When everything feels messy, most leaders reach for more tactics and more meetings. In this conversation, I sit down with Maartje van Krieken - engineer, skipper, crisis strategist, and host of The Business Emergency Room Podcast - to talk about how to triage chaos, make cleaner decisions, and realign people and processes without burning everyone out. We cover her “coat rack” process metaphor, the emotional side of chaos (and why emotion = people still care), and a simple way to de-risk the options you’ve been carrying around in your head. If you’re navigating growth, change, or just too many priorities, this one’s a compass and a raincoat.
Takeaways:
Triage first, then treat: stabilize cash/commitments/people before “fixing” root causes.
Emotion is a signal, not a problem: frustration often means people still care—use it.
The coat-rack rule: lightweight, fit-for-purpose processes prevent “stuff on the floor.”
Preventive leadership: “see your people,” listen for small irritations before they scale.
Decision hygiene: define options to de-risk them; clarity beats carrying cognitive baggage.
Sail the weather you’re in: keep the destination clear, adjust the route—not the mission.
Yes, And in chaos: assume positive intent, ask a better question, redirect the energy.
Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartje/
https://www.thechaosgamesconsulting.com/
https://www.thebusinessemergencyroom.com/
info@thebusinessemergencyroom.com
About Maartje
Maartje van Krieken is a Dutch seasoned executive and host of The Business Emergency Room podcast, where she helps leaders triage chaos and steer their organizations toward stability and growth. With 20+ years leading global, multi-billion-dollar initiatives across the globe from Iraq to India to New Orleans (her current base), she now guides mid-market B2B companies as a Fractional CEO/COO/CSO through The Chaos Games Consulting. She focuses on Triage, Decision Making Mechanics, People Dynamics and closing the gap to potential.
Her typical roles are Business Value or Start-Up Advisor, Executive Coach, Exit Planning Specialist, Speaker / Workshop Facilitator and various Board Positions. She is also an Entrepreneur, Investor, accredited Disaster Action Specialist, a Skipper and a mom to 3 teens committed to helping leaders and businesses turn chaos around and perform better in today's VUCA environment.
Unedited Transcript
Avish
Hello, Maartje, and welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Maartje
Hi, I'm great. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be talking to you today.
Avish
Excellent. Well, I'm excited to be chatting with you. You have a very interesting background and very interesting brand, which I'm looking forward to digging into. There's definitely a lot of questions I have. But just for the overview for people who are listening and are unfamiliar with you, Could you give us the one minute overview of sort of who you are and what your business is all about?
Maartje
Yeah, for sure. So Marjolein is a Dutch name. I'm originally from the Netherlands or Amsterdam more specifically. I'm an engineer by background, so I have a master's in innovation management and then spent a couple of decades in the dirtier part of oil and gas in frontier projects, working all over the world and visiting most of the continents, working on these mega projects where everything was the first, the biggest, the, the whatever, you know, all the superlatives applied, typically also the most complex and the most messy. Left that industry behind and then set out on my own with a Consulting business that is called the chaos games. I help businesses navigate out of chaos. I think chaos can be a good thing.
I like Innovation. I, I like movement.
But I, yeah, I also see many fast growing and changing businesses descend into chaos because at some point the energy is moving in all the directions, but no longer the right one. I also host a podcast with that that's called the Business Emergency Room. And I bring into that my experience from before, but also from working in disaster recovery and my experience as a skipper. So the high stakes, emotional decision making or decision making in a landscape where everything's uncertain and changing every second, and you still need to plot a course for it.
Avish
Okay, well, you just mentioned about five different things that triggered my head that I want to ask about. So let's try to prioritize. So let's start first with the idea of the chaos games. So I love this idea of chaos. I feel like most people, especially I would assume the higher up you go, they probably feel like their lives are just constant states of chaos. So let's kind of go back to the very granular level. How did you come up with that as a brand for your speaking and consulting business?
Maartje
Yes.
Avish
So.
Maartje
Most of us who've been in some kind of either in school or in companies, when you do any type of leadership training or whatever, people always talk about what's your superpower, right?
Avish
What.
Maartje
Differentiates you from others. And structuring chaos has always been somewhere in there. I think that was very clear early on that that's something I just connect dots that maybe others don't connect as fast or in a different way. I never wanted to play in my lane. So working in a multinational, I was always trying to play between the lanes that got me in trouble a lot. But ultimately, if you're at a more leadership level, that can actually be of advantage, right? Because it's building bridges that aren't there.
