Episode 27

Defusing the Dilemma: How Resourcefulness Solves Big Challenges

What happens when you’re tasked with solving a high-stakes problem you know almost nothing about? This episode of The Business Emergency Room takes you behind the scenes of a fascinating real-life challenge: tackling the unknown to support critical decision-making.

Join Maartje as she recounts a pivotal experience early in her career—a multi-billion-dollar investment opportunity in Iran, fraught with risks, including unexploded ordinances in an oil field near the Iran-Iraq border. With little knowledge of the issue and limited resources, her team had to think fast, ask the right questions, and collaborate effectively to provide leadership with the insights needed to make a decision.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • How to approach complex, high-risk challenges with resourcefulness and creativity.
  • The importance of de-risking decisions by identifying what you know—and what you don’t.
  • Why collaboration and transparency are essential in problem-solving under uncertainty.
  • Lessons learned from both the successes and missteps in their decision-making process.

This story is more than a case study; it’s a masterclass in resourcefulness, decision-making, and leadership. Whether you’re tackling a small challenge or navigating a major business emergency, the lessons in this episode will inspire you to face the unknown with confidence and clarity.

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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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.