gets done together. She shows what dysfunction actually looks like before it becomes a crisis. What happens in the room when the CEO isn't there? Does anyone still get uncomfortable on purpose? Maartje closes with a case for bringing in an outside perspective before problems harden into politics. Her takeaway is direct. The strongest leadership teams share a habit most performance systems miss. They tell each other the truth. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 The Hidden Cost of an Unaccountable C-Suite 04:43 The Three Layers of Leadership Accountability Explained 08:45 A Public Company Case Study in Board Failure 11:26 PE-Backed vs Mid-Market: How Company Type Shapes Accountability 16:09 A Real Case of C-Suite Silos and Dysfunction 18:30 Warning Signs of a Dysfunctional C-Suite 20:11 The Hidden Cost of a Team That Avoids Conflict 24:53 When a Performance Problem Becomes a Turnaround 27:35 Three Steps to Close the Accountability Gap This Week Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    The Most Avoided Diagnosis in Business: Who Is Managing Your C-Suite?

  5. Jul 22

    Before You Call the Lawyer, Call a Mediator.

    Every business relationship sends a warning signal months before it breaks, and the leaders who profit are the ones willing to act on it early instead of waiting for the lawyers to get involved. Maartje sits down with mediator and arbitrator Imtiaz Siddiqui, a litigator who spent two decades in courtrooms and now works to keep people out of them. His take is blunt: most leaders wait until the legal bills pile up before they consider mediation, when the smarter move is to bring in a neutral at the very first sign of friction. Why do we wait? People process conflict on different timelines. One side flags the problem right away, the other absorbs it until it boils over, and by the time both parties agree something is wrong, the dispute has already blown up. The numbers back him up. Mediation costs a fraction of litigation, resolves in a fraction of the time, and produces agreements people actually honor. Court judgments don't carry the same weight. Winning a case is no guarantee the other side follows through. The real fix is a better contract, not a better lawyer. Siddiqui and Maartje both land on the same idea. Name your neutral and define what success and failure look like while the relationship is still healthy, not after the trust is gone. What would change if every partnership agreement treated conflict as a certainty rather than a risk? Disagreements don't hurt businesses. A known problem left sitting while everyone stays polite does the damage. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Why Business Leaders Wait Too Long to Address Conflict 03:12 When Should You Trigger Mediation in a Business Dispute 13:27 Mediation vs Litigation: The Real Cost and Timeline Data 18:58 Arbitration vs Mediation: Key Differences Explained 23:04 Why You Need a Dispute Resolution Clause in Every Contract 34:21 Final Advice: Use Mediation Early and Often Connect with Imtiaz A. Siddiqui: IAS LAW LLC Visit Imtiaz Dispute Resolution Imtiaz has been practicing law for over twenty years. He started his career in New York City working on complex, large-scale antitrust, financial fraud, and commodities fraud matters. After ten years, Imtiaz moved to New Orleans where he worked on varied contract and litigation matters in the public and private sectors. In 2018, Imtiaz launched his solo practice, IAS LAW LLC, where he handles, among other things, business transactional and litigation matters. Last summer, Imtiaz started his newest professional endeavor, Imtiaz Dispute Resolution, where he provides arbitrator, mediator, and negotiator services relating to a variety of disciplines. Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Before You Call the Lawyer, Call a Mediator.

  6. Jul 15

    Why Outsourcing Fails and the 5 Questions That Change That

    Half of all outsourcing relationships fail within five years, and Maartje van Krieken says the reason almost always comes down to one bad decision made at the very start. The founder of The Chaos Games Consulting and host of The Business Emergency Room makes the case that outsourcing doesn't usually fail because of a bad vendor or bad luck. It fails because companies sign the deal before they've done the work to set it up for success. Take Nike. The company runs a fifty-billion-dollar business without owning almost any factories, but that's not really the lesson here. The real lesson is what Nike held onto: design, brand, and hands-on oversight never left the building. That's the part most companies skip. When you outsource a problem you never fixed, it doesn't go away. It just gets harder to see. Maartje breaks down the patterns that show up again and again: nobody clearly owns the relationship, the two companies never actually figure out how to work together day to day, and there's rarely any plan for what happens if things fall apart. That last one is a big deal. Seventy percent of companies have pulled outsourced work back in house over the past five years, yet many of them never planned for that possibility going in. So before signing anything, she suggests asking a few honest questions. Do you know exactly what success looks like? Is someone responsible for this relationship? Would you recognize failure within ninety days? How would you walk away if you needed to? And what are you keeping for yourself? Outsourcing can be one of the smartest moves a business makes, but only if it's treated as ongoing work rather than something you set up once and forget. She wraps up by recommending Michael Corbett's The Outsourcing Revolution, echoing her main point: outsourcing done right builds real strength, and outsourcing done wrong turns a fixable problem into a much bigger one. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Why Half of All Outsourcing Relationships Fail 02:54 The Shift from Cost-Cutting to Strategic Outsourcing 05:50 What Nike Got Right About Outsourcing 09:07 Common Pitfalls That Sink Outsourcing Deals 11:55 Five Questions to Ask Before You Outsource 24:03 Building an Outsourcing Exit Strategy That Works Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Why Outsourcing Fails and the 5 Questions That Change That