And so that word chaos has been around forever. I think business is a game. I think life can be considered a game, right? There is rules to the game and sometimes you can choose to not play by those rules or choose to not enter the game because you don't like the rules. But ultimately, business is a game and you need to figure out how the other players are playing and where you fit into that and what assets you have to play the game. So that's where the game comes in. What I love about the idea of chaos is that it's about energy and ultimately energy comes from the people.
I think business is about people, making businesses move and progress and successful is a about people and about redirecting the energy, right?
Avish
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's funny, I'm very different from you. I have a little improv comedy background, didn't work in oil and gas for 20 years. But the overall idea, I talk about improv comedy, I talk about the unexpectedness and ding happening and how you have to respond. And so in that case, and it does come down to people, I mean, and maybe I'm oversimplifying, obviously, when you go, you probably work very deep, but I think everyone wants to jump to tactics and what's the step-by-step plan, but it does start with the people and the communication, right? I mean, so when you're working with a group, well, here's my first question. I want to learn a little bit more about how you work.
When are people, when are you engaging people? Are you know, with a brand like Chaos, are they coming to you when they're like, five steps down the road into chaos? Or are they more hiring you when it's just starting? They're like, all right, we need someone to... Because from your podcast name being the Business Emergency Room and the chaos thing, I feel like it's when their whole business is on fire is when they pick up the phone and call you.
Maartje
Yes. And we talked about this briefly before. When you go and market yourself, everybody tells you that you don't want to market yourself in a negative way, right? People will probably tell me that the business emergency room, the name of my podcast would be a bad name for a business or even suggesting, hey, when I said to people, I'm putting myself out there to help business when they're kind of, you know, at times circling the drain or at least emotions are running high and things are not good. And that is typically where I come in. People are like, well, how do you sell that? Yeah, that's difficult, right?
I haven't really sold it a lot. A lot of my business comes through referral because I do, there is a need out there for that, right? I think as people, we all recognize that asking for help is hard, that we think we can do it, that inviting a strange pair of eyes in is hard, particularly when things are not great and fantastic. And that sometimes also things go so fast and we and we think that we know where the solution lies. And so we start picking at the one thing, but that doesn't work. We pick at another thing and it takes a while to admit that maybe it's just been a slow plaque build up in the artery and it's a little bit everywhere. If you would know what's causing your business to be dysfunctional, you probably don't need me, right?
If you're in a well-oiled business where people work well together and your warehouse burns down, yeah, you're in a business emergency. But if your business was functional before that event, you probably band together and get out of it. Right? So I'm more involved in the type of scenarios where there's been that slow build up. And at some point somebody says, it's enough. It could be the board, it could be investor, it could be the C-suite. I would love to work more preventive with people, but that's not necessarily the nature of the beast.
Avish
Sure. So how do you engage? I'm just curious about your process. And so someone calls you up. And obviously I'm sure it's a very long process, a lot of steps, but just the end, and you know, I do have, I think that a lot of listeners who are maybe not executive level, we have some, but so I want to make sure, because I think the content will be helpful even if you don't run your own company. The theories, I assume, would help even an individual, as most humans in this world these days are dealing with cash. Yes. So when you engage with a company or organization, kind of, what is your initial approach?
Start with conversation, do you start looking at numbers? How do you go about it?
Maartje
Yes, yes, and all of those. And yes, as to your point around the process, I do think the process is not necessarily that much different if it's a smaller organization or a larger organization. If it's a smaller organization, it might be more a business coach and a few individual conversations. If it's a larger organization, it might be more a consulting job and you might end up with me, but it's same difference. So it's not very complicated because by the time people decided that they want to work with me, decisions are made pretty quickly. And so I literally do triage. I come in, I ask a bunch of questions about the current stability of the situation, how how close are we to being out of business?
Can we make next payroll? Is there external stuff that we need to address? Is there relationships, deadlines we need to make, or we're not here tomorrow? What are those things? I also start with some difficult conversations, particularly if it's the board or the investors who's, who've invited me in. Then the first question back to them is, are you really ready to give your C-suite a second chance? Or is there some position changes and conversations that need to happen.
