The Business Emergency Room: For Leaders Facing Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity (VUCA)

Most startup founders don’t realize they’ve become accidental CEOs until their own success turns into the biggest reason they can’t scale.

Maartje van Krieken and Pete Steege discuss the “founder’s fog,” that frustrating place where a vague vision, scattered execution, and unclear roles quietly start choking a growing business. Pete shares stories of technical founders who are brilliant at their craft but end up stuck because they’re trying to lead the company the same way they built it. Is it possible that being good at everything has become the reason things aren’t moving forward?

The real challenge of scaling isn’t about doing more work but about shifting who you are as a leader. Pete breaks down the three identity shifts every accidental CEO needs to make to get out of the fog: moving from expert to strategist, from peer to boss, and from builder to scaler. He also offers a fresh take on standing out in a crowded market, especially when AI content is flooding every channel. Could being more human, not louder, be the smartest move a founder makes?

For anyone feeling the weight of scaling challenges, Maartje and Pete’s discussion is a real look at how clarity, identity, and intentional leadership can pull you out of founder’s fog and help you grow without burning out.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 The Accidental CEO: When Success Becomes a Bottleneck

02:07 How a True Story Helped Land Enterprise Clients

06:04 Founders Fork: Why Asking for Help is Hard

12:03 Scaling Challenges: Identifying Pain Points that Matter

18:06 Surviving the AI Content Flood with Meaningful Engagement

22:42 Founder’s Fog and the Risks of Business Continuity

24:07 The Three Identity Shifts Every Accidental CEO Must Make

Connect with Pete Steege:

B2B Clarity

LinkedIn

X

Pete Steege is a growth strategist and CEO advisor who helps Accidental CEOs – technical experts turned business leaders – gain clarity, lead with purpose, and scale with confidence. With decades of experience guiding startups and Fortune 100 companies, Pete understands the unique challenges founders face as they step into leadership.

His upcoming book, Radical Clarity, offers a roadmap for technical CEOs ready to move beyond their expertise and lead strategically. As founder of B2B Clarity, Pete empowers leaders to simplify complexity, focus their efforts, and build businesses that grow without constant firefighting.

Connect with Maartje van Krieken:

The Chaos Games Consulting

The Business Emergency Room

LinkedIn

Substack

YouTube

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

A startup with cutting-edge tech and global momentum collapsed in under four years because no one stopped to build the structure needed to sustain it.

In this episode, Maartje van Krieken reflects on the rise and fall of Hyzon Motors, a hydrogen fuel cell startup that looked like a sure thing. The technology was solid. The market was ready. The company had funding, partnerships, and a compelling vision. So how did it all fall apart?

Drawing from her direct experience inside the organization, Maartje walks through the kind of operational breakdown that often gets overlooked in the rush to scale. Roles weren’t clearly defined. Regional strategies clashed. Expectations were sky high, but no one had a realistic plan for how to deliver on them. What happens when you bring in top talent but give them no framework to work within? What does growth look like when there’s no shared understanding of how the pieces fit together?

Seen through the lens of business triage, this story becomes a reminder of what’s easy to miss when everything feels urgent. If your team is under pressure to move fast and you’re not quite sure whether the foundation can hold, it’s worth asking: where are the cracks starting to show?

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Case Study: Hyzon Motors and the SPAC Hype

02:10 Early Red Flags: Phantom Customers and Inflated Demand

04:10 European Joint Venture Breakdown

07:09 Unrealistic Timelines and Costly Missteps

09:19 Over-the-Wall Management and Organizational Chaos

11:47 Business Continuity Problem Hidden Beneath Activity

16:05 Inside the Collapse: Leadership Turnover and SEC Probes

19:05 Hyzon’s Final Collapse and Liquidation

20:03 Lessons in Startup Failure and Operational Breakdown

26:09 The Fix Illusion vs. What Businesses Actually Need

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

Scaling looks like success, until your product hits every shelf and you’re still bleeding cash.

In this episode, Maartje van Krieken talks with food and beverage strategist Debbie Wildrick about what really happens when growth gets ahead of structure. With decades of experience across the CPG world, from startup brands to overseeing billions in retail at 7-Eleven, Debbie has seen firsthand how companies unravel behind the scenes. What causes a business to stall even after it secures funding, distribution, and shelf space? Why do so many founders miss the early signs of a CPG breakdown?

Debbie shares stories that highlight just how fragile scaling can be, including one where a CEO was removed after failing to calculate basic production costs. They dig into the operational blind spots that often go unchecked, the assumptions that break business models, and the moments when a solid business continuity plan can mean the difference between recovery and collapse.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your growth is built to last or felt like things are moving fast but something’s off, Debbie and Maartje’s discussion will help you step back and take a harder look at what’s really going on under the surface.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Scaling Chaos in the CPG World

03:04 Costly Mistake: Miscalculating Production Costs

05:24 Why Your Business Model Is Breaking Down

08:38 The Hidden Costs Killing Margins

12:39 When Retailers Drop You Without Warning

17:57 Data Without Action Isn’t Strategy

19:36 Why Founders Struggle to Ask for Help

25:16 Signs It’s Time for Outside Support

27:01 Still Bleeding Cash After Growth?

Links

Connect with Debbie Wildrick:

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

https://www.debbiewildrick.com/

Debbie is a sales, marketing, and operations executive and channel strategy specialist in the consumer packaged goods industry with 30+ years’ experience. She brings a wealth of knowledge in getting products to the consumer in today’s marketplace having experience in retail and consumer marketing as well as sales in all food market channels including grocery, c-store, foodservice, drug, club, mass, nutritional and e-commerce. She has had leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including 7-Eleven, Inc. and Tropicana North America (Pepsico), recently EVP/Global Sales for HempFusion, President of Frey Farms Beverage Division, as well as executive positions with several early-stage brands. She Cofounded and was Chief Strategy Officer for MetaBrand, working with 100’s of early to mid-stage brands helping them navigate their launches in all aspects of business. She served as a Board Member for ten years for the Network of Executive Women

Connect with Maartje van Krieken:

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

https://www.thechaosgamesconsulting.com/

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

A single line of flawed code grounded planes, shuttered hospitals, and crashed cash registers… What would your business do if the emergency was already underway?

One year after launching this podcast in the middle of real-life chaos, Maartje breaks down the CrowdStrike debacle that exposed just how fragile even the biggest systems can be, and why most business continuity plans still fall short. She shares five hard-earned lessons from the outage, including how American Airlines recovered faster than Delta, what crisis readiness really requires, and why your frontline team, not your tech stack, might be the biggest variable in an emergency.

To celebrate The Business Emergency Room podcast’s anniversary, Maartje is giving away a full continuity plan upgrade package (worth over $5,000) to one lucky listener, plus a free checklist for everyone who enters. If your business continuity plan hasn’t been stress-tested lately, this is your chance!

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 One-Year Anniversary of The Business Emergency Room

03:34 The CrowdStrike Outage That Brought Global Systems Down

07:21 How Airlines Responded and What Set Them Apart

10:15 Five Leadership Lessons for Crisis and Continuity

19:42 $5K Business Continuity Giveaway Announcement

24:07 How to Enter and What You’ll Receive

26:16 What This Year Taught Us About Leading Through Chaos

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

Public sector leaders are quietly mastering the kind of complex, human-centered change most businesses struggle to get right.

Maartje van Krieken is joined by Vijay K. Luthra, a former civil servant and transformation strategist, to talk about why public sector transformation deserves more attention from business leaders facing turbulence. Vijay draws from his experience across government and consulting to challenge assumptions about innovation, revealing how public institutions have become experts at navigating constant disruption and ambiguity. Centered on what he calls the “Fifth Industrial Revolution,” the episode explores how the pace of technological change is creating a future where opportunity is increasingly uneven, especially for workers in vulnerable or transactional roles.

The discussion touches on the psychological and cultural dimensions of large-scale change, and focuses on human-centered change that prioritizes long-term outcomes over short-term savings. Vijay explains how reform efforts, particularly in systems like healthcare, fail when they ignore the needs of both service users and frontline workers. He also offers a look at the emotional toll of poorly managed transformation and the importance of building psychological safety within organizations. From the NHS to digital strategy, Vijay makes a case that the public sector offers valuable lessons in resilience and complexity in leadership that today’s business world can’t afford to overlook.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Why the Public Sector Might Be Ahead on Complexity

01:53 Chaos in Government and What It Reveals About Leadership

04:33 The Fifth Industrial Revolution and Shrinking Opportunity

07:00 Automation in Government and the Future of Work

10:09 What Human-Centered Change Really Requires

12:08 Why Long-Term Outcomes Matter More Than Cost Cutting

14:47 How to Prepare Teams for Technology Transformation

20:04 The Emotional Toll of Looming Change Projects

23:13 Why Behavior Change Is Essential in Public Sector Reform

25:08 Balancing Running the Business with Changing the Business

26:21 Lessons Business Leaders Can Learn from the Public Sector

28:26 Creating a Strategic Digital Center for Change Readiness

Links

Connect with Vijay K. Luthra:

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

www.cevaglobal.co

Vijay K. Luthra is a strategic advisor specializing in human-centered transformation for public services. A former Civil Servant and Chartered Management Consultant, he’s worked with PwC, PA Consulting, and Capita, advising senior leaders across the NHS, Ministry of Defence, Department for Education, and local government. His notable work includes helping establish Greater Manchester’s devolved health system, leading national reforms, and contributing to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. A renal transplant recipient and neurodiversity advocate, Vijay also supports Kidney Research UK and Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity. He holds an MSc from King’s College London and serves as an Associate NED in the NHS.