  7. Jul 8

    Control, Influence, Accept: A Better Way to Lead Through Chaos

    Most leaders under pressure are not failing because they panic, they are failing because nobody ever taught them to think clearly when panic is already present. Fredrik Sandvall has operated in environments where that gap costs lives. As a military leader, international operator, investor, and strategic advisor to founder-led businesses, he has spent decades studying what separates leaders who hold a room together in a crisis from those who quietly make everything worse. This episode draws on that experience to surface frameworks that are genuinely useful when the pressure is real. The conversation covers the discipline of intelligence gathering before you act, the difference between useful structure and micromanagement, and why stress narrows your decision-making at exactly the moment you need it most. The CIA model Fredrik shared, Control, Influence, Accept, is the most practically transferable tool here. How much of your current mental bandwidth is spent on things that sit firmly in the Accept column? Writing those three categories down honestly will free up more energy than most productivity systems ever will. Trust runs as the backbone of the whole conversation. Fredrik frames it as an emotional bank account, and the logic holds whether you are leading a team through a crisis, navigating a difficult acquisition, or simply trying to ask something of people who are already stretched. The withdrawals come when things go sideways. Whether the balance is there to cover them depends entirely on what was deposited before the emergency arrived. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Thinking Clearly Under Pressure 02:53 Intelligence Gathering and Decision Making in a Crisis 07:46 Self-Mastery and the Stress Cone 14:02 The CIA Model: Control, Influence, Accept 17:25 The Emotional Bank Account and Trust 23:07 Mergers, Acquisitions, and Trust as Currency Connect with Fredrik Sandvall: LinkedIn Podcast: Invest in You Books: Trust is the New Currency and Options Strategy: Build to Keep. Ready to Sell Tomorrow. Fredrik Sandvall is a trusted investor, entrepreneur, bestselling author, podcast host, and strategic advisor to founder-led businesses. With a background spanning military leadership, international operations, board work, investing, real estate, acquisitions, and entrepreneurship, Fredrik helps founders build stronger, more valuable, and more option-rich businesses. He is the author of Trust is the New Currency and Options Strategy: Build to Keep. Ready to Sell Tomorrow. He is also the host of the Invest in You podcast, which has featured entrepreneurs, investors, fund managers, authors, and business leaders from around the world. Fredrik’s work sits at the intersection of trust, leadership, capital, enterprise value, and ownership design. His core belief is simple: trust is currency. Used well, it can reduce friction, attract better partners, unlock capital, improve terms, and create options before they are urgently needed. Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Control, Influence, Accept: A Better Way to Lead Through Chaos

  8. Jul 1

    Why Exit Strategy Is the Most Underrated Management Tool in Your Business

    Most leaders treat exit strategy like a will, something you draft when the end feels close, but Maartje van Krieken makes the case that your exit strategy is actually the most honest diagnostic tool you have for the health of your business right now. Half of all business exits are unplanned, triggered not by bad markets or bad timing but by the five D's: death, disability, divorce, disagreement, and distress. A 40-year-old has a one in three chance of experiencing a disability lasting 90 days or more before age 65. Businesses without succession planning lose 25 to 50 percent of their value during an unplanned ownership transition. These are not remote risks. They are live exposures sitting inside most organizations right now, largely unaddressed. Maartje also names something leaders rarely say out loud: the exit strategy pitched to investors at launch is often not the one the leadership team actually believes in anymore. External stakeholders are operating on the old story while internal leaders have quietly moved to a different one. The cost is not the wrong strategy. It is the silence around it, and the value it bleeds slowly while nobody calls it out. The real test of organizational health is transferability. Could someone with no prior knowledge of your business make sense of how it runs and what it is worth? Where does your value actually live — in systems and structure, or in specific people and relationships that could walk out the door tomorrow? If those questions are uncomfortable to sit with, that is exactly the point. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Understanding Exit Strategies 05:57 The Five D's That Trigger Most Unplanned Business Exits 12:13 The Hidden Cost of a Stale Exit Narrative 14:55 The Four Killers of Business Transferability 20:51 Three Questions Every Leader Should Be Able to Answer Connect with Maartje van Krieken: Connect with Maartje on LinkedIn Visit The Chaos Games Consulting website Visit The Business Emergency Room website Subscribe to The Business Emergency Room on YouTube Subscribe to Maartje’s Substack Host Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist and decision-making expert who thrives in high-stakes business environments. Combining disaster management training, hands-on experience in global industries, and leadership skills honed as a seasoned sailor, she helps businesses navigate chaos with precision. Whether tackling transformation, scaling challenges, or leadership bottlenecks, Maartje delivers actionable insights to turn turbulence into traction. Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

    Why Exit Strategy Is the Most Underrated Management Tool in Your Business
See All (111)

Trailers

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Scaling a business isn’t just about strategy—it’s about navigating chaos, making fast but sound decisions, and keeping teams aligned under pressure. The Business Emergency Room helps leaders, founders, and decision-makers sharpen their decision-making mechanics, master people dynamics, and build resilience in uncertain markets. Host Maartje van Krieken shares battle-tested frameworks to eliminate bottlenecks, avoid analysis paralysis, and turn turbulence into traction. Tune in weekly for real-world insights to lead with confidence and thrive in turmoil. For leaders facing: High-stakes decisions, VUCA market conditions, crisis management, and rapid business growth pains.

Information