And does maybe the original owner of the business need to move to a more advisory position? Or is that the end goal? Because let's not try and go fix it if you've kind of already decided that people are out or that something needs to change, right? I'm not interested in the target seek exercise to feed you ammunition for an idea that you've already decided upon. So, yeah, I, I also very much ask the awkward questions and, and facilitate some difficult conversations, but ultimately, typically with better outcomes. Right. Because in the end, everybody wants the Band-Aid off.
So at some point it needs to happen. And sometimes it's easier to have an external person help with that.
Avish
It is. And it's so funny that, well, not funny, it's interesting to me. This simple idea of having someone come in and ask hard questions, because I do think that that's at any level of fixing a problem or responding to a change or trying to innovate even, and even if it's an individual, it really does just start with really being honest about maybe some things that we've been avoiding, and sometimes you go and hire someone like a consultant or a coach or someone hoping they'll be able to give you a solution without you having to address those issues.
Maartje
Yes.
Avish
But I can see how you would have to, right? I mean, I guess that's the benefit of hiring someone like you is that you probably don't let them get away without answering some of those questions.
Maartje
No, and there's also some very basic just asking around hearing with all the different levels of the organization are having to say and then saying, okay, this is where you're telling me that you think you're headed, but everywhere lower down, I'm hearing this. Or you keep on telling me that this is what you want to do. And at the same time, everything you're showing me, you know, you're telling me red and everything you're showing me is blue.
Can you explain that? Can you. It's. It's making some of these things visible. It's. It's digging that out. It's being that independent pair of ears and eyes that is.
Is trying to follow your logic and your reasoning around everything that's going on and. And figuring out the inconsistencies therein. And helping you figure out maybe to create an initial moment of calm where you can have some of these conversations. So let's at least stabilize things. And so my initial engagement can be a week, two weeks, a month, and then we roll over to something more, or we've got some clarity and realize we need some different type of specialist in, or yeah, or we're starting a whole different journey and are teeing that up and bringing in a much bigger team. To look at a bunch of stuff. So sometimes my engagements are very short. Right.
Avish
It's just mostly diagnostic at that point. You kind of come in and talk to the people maybe. Because I think it is interesting the whole, oh, you're talking to the C level, they're all telling you this thing, but when you dig in, because I mean, even as just, you know, I don't do a lot of consulting. I do more like training, but the number of times I've been just working in a workshop with employees and, you know, at a break, they'll be like, oh, yeah, like, this is great, but it's not really going to matter because everyone else is doing this or they'll tell me this is great, but can you do this training for our managers? I'm like, well, I can try, I would love to. But, and so do you, well, first off, how often do you see that, that there is a disconnect between what, you know, maybe the people who brought you in making the decisions think the problem is versus what the people who are maybe more in the front lines are seeing as the issue?
Maartje
Yeah, it's typically not actually a very black and white disconnect where the one level is all on the one side and the other level is all on the other side. It's typically a situation where there's been too much all at once, all the time. And so the silos started to get more segregated, right? There is not enough contact time. There's not enough time to talk between the silos.
There's too many challenges. And the person in discipline A is trying to solve their challenge and is so caught up in that that they're missing out on something that's happening in silo B that they also should be involved with. Or they're, they need something from a different department to fix their thing and they think they've been trying to explain it, but the other department is busy with their own problems. And so it's growing frustration. It's going, it's, it's more and more parallel lives. And even people who used to get along fabulously are just getting frustrated with each other because things get lost in translation. It's a lot of lost in translation, good intentions, but working at sometimes not even at perpendicular paths, sometimes they are actually not that far removed from each other, but are just using entirely different vocabulary to explain the same thing and think they don't understand each other.
Avish
I've never thought about that as an interesting approach. It's not that they're necessarily at odds, they're just on two different wavelengths. Still sort of trying to head the same direction, but I can see how it's completely cross purpose. You had mentioned a statement earlier about kind of going and working and you said that high emotion. And I can only imagine when it's chaos, when there's trouble, it's high emotion. And one of the things I talk about a lot of my talks is the power of emotion and how in business it's often overlooked or said, it doesn't matter. But I have found that it sort of drives everything.
So when you're going into a situation that is emotionally charged, and I would also think that for a lot of people that when the C-suite brings in a consultant like you, they turtle up or they get defensive or they're worried that maybe you're going to come in and start slashing and stuff. So, you know, what kind of emotion or pushback do you get? Not from the people who bring you in, obviously, but from the people who then you're trying to engage in these conversations to learn and to get advice.
Maartje
Yeah, yes and no. There is some of the turtle behavior, right? But there is also a thing by that point, there's also a bit of a sigh of relief. We finally admitting we need help, right? I think you see that with patients who come into an emergency room or people who've been struggling with their health and are finally getting treatment, right? There's also this like, okay, I'm now succumbing to this and letting myself be helped. And I think you feel that in an organization.
As I said, I'm not interested in target seek. So if you're bringing me in and all you're interested in is a look back and find the guilty person, Well, no, I don't, I think that's also a waste of energy. So, yes, we need to look a little bit back to see what needs fixing, to not have a reoccurrence of certain problems, et cetera, right? Or to have the right history to know how to climb out of the hole. We can maybe get find the first few rungs of the ladder, but we can't find all of them without looking back a little. But I'm not interested in figuring out who's at fault or unraveling to the umpteenth degree why we got there. Right. So if you make that very clear, that changes the situation, too.
I often point out immediately to the leadership the fact that you have all these emotions, the fact that everybody is frustrated and maybe even angry or saying things they shouldn't be saying. It means they care. Right. It means they're in there and they're still connected.
They didn't zone out. I'm more worried about the people you have who are not emotional. And who are already disconnected, right? Because a negative emotion is still typically coming from a place of caring, from a place of pride for their job, of them wanting to do the right thing and feeling unable to do so, or their work not leading to the results that they were expecting, or now having continuous arguments with a colleague that they were fine with before, right? So, emotion is also a sign that people still care. And ultimately, I think people know, right? I've worked with plenty of businesses where, yes, as part of the situation, there has been a layoff or downsizing or an exit or a takeover or some other form of damage control that impacted people and that impacted roles.
But if If people need to leave and it's done in a respectful manner and there's clarity why and there is some form of closure that's infinitely easier than things just sort of dissolving into nothingness and then everybody going. The interesting thing is that even some of the most dire situations I come into, people want to stay, even if they already are saying, I'm not staying here for the. They somehow want to stay until things go better. People want to stick around and leave at a high. There is very few people who really choose to leave at the low, low by themselves. Oh, I find that a very intriguing concept.
Avish
It's very encouraging. Like, it's almost like, it almost, like, gives you faith in the human spirit, I guess, that, like, you know, people. Would want to stick around. And it's funny, you're not the first person I've talked to about this, talking about, you know, if there are layoffs, whatnot, that if it's done respectfully and communicated well. And I think that's such a huge piece of it in the type of work you do, I'm sure, is it's just being transparent and with clear communication versus, you know, I think some organizations, like, they'll just send out an email, you know, be like, oh, like, here we have to downsize. Like layoffs are coming and then, but if you engage in these conversations, you almost find, you mentioned when you come in sometimes there's a sigh of relief, like, oh now they're dealing with it. And I feel even for layoffs to a degree, obviously no one wants to lose their income source, but when things have been going down, down, down, it's almost like when it's finally like, all right, talk about respectfully, it's almost like the weight off your shoulders.
All right, well now I can move on, right?
Maartje
Yes, sometimes we just want somebody else to make the decision for us. And although I don't make decisions, I facilitate some of these decisions finally being made. And sometimes we hang around in situations where we shouldn't hang around, right? So that indecision affects everybody. So creating clarity and creating that point where everybody can move on with their lives. Ultimately, I think I'm one of these people who thinks life's too short. I want to do everything.
And so, yeah, hanging around in a place where things are going nowhere. We can only do that solo, right?
Avish
Yeah. I think that's great advice, which kind of gets into the next bit I want to chat about is some application pieces. Obviously, if you've got a company that's in chaos, reach out to Maartje and have a conversation. But just for the average person listening right now, I'd like to talk on a few sort of scenarios. Number one, if There's a leader listening right now whose company is doing pretty well. They're not in chaos. From everything you've seen, what do you think are the key things that prevent you from getting to a state of chaos?
Where things are so bad?
Maartje
Yeah, the buzzwords, of course, are around trust and transparency. I talk about seeing your people, not seeing dead people.
That's a different film. No, but seeing your people, I think, as a leader, if you, if you try to see how your people are doing, how they're operating, what makes them excited, and, and, and if you seeing your people is also listening to the things they bring up, the things that they care about, I think if you, assuming you hire the right people and you surround yourself with a good team, right? I think if you listen to your people and you see them, they bring up the signals, right? They bring up the signals of what is starting to, what's annoying or what they maybe don't like. It's maybe initially starts as a joke, right? That this report is always the stupid one to make or this report always has this one client in it where nothing happens, but then suddenly it becomes more. And if it becomes more than a joke or the joke is gone, these are the little things where you're like, hey, it's getting to a different level.
Avish
Right.
Maartje
And so using the analog of the podcast, I think a business is a bit like a body, right? And if you're, if you're the kind of business where once a month somebody eats a whole roll of cookies in one day, probably fine. But you want to notice when it suddenly becomes every day a pack of cookies, right? And you, and so I think in order to pick up the signals and the symptoms, you need to see your people, you need to see when your people are starting to be overloaded. And that might entirely be because be because of stuff that's got nothing to do with work. But seeing that and then creating the space for them to say, okay, what can we take of your plate? Because then you'll learn about some of their priorities.
Use that as an opportunity to maybe see if you've got eager people in their team that want to take on some of their tasks for them for a bit. You know, drive your direct reports to do some of these things. See people, see who wants to step up, who wants to do something different, what gets them excited, what they're frustrated about, where their energy levels are at. I think all of these are better signal readers than any management report you can create.
Avish
I agree 100%. It is amazing how the conversations I've had in the podcast and also I was interviewing leaders for my book that I'm working on and the absolute, this is the absolute common thread I hear from everyone. It is and it's so stupid because it's like, it's so simple. You don't need any degree, you don't need any training, it's just Ask your people questions, listen to their answers. Like, that's basically it. And pay attention to do something with it.
And it's just amazing. I'd even think back to my work in corporate how I had leaders who would do that and I had leaders who wouldn't. And it's just so, you're talking about chaos and avoiding it. It starts with just that paying attention and being there for your people.
Maartje
Yeah, but I think it's, it's maybe sometimes more than the questions and the hard thing is of course when, when you're overloaded and in this current climate where everything is the world spinning faster around his axis than ever, it feels like anyway, it's really, if you're so, you're yourself so busy, it's sometimes hard to, to take the time to see and look right, but in improv in, in your world, you talk about character work and stuff. I do think if you actually sit down or you're, I don't know if you're driving to work or where you have a moment where you you're not on your device and you have time to think. If you think about your, your 10 leaders in your business and you think, like, if I, if I try to imagine how they work or how they think about the, our business, right? What would, what would each of them say is the strength of our business or going really well? And what's the one thing they will bring up that's not going well at all or needs work? And, and I bet that you're sitting there and you're like, Actually, I know this and it's this.
And why am I not actually doing anything with this? Right? And yes, you should also ask.
You should follow up. But we see and we hear much more than we sometimes take the time to absorb. So I think it's also just sitting back in a meeting where you don't need to take charge and just see how everybody interacts and kind of go like, Hey, what am I hearing? That's an irritation.
Is it a big deal? What are the three irritations that came up in this meeting?
Do any of them matter?
Avish
Right?
Maartje
Should I do about anything about them?
Avish
Yeah.
Maartje
What did I, what got brought up that I had no idea about? Why? And what does it matter that I knew nothing about that?
Avish
Right. Yeah. The paying attention.
I like, I like that idea, like having some meetings where you could sit back and observe, you know, instead of feeling we need to drive it, which sort of leads to, like, and we might have already answered them. The next question I was going to ask, which is around, you know, this question was about how do you prevent getting that state of chaos. So let's say you've got a leader listening who feels like, all right, yeah, we're, we're in chaos right now. And maybe they're not.
Maartje
Yeah, I think there is a different angle than just the, the people angle. And that's bringing us back to the games part of chaos, because I, I do think in a business, you need to have some level of, of agreement on the rules of your specific game. And I sometimes say, compared to a coat rack, right? We all have a coat rack in our house. So when we have visitors, they come in the door and they see the coat rack and they know where to leave their jacket. And if there's a bunch of backpacks on the floor next to it, they'll put their backpack there too. If their shoes by the door, they'll also pick, automatically take out their shoes and leave them there.
If there's no shoes by the door, they keep them on and they go. And so having a coat rack somehow makes people automatically understand what to do. And if you have a house and you don't have a coat rack, I don't know if you've been to these places where you had a party and people come in and they don't know what to do. And then suddenly everywhere at the most random places in the house are handbags and coats because people have put it somewhere because they don't know where to put it. And I think it's the same with a business, right? At some point you need some standard processes and operating procedures so that not every time somebody needs to work together, they either are not first agreeing how they're going to do the work together. And so they both start working it, but from their own coat rack, right?
Avish
Sure.
Maartje
And then you've got all this time wasted on disagreement and dysfunctionality. I think you need some mechanics in your business on how decisions are made, how some of the standard stuff is done, some clarity around handoffs between departments, who's got which authority to what decide what's and a big cause of the chaos is that businesses grow immature and their processes don't grow up with them. They need to evolve with your business and you need to do some basic housekeeping in that space because you can do the most amazing people work. But if you start to be more than a handful of people who are in the same office space and see each other all day, you cannot keep working that organically and assume that it will work, right? If you want some predictability and outcomes.
Avish
Yeah, when I called for a company, one of the challenges, I guess, I get called in for, because I'm doing more keynote type stuff, is just rapid growth. It's like, you know, we've had people here that were here when we were a 10-person company and now we've got 150 and everyone's trying to operate like we did when we were 10 people and it's not working. But now we're trying to put in processes and people are upset about it because they can't do it away. I get what you're saying. And I guess that's sometimes maybe one of the things you do when you go in is help them figure out that they need to do that and then maybe help them develop those processes.
Maartje
Yeah. And there's some backwards ways these things get done, right? Because I see them in the extreme end. So it's like, oh, we need processes and then we get the full blown, we need everything and it becomes a very dry and meaty thing to do. Or somebody used to work somewhere else and oh, we'll just use this because they like that. But that process in finance and doesn't work with whatever the process in operations is because they came from different places. And so you want a bit of work.
I'm very outcome oriented. I'm a very impatient person. I don't like busy work. So if I get in with these places, I talk more about what is the outcomes we're working towards, what do we need to be able to have predictability on or control on. How do we put something fit for purpose in place that gets us there? Because also if you overdo it today, then you're not going to update your processes in five years when you've had a huge growth because everybody still remembers how painful it was to do it last time, right? It needs some organic growth and space.
Let's keep it fit for purpose. But yeah, and fit for purpose to me is very much bringing down to what are the decisions that need to be made, what are the outcomes we need to deliver, what's the level of predictability we need to have around them, right? What is the most thresholds or standards or alerts that we need to have where things derail?
Avish
Okay, no, I like that. So you gotta get these basic processes in place and leave room for them to grow as as the organization grows.
Maartje
Yeah. All right.
Avish
A couple more things I want to ask about before kind of circling back and then sort of wrapping up. So as I think I mentioned when I kind of, you know, put the call out looking for, you know, finding people is I very much talk about change. So I'm curious, when it comes to chaos, how much do you find that change, whether it's internal organizational change or external, you know, world economics, political change. How big a factor is that in creating chaos for organizations?
Maartje
Yes. Well, I think change in business has become a bit of a dirty word, right? It's become this thing in itself. Whilst I like change, I like chaos. I don't really like the same thing. Not in my life anyway, day in, day out. But I think change is perpetual, right?
So I look at it more as a skipper or a sailor, right? The weather changes all day, every day. Maybe my destination doesn't change, but how I get there has to adjust for all these factors that come on my path, right? And so I look at it more as conditions that you need to navigate. I think navigation as a business skill is something you need. And to me, navigation in business comes from having decision-making skills. We have over 180 biases that affect us in our decision-making.
We all know from our personal life that decision-making is really hard. We get stranded in indecision and recycled decisions and bad decisions and then not wanting to make more decisions because the last ones weren't very good and then not trusting ourselves or then taking other people's opinions. For the sake of it and then realizing that that one is actually not relevant for our life either. So to me, change is, yes, a major cause to chaos because I see people, like, changing with everything, so not filtering through everything that comes at them or trying to. To change too many things at the same time whilst not having a clear anchor or what that's supposed to lead to. There's also a kind of a logical order to things, right? Sometimes you cannot change A and B in parallel, you need to change A first and then you can look at B.
There is some, yeah, some hierarchy to some of these things. So it's about your decision making, but not looking as change as a bad thing, just just like weather conditions, it's just stuff that happens. And as you're you know, coursing towards wherever it is you're headed. If you have good clarity about to where you want to go, it's much easier to say, okay, does this change affect me? Oh, this has got nothing to do with me, right? Oh, yeah, it's gonna rain now. Well, I'm still, I'm not going to change a different course because it rains.
