Episode 75

Episode 75 Holiday Special: Gratitude, Scar Tissue, and 5 Business Gifts for 2026

Most businesses do not break in a single moment. Pressure builds quietly, decisions get heavier, and strategic focus starts to slip long before a crisis forces attention.

In this milestone 75th episode of The Business Emergency Room, Maartje van Krieken reflects on why organizations reach a breaking point and what leaders can do earlier to change the outcome. Drawing on her experience in disaster management and strategic decision making, she explores how business resilience is built by recognizing small issues before they compound and by responding more effectively to uncertainty and overload.

Maartje offers decision-making tools to help leaders regain momentum, including a simple framework to break decision paralysis and restore forward movement. She also shares habits that protect time, energy, and clarity, along with guidance on sharpening strategic focus so teams can reduce noise and concentrate on what truly drives value.

This episode is a thoughtful reset for leaders who want to lead more proactively, strengthen resilience, and enter the next season with clearer direction and better decisions.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Why the Business Emergency Room Exists

02:33 The Plaque Buildup That Breaks Businesses

05:33 What Business Resilience Really Requires

12:18 Decision Defibrillator: A Tool to Break Decision Paralysis

15:06 Cancel Three Things to Reclaim Time and Energy

18:26 Using Outside Eyes to Reveal Blind Spots

24:46 Strategic Focus as the Foundation for Momentum

29:34 Leading Forward With Clarity and Momentum


Links:

The Decision Defibrillator Tool


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

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for The Business Emergency Room: For Leaders Facing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity (VUCA)
The Business Emergency Room: For Leaders Facing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity (VUCA)
Triage, Tools & Tactics to recover from or prevent business chaos in this VUCA business environment

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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.