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

AI isn’t some future threat on the horizon. It’s already changing how businesses operate, and the question is whether you’re keeping up or falling behind.

In this 50th episode of The Business Emergency Room, Maartje van Krieken gets real about “AI FOMO” and why so many leaders are stuck thinking instead of doing. Most companies say they’re exploring AI, but only a small fraction have actually changed how their business runs. So what’s holding them back? And what might it cost to keep waiting?

Maartje shares examples that go way beyond marketing copy and chat tools. Think AI systems that manage warehouse traffic in real time, flag legal risks in massive contracts, guide field technicians on complex repairs, or adjust prices based on raw material costs before your team even opens a spreadsheet. These aren’t futuristic experiments… They’re happening right now.

You don’t need to become a tech expert to bring AI into your business. What you need is a clear sense of where things break down, where the process slows, and where your team is stretched thin doing work that tech could handle better. That’s where AI business integration, operational efficiency, and intelligent automation come into play.

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to take action, maybe this is it. What would change if you picked one process and explored how AI could make it faster, smarter, or less painful? What’s the risk of staying still while everything else moves forward? Maartje offers a grounded, no-hype way to start answering those questions.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 AI FOMO and the Leadership Gap

01:17 The Truth About AI Adoption in Business

03:02 Why Waiting to Act Carries Real Risk

05:04 Practical Use Cases of Intelligent Automation

14:12 Five Strategic Steps to AI Business Integration

22:22 Building Long-Term AI Capability and Confidence

23:48 Moving from FOMO to First Mover Advantage

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

Most leadership failures don’t happen because of bad strategy. They happen because we overlook how human we all are when the pressure’s on.

Maartje van Krieken is joined by German author, speaker, and former airline pilot Peter Brandl, who brings a pilot’s perspective into the world of business leadership. With years of experience training flight crews in crisis response and communication, Peter talks through the concept of human factors in leadership, how the real risks come from misjudged decisions, flawed communication, and the stress responses we don’t always notice in ourselves or others.

They explore the role of situational awareness training and why it’s so important, especially when things go sideways. Peter shares some eye-opening moments about how quickly even simple communication can unravel and how much more effective we become when we admit our limitations instead of pretending they’re not there.

They also take a hard look at crisis decision-making. Why does indecision take hold in the moments that matter most? What helps people push through the freeze and take action when it counts? Peter offers up tools, like the idea of a crisis simulator, asking the right “what if” questions before disaster strikes. This episode is a reminder that leadership isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about being prepared, grounded, and human.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction: Peter Brandl

01:47 From Pilot to Leadership Trainer

02:50 Lessons from Aviation for Business Leadership

06:02 Understanding the Human Factors Behind Mistakes

09:04 Why Communication Fails When It Matters Most

13:35 Crisis Decision-Making and the Cost of Inaction

21:01 Using the What-If Technique for Crisis Readiness

27:27 How Storytelling Reinforces Leadership Lessons

Links

Connect with Peter Brandl:

www.peterbrandl.com

Peter Brandl is a professional pilot, flight instructor, bestselling author, and former president of the German Speakers Association. With over 3,500 events across 30 years, he’s known for blending cockpit experience with boardroom strategy, sharing stages with leaders like Richard Branson and Steve Wozniak. His clients include Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, Red Bull, and Lufthansa. Today, he advises top executives as a trusted sparring partner through high-stakes decisions and turbulent times.

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

Most businesses won’t survive their next big disruption. Not because the crisis is too big, but because their business continuity plan (BCP) was either half-baked or never tested.

Maartje van Krieken makes the case for recovery planning that actually works. What would happen if your leadership team was unreachable? If your systems went down? If your staff didn’t know who had authority to make decisions?

The stats are rough. Nearly 95% of companies without a recovery plan after a major data breach go out of business within a year. And yet, most organizations either don’t have a documented BCP, or haven’t updated it in years.

Maartje walks through what a good BCP needs to cover: not just cybersecurity or data recovery, but business-wide disruptions, everything from crisis communication and staffing protocols to vendor continuity and decision-making chains. She shares the story of Southwest Airlines’ infamous collapse in December 2022 as a clear example of what happens when those systems aren’t in place.

What kind of support would your team need in the first 24 hours of a crisis? Have you ever talked through worst-case scenarios with every department in the room? Maartje doesn’t just focus on what belongs in the plan. She explains why the process of building it, the conversations, the scenario planning, the connections made across teams, is where so much of the real value lives.

This episode is part practical breakdown, part wake-up call. If your current plan lives in a drawer or hasn’t been updated since before hybrid work was a thing, now’s the time to rethink it.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Why Most Businesses Fail Without a Continuity Plan

02:55 Southwest Airlines Case Study: A Failure to Plan for Failure

05:06 What Every Business Continuity Plan Should Include

08:40 Crisis Communication and Emergency Response Protocols

11:09 Vendor Risk and Supply Chain Continuity

13:38 Overlooked Elements That Make or Break a BCP

18:03 Building an Agile Crisis Response Team

20:00 Scenario Gamification for Better Recovery Planning

22:17 Pre-Investments That Accelerate Crisis Response

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

Most boards don’t fail because of bad people. They fail because the right people aren’t at the table when it counts.

Maartje van Krieken sits down with Dr. Keith Dorsey, the founder of Boardroom Journey, to talk about what makes a board truly effective, and why board composition strategy should never be an afterthought. If your company is scaling fast or hitting friction, are the voices in your boardroom equipped to help you grow? Dr. Dorsey shares why defaulting to well-known CEOs and CFOs can backfire, and how to identify the real gaps in expertise that could be holding you back.

They dig into how thoughtful board refreshment can increase board impact on growth, and what it takes to align governance with the company’s next chapter. The conversation also looks at the fallout from virtual-only board interactions, and why relationship-building still matters more than efficiency.

As Dr. Dorsey puts it, the goal isn’t just filling seats. It’s making sure the people in them can see what’s coming and ask the right questions when the pressure hits.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Meet Dr. Keith Dorsey

01:14 Why Board Composition Strategy Matters for Growth

03:49 Key Roles of Board Members: Management, Advisory, Governance

06:51 The Risk of “Shiny Object” Board Appointments

10:24 Board Relationships in a Post-Pandemic World

12:50 How Virtual Meetings Affect Board Impact on Growth

16:49 Building a Culture of Inquiry and Strategic Alignment

19:10 Emotional Intelligence as a Boardroom Advantage

21:01 What “Optimal Diversity” Looks Like on a Board

Links

Connect with Dr. Keith D. Dorsey:

[email protected]

https://www.boardroomjourney.com/

https://www.boardroomjourney.com/book

Dr. Keith Dorsey is a seasoned board member, researcher, and author of The Boardroom Journey, a practical guide for executives pursuing corporate board service. His thought leadership on governance and board effectiveness appears in outlets like Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company. A 2023 NACD Directorship 100™ honoree and Certified Director, Keith serves on several corporate and nonprofit boards, including Vimly Benefit Solutions, Continu, Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School, and others. He holds a doctorate in Organizational Change and Leadership from USC.

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

A jailbreak in New Orleans becomes a sharp metaphor for what happens when creeping dysfunction goes unchecked inside a business.

In this episode, Maartje van Krieken unpacks the hidden costs of ignoring early warning signs in organizations. Broken locks. Budget cuts. Communication breakdowns. The kind of slow decay that builds quietly until a major crisis forces everyone to pay attention.

Using the lens of operational risk escalation, Maartje explains how small process failures can snowball into full business process failure, often without anyone noticing in time. Did you know it takes most organizations 84 days to spot a critical internal issue? And that only 5% of frontline insights ever reach leadership?

That gap in awareness is where risk lives. Maartje challenges leaders to think differently: What keeps your team up at night? What friction points have they stopped mentioning? And what’s the cost of waiting too long to act? Maartje shares ideas for closing that gap, like building a culture of trust, making time to “go and see,” and running a regular cleanup cadence to address issues before they grow roots. Because when dysfunction becomes normalized, your version of a jailbreak might already be underway.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Jailbreak as a Metaphor for Organizational Failure

02:29 The Real Source of Chaos: Creep

04:00 Early Warning Signs in Organizations

05:30 Case Study: Sales Breakdown in Industrial Gases

08:42 Case Study: Procurement Failure on Offshore Platforms

13:43 Reducing Lag Between Signal and Action

14:26 Why Most Transformations Fail

16:05 The Cost of Employee Disengagement

17:05 Culture of Trust and Transparency

18:12 Go and See: Leadership by Observation

21:26 Building a Cleanup Cadence

24:17 Business Versions of a Jailbreak

25:21 Take Action Before It’s Too Late

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