Episode 31

Avoiding the Fumble: How Leaders Can Make Smarter Calls in Chaos

Hesitation under pressure costs more than a bad decision. This season 2 kick-off episode of The Business Emergency Room unpacks how to make fast, confident calls when the stakes are high.

When everything is unfolding fast, how do you make the right call without second-guessing yourself? Host Maartje van Krieken shares a real-world example of decision-making gone wrong, turning a simple family outing into a mess of miscommunication and last-minute scrambling. The parallels to business are clear: disruption happens, and leaders who hesitate risk bigger problems.

This episode breaks down how to define the decision at hand, communicate what you know (and don’t), and commit to a path even with missing pieces. Decision-making is a skill, and like any skill, it gets stronger with practice.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Welcome to Season Two!

00:43 Leadership in Uncertainty

01:04 Fast Decision-Making in Volatile Situations

02:29 Super Bowl Experience Chaos

03:02 Miscommunication and Assumptions

05:05 Defining the Decision

08:23 Importance of Communication

10:10 Different Assumptions

11:14 Sharing Information

13:23 Don’t Blindly Follow Others

15:02 Decision Frameworks

22:03 Final Takeaways

23:05 Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast

25:15 Closing 

Links

Connect with Maartje van Krieken:

https://www.thechaosgamesconsulting.com/

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

https://maartjeturnschaosaround.substack.com/

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

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About the Podcast

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The Business Emergency Room Podcast
Triage, Tools & Tactics to recover from or prevent business chaos in this VUCA business environment

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About your host

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Maartje van Krieken

Maartje van Krieken is a crisis strategist, executive consultant, and your at host of The Business Emergency Room podcast, where growing businesses go when things get messy. With a career that began in frontier oil and gas and spanned war zones, boardrooms, and billion-dollar pivots, Maartje has spent over two decades helping organizations steer through chaos and come out stronger.
Now through her consulting firm, The Chaos Games, Maartje works with medium-sized businesses, especially those scaling rapidly or navigating uncertainty, to diagnose breakdowns in leadership, collaboration, and decision-making before they become business emergencies. Her signature approach blends practical triage, people-first strategy, and blunt Dutch honesty to help teams realign fast.

​The Business Emergency Room delivers high-impact insights for business leaders, board members, and investors who are tired of the symptoms, disconnection, friction, paralysis, and want the tools to fix what’s really going wrong. Maartje’s episodes cut through fluff with stories, frameworks, and metaphors that turn even the most complex chaos into something leaders can act on.
Maartje is based in New Orleans and speaks regularly on navigating organizational storms, building business resilience, and turning reactive firefighting into proactive leadership. Whether you’re scaling a business, running a team, or dealing with dysfunction, The Business Emergency Room is the place to find straight talk and smarter tools.