I still need to get there. I can't turn around. So I'll just have to put on a raincoat and sit it out. Right.
Avish
So Well, let's talk about that sort of. So you've mentioned the skipper thing and the navigation thing a few times. And so I want to just talk about kind of how that fits into either your life or your business or because I did watch, I believe it was your disrupt HR program and you tell a whole story about. So you have a whole nautical thing going on there.
Maartje
Yes.
Avish
And that's something you do outside of work, but then do you use that kind of metaphorically or even beyond metaphorically in your work?
Maartje
Yes, I think sailing or being out on the water and ships are good metaphors for business. And for particularly the current times, right? I think the current climate comes across as very, both personal and business is very volatile, very uncertain, yeah, complex, ambiguous. Right. There is not, there's not, we're making puzzles with half the pieces. We have information overload, opinions coming at us from, I don't know how many sources and we don't know which one we can trust. It's a lot. Right. So it's kind of sail, like sailing a storm.
And so, yeah, I use, I use the skills I, I learned there a lot because it's decision making under pressure. Right. I've been many a times. On big yachts or big barges where I am not strong enough to actually sail the ship by myself, right? So I need to tell the crew what to do and it's my responsibility to keep everybody in one piece and safe and reduce the number of pukers, right? And then there's other times where it's sunny and nice and everybody can have a shot at steering for a while. I think that's a good analog for how businesses work.
And how you deal with an ever-changing environment and make it through that. And I think thinking about it in a different context sometimes helps to people. Yeah, asking the questions that you would ask as if you were a sailor. Does this matter to me right now for today's journey? You know, does it matter for where I'm trying to head right now? Yes or no? Do I need to take this information on board?
And where is it coming from? Is this a weather forecast from a four-year-old that she did for school projects or is actually the weather service, right? It makes a big difference if you want to do anything with it.
Avish
Okay. No, I like that. I like your story about the storm. I think you talked about it in your Disrupt HR program. All right, one more question and I'm going to kind of granularize this a little bit. So we've talked about leaders and organizations, but again, talk about, you know, one thing that really excites me is kind of the personal level. And, you know, that's the motivational speaker and the motivation little bit. Right. So let's just say you've got an individual. Yes. Maybe this isn't something you do regularly professionally, but let's say you got an individual who's like, my business has been going down and things are changing and I feel like my life is, is in chaos.
What advice would you have for them kind of based on your sort of approach as a professional and the chaos games various ways. Like, how would you help an individual respond to the chaos and struggle in their own life and business?
Maartje
Yeah. So I think there's two, two really clear things that I, I, I look at it or think about in these moments. It's, on the one hand, we're typically in those moments standing still and kind of, kind of like, in almost inertia.
Like, where do I start? There's something paralyzing around realizing you're in that kind of a situation, and you're like, I don't know where to go anymore. You're. You're kind of on the hamster wheel and don't know how to get off.
Avish
Yeah.
Maartje
And there's typically also a. A loss of knowing where you were going. I would say let's first get off the hamster wheel. So what is it that you need to do to take a moment and get yourself to calm? Can you create a moment where you say, I'm just going to create a day where I have nothing else and sit in the room and figure this out? Or I first need to sleep for 24 hours because I'm just simply exhausted before I can think at all. But what is it you can do that you can get yourself to a place of calm and regroup?
And then it's, I would have another look back at saying, where is it that I was trying to go? Is that still where I'm trying to go? Does that need some refining? And then throwing everything out of your toy toolbox and kind of putting the pieces back in that actually truly contribute to getting you there. And ask yourself some questions. With that, right? So why now?
We often take on a lot of stuff that we feel we also all need to do. But if you then ask the question, why now, right? What is driving that that needs to happen now? Does your book need to happen now or would it be a huge disservice for your business if it's six months later, right? Is there other things that need to happen first because they have other deadlines or are driven by other things? Says who? Because half the stuff we put in our books as individuals is in there because somebody at some point suggested that we should do something and we didn't actually filter it and say, well, is it really relevant for where I'm going or is it just somebody's opinion? Right? Do I need to write 700 LinkedIn posts per month or if I do 100 LinkedIn posts, does it fit the purpose too? Right? What is that?
What's the very so says who? Where, where is it coming from? Why am I carrying this? Why am I believing that this needs to go there and needs to, and carries me forward? So it's some filtering to bring back that focus on what is the stuff that really is helping you get to your destination. And then last but not least, there's a certain level of de-risking there is. If you make decisions or you're going after options, there is things we don't do because they are undefined.
In our head. And by that I mean if you're making a decision between three choices and one is the thing that you see everybody else do, so you know quite a lot about it. One is the thing that you're currently doing and the third one is something in between which you don't know other people who do it or you haven't seen a lot of other people doing it or it sounds like really fun but it's also more out there. Typically, the challenge is that there's not enough definition around that third option for us to go there. So we carry it and it absorbs a lot of energy for us to think about it and keep considering it, but we make no progress on it. So my challenge to people in those moments is what is it that you can do today to put a bit more meat on that option or that thing that you keep carrying but is not progressing or going anywhere. Can you do something to create a new perspective on it, to de-risk it, to find somebody who does that, to give it more definition so that you can get to a point where you say, actually this is not me.
I'm finally now going to put it on the shelf and leave it there. Or actually, this may be something and I do want to do it, or I only want to do this piece of it, but that to allows you to actually make some decisions around it rather than carrying it as luggage. Does that make any sense?
Avish
That, yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I love that because it's very validating for me.
Well, it's funny, right? So I talk about two things in my keynotes and in the book I'm writing is number one is identifying your persistent yes, but, which is what is that thing that your mind keeps telling you and your conscious logical mind keeps saying, yeah, but I can't, right? It's kind of like that option you're talking about. And then I talk about the exact same thing, which is in improv, you know, the worst thing you can do in improv comedy is to try to have the whole thing mapped out, right? It's like just what is the one step I can take? And so I tell people, what's your persistent yes, but? And then what's the one step you can take?
Because either it works, which is awesome, or it doesn't, and then you can say, all right, now I can finally let that go. So, agree with you 100%. It ties in beautifully. So I think that's kind of a Perfect point there to sort of, I made notes, there's lots of other things, but we're kind of running out of time anyway, so that's a good point to pause. I'm going to ask one more question in a minute. First, I want to just give you a chance. Let's say people are listening, they want to learn more about you, they want to potentially engage with you, they want to listen to your podcast.
So where should people go to find out, to listen to more of you, learn more about you, and potentially work with you?
Maartje
Yes, well, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm Marja, M-A-A-R-T-J-E.
If you look for Marja and Chaos, you can also find me anywhere, thechaosgamesconsulting.com the podcast is the Business Emergency Room. It's everywhere where you listen to podcasts. And I also do workshops in the business ER space. So that is my version of speaking. I do work at conferences and with businesses to really talk about some of these symptoms and ailments that afflict organizations and businesses and what you, what is where symptoms go from healthy to unhealthy and what you can do about these things. Also much preventative stuff, not all just disaster recovery. Yeah. And I typically work with midsize B2B, but I also do individual business coaching.
So if you are a smaller business or a growing business or a startup that will be eventually more complex and could use some ad hoc support. Don't hesitate to reach out. The whole point of having a business emergency room is that I will at least try and help you to get to a stable point, and then I'll refer you to somebody else if I'm not the right doctor for you.
Avish
Perfect. I love it.
And we will link to all those things, the LinkedIn, your websites, the podcast. We'll link to all that in the show notes as well. Okay, we're actually going to have one more question for you, and this is a relatively simple one, but I'd like to end the podcast with this question. So, you know, I talk about this idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but because I believe the world would be a better place if everyone just started with the default mindset of yes and instead of yes, but. So my question for you is, what is one small thing that you believe that if everyone did, it would make the world a better place?
Maartje
Assume that the other people, the other people are doing stuff with the right intentions. As soon as emotions start running high, if what other people are saying doesn't entirely make sense or rubs you the wrong way, then think in your head, let's assume they're coming from a good place, right? This is well meant and this is what could this also be or what could this be or how do I then ask a question back rather than immediately going, yeah, the no, right? So my version of the yes and in business is let's assume it's coming from a good place. So how can I answer this when my first reaction is like, what? It's like, how would I answer this if I assume that they're meaning well and that this was constructive?
Avish
Love it. I think that would make the better place. I think that is a great answer. Maartje, thank you so much for being a guest. Everyone, be sure to check out Maartje's website, podcast, blog, LinkedIn, and connect with her there. Thank you Marcho, this was great. I look forward to talking again soon.
Maartje
Thank you so much for having me, Avish.