Latest / Better Together / Navigating Chaos to Achieve Clarity in Business with Maartje Van Krieken
Transcript
- Meesam curingbusy: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Better Together podcast. I'm Kelly Sunsvold co-hosting with my partner and business in life, Sean Sunsvold. Today we are joined by Marcia, a seasoned executive, fractional CEO, COO and CSO, and the host of the Business Emergency Room podcast where she helps leaders triage chaos and turn it into clarity. With 20 plus years leading global initiatives from Iraq to India to New Orleans, Marcia now guides mid-market B2B companies through Chaos Games Consulting, a business focusing on decision-making people dynamics and unlocking business potential. She's also an advisor, executive coach, disaster action specialist, and mom of three, bringing grounded real-world insight into how leaders can stay steady and strategic in a fast-moving world. So let's jump right in. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So let's start from the very beginning. What inspired you to start the Chaos Games Consulting and how did you know the business world needed it? Yeah. I used to work for a multinational in oil and gas for a couple of decades and really in the early days tried to duly follow the career ladders laid out there in. But you also get a lot of good leadership training, right? Where they talk about what is your super superpower or your specialty. And it's always been, you know, the drawing things, the fast connecting the dots. My brain just works differently. I cannot connect different dots, but in a useful way. so... finally made a switch to swim between the career ladders. And so the label associated with what my superpower is, really structuring chaos, seeing the patterns when everybody's kind of lost a bit. So after a couple of decades in oil and gas, I left and I took on, yeah, kind of random. It looks maybe to others random, big consulting contracts, but they were all in the same space. They were all organizations and businesses that were all lost. ⁓ And said, okay, we need help, but we also don't know where to start. And we've already had three or four people how to go at this. What do we do? As you mentioned in introduction, I have three kids. I have lived a global nomadic lifestyle and I'm now staying put in New Orleans to put these three through high school. And yeah, it meant that I also really had to ground my business a bit more and stop some of the traveling. So about two years ago, I really carved out a business specifically around this scope with the intent to do more of that initial triage work and not necessarily have five months, two year commitments with people, but really help in that original. I need help but I also don't know where to start face because I think that that's truly still where my superpower lies and I think in this crazy world there's only more need for that, right? Everything's compounded and integrated and stacked and unraveling that is not so simple. Yeah, yeah for sure. And I think one of the phrases that you use, you know, as you describe your business and what you do is triaging chaos, right? And you know, we've all probably watched a medical show or two. Right. Where it's like, you know, you think about triage and stuff, like something along the lines of stop the bleeding. Right. And for a lot of businesses when they're disorganized and not sure what to do, they're bleeding cash. Right. They might be bleeding people. They might be bleeding because they don't have the right processes in place. So talk us through that a little bit more. And what does that actually look like inside a company that's, that's going crazy? Like, what does that look like for you? Yeah. So I, typically. cold kind of challenges are running into kind of equivalent to plaque buildup in the arteries, right? There is usually a lot of little things that by themselves are not lethal. And it's also not necessarily anybody doing anything drastically wrong, but there is little things that were left too long and then grow too far and then it's compounded and then it doesn't take much to be too much. Right. And that also makes the unraveling more complex, right? If it's been a slow buildup, there's not also necessarily a slow. So what I do when I come in is what I call diagnostics, but the business AR metaphor is very useful because it is also about stabilizing first, right? Cause when I come in, it's also like, okay, how bad are things? Can we make payable at the end of the month or is there something else that we need to stabilize first before we do anything else? It typically also includes some difficult conversations because sometimes I'm brought in by the C-suite, but sometimes also by investors or by board members. And so it's a conversation about, We only can do this work if we have everybody at the table, