When chaos strikes and the storm clouds gather, the difference between sinking and sailing often comes down to how quickly you can find calm amidst the turmoil. Maartje van Krieken, an engineer turned business strategist, dives into her journey of transforming organizational chaos into structured, thriving entities. Drawing from her experiences in oil and gas, disaster response, and her own consulting firm, she shares how her unique ability to see patterns in the midst of chaos helps businesses navigate through emergencies. This episode is an empowering reminder that with the right approach, even the most daunting challenges can lead to calmer waters and renewed success.

About the Host:

Your host, Maartje van Krieken, brings a wealth of experience from the front lines of business turmoil. With a background in crisis management, managing transformation and complex collaboration, she has successfully guided numerous organizations through their most challenging times. Her unique perspective and practical approach make her the go to First Responder in the arena of business turmoil and crisis.

Podcast Homepage: https://www.thebusinessemergencyroom.com/

https://www.thechaosgamesconsulting.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartje/

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Maartje van Krieken: Hey, welcome. Thank you for tuning in. I love that you're here. I'm very excited. This is episode one, the inaugural episode of the podcast the business emergency room, and I'm your host. Maartje van Krieken and I am very excited to be launching this podcast. I love everything about it, and that's exactly what this episode will be about why me and why this podcast. So let's start with why me and chaos and business emergencies. I actually am an engineer by background, and I chose to study engineering because I wanted to learn to solve problems. I did not really know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but there was something I found very attractive about learning to solve problems and learning to integrate and put stuff together. I chose to study industrial design, engineering and innovation management, because in the Netherlands, you do your masters in one full sweep. So if you don't finish it, you have nothing. And so five years of engineering sounded a little daunting and potentially a little boring, and this is the only study that had some commercial elements and model bit, model making and other artsy stuff to it, which I really liked, and was about the interfaces with humans, which I found attractive. From there, I ended up in a career in oil and gas. As I said, I didn't really have a specific career plan on what I wanted to do, and joining a multinational doesn't necessarily make that much clearer, because the they assume that you are a good engineer, and hence you are technically equipped, and the assessment that checked me for interpersonal and people skills, but then there is a whole new trajectory following after that, trying to train you into a certain discipline.

So I stepped into those career ladders and very quickly found out that I didn't really fit in any of them very well. The the assessor actually had told me as much when I made it through the assessment center and said, I think this company needs people like you, but I'm not really sure where to place you. And so from the beginning, I was always looking outside the lines of the construct I was in. I was looking at whether the grass was green or somewhere else, and it never was, but there was always elements in on other people's ladders that I found attractive. And I think because I was always looking, I realized that I saw connections and overlaps and sometimes even duplications of effort between the different groups and teams and what they were doing. And initially, of course, that just made me a really annoying person, because I asked questions that nobody was really interested in dealing with. But once people started to realize that in a in an organization where people are actually quite siloed in their discipline, that people who maybe look more across the disciplines also have a space and value, I started to do better from a performance perspective, right? Or at least it was valued differently. And also as I went up in the organization and in the hierarchy, and I got my own scopes and teams to manage, no longer people were no longer stopping me from looking around. And so for me, it really became a career. I chose the weird the old jobs out I was always in the roles that required integration, that required to bring teams together that didn't logically fit together, that required to structure challenges and problems that a few people already had a go at but got stranded, and then it was like, well, maybe Marty can Try one more time. And yeah, that's where I thrive. I love I sometimes say I love doing that work. And I sometimes say to people that I think my eyes are just faster. My eyes are just faster when it comes to the connected dot puzzles, except in real life, of course, they're not numbered, and somehow I see patterns. Yeah, I think helpful patterns to start structuring chaos in a manner that others are catching on where we could go, or what the way out might be, or how we can ride a wave in that with a successful outcome.

These skills are also combined with me as a skipper. I'm a I'm a sailor and a skipper. And from that, doing that, from quite a young age, a young adult age, I realized that I'm what they call in the Netherlands, a cool frog. I guess it stems from boiling frogs, or here in New Orleans, that would be. Crawfish, right? But realizing that when the going gets tough and things are tricky and we're in the storm or the bad weather, and you know, the passengers get a bit antsy, etc, I actually do fine. I get really calm and really focused on the situation and focused on making sure that those entrusted to me are safe, don't freak out, and that we make it to calm our waters together safely. And I think that ability to in the moments when it gets tricky to translate that skill to the workplace has also really helped me and helped me land the type of work that I really like these days. I do that work under my own header is in a consulting business called the chaos games. And gradually I've been getting more and more the type of projects where, yeah, businesses truly are, or organizations truly are in quite extreme turmoil. I also have worked as a volunteer for the American Red Cross in their disaster action team, and so I'm FEMA trained, etc. I also worked for with a nonprofit organization in the covid response and seeing those structures and seeing how emergency response and structuring extreme organizational turmoil are actually similar, not the same, but they're similar. There is overlap in the things that work, in the things that are helpful. There is similarity in that emotions are running high. Energy levels are low. People are tired, tired and out of their element, and the infusion of some temporary extra help, fresh energy, fresh ears and eyes and fresh capability to do take over some of the heavy lifting for a little bit are really what it takes to get out of some of these. Yeah, these chaos is or these emergencies, right? And

that's actually what led to this podcast. And let also to me fine tuning my business in this direction. I believe that there is a real niche out there, or at least a gap in what's offered in terms of help and support and services and what's needed in this world where which has become so extremely dynamic, and is Also, according to the World Economic Forum, becoming more interdependent on all fronts, and that that's just hard to keep up with. And so if everything is happening all at once all the time, it's also a little easier to get derailed. And as humans, we find it really hard to ask for help. And we we are all capable, and most of us are also really good at our jobs, and we have our pride. And so we keep going. We keep going because we think if we work a little harder or do a little more or just we should be able to crack the nut and get it done. And then somehow something else lands on your plate, and then suddenly you're in the what I call what now, or now what situation, and in that, at that point, this moment, that people realize that they can't keep going the way they are. I think in the business world, there is not usually that easy an answer out there. I see a lot of organizations then really stand still for a while, which is tricky, because that usually does damage to the business, right? Or I see organizations go out and hire help, but not knowing what it is they need. I see organizations spend a lot of money on major contracts with specialists or with generalists, or with big consulting houses, or long trajectories, which you know will generate results but don't, don't end up being very cost effective solutions to the situation. I think there is a need to do a certain level of triage in those in those moments, and there is a need for somebody to come in, not necessarily with a long term expectancy or a long term support role, but with a short term support role to really come in and be that fresh pair of ears and eyes in the moment, to bring in that energy and to have a look with the team and the organization, what it is that's needed to get to calm our waters, what it is that's needed to. Get to calmer waters, so that you can actually sit down and spend a bit of time to figure out what you really need, and then source the right help with the right contractuals construct to also establish what you maybe can do in house, and to prioritize there in therein, so that you don't, you know, try to chew off everything all at once, which, yeah, you're already in a situation where you're doing too much.

So then trying to also lit several fires under different recovery trajectories is not necessarily going to be successful, right? If you don't also take some stuff off your plate. So that's where this business podcast comes in. This is also where my consulting business come come in. I think there are people like me, and I just wish that more of you would be able to find people like us who come in those early days and really help you think, will help you get to a somewhat calmer place quickly, and then helps you strategize a good, pragmatic plan of how to start working your recovery, and then help more specialist or tailored help as a as a result of that. So that that's what this podcast is about. We will talk about scars. So these are examples of people who made it through business emergencies and other turmoil and have the scars to prove it, hoping that you don't have to reinvent the wheel and learn from other people's mistakes and experiences, and maybe also start recognizing some of the signs of the build up sooner. Then we will also talk about first aid kits, which is lar will be largely episodes by me on various tools that you can use to address the various sources of business emergencies or when you are in a business emergency. I'm not a bluffer, though. So I will also occasionally bring in other specialists to talk about solutions and tactics and tools that are useful in business emergencies, on subjects that I don't know anything about or not enough to advise you adequately. And then we're also going to do some life on air triage.

So if you have a situation that you would like to have worked life on air, then please reach out. We would love you to have you on the show this so you can see how these situations can be tackled and how bringing in a fresh pair of ears and eyes to do some diagnostics and triage can really help remediate a situation quicker. My whole passion around this is that I learned the hard way that life is precious and short. I love my job and I love working hard, but I also love living life to the max, and I get energized and happy, and I love my job, but when I see that people, very quickly after me getting involved, start to go home calmer again, right? That emotions start to calm down a little bit, that people start to see that they can breathe again, that they start to feel that they might be able to get out of a situation, and there's light at the end of the tunnel, and hence that they they start to slowly go back on the road to to their personal recovery from the situation, meaning that they'll have more energy to live this fabulous and glorious and messy life outside of work too. So that's, that's what I get out of it.

I look forward to the next episodes and showing you all that is out there, and I love hearing from you. If you have questions requests, please reach out, always interested in feedback, and look forward to hearing seeing you here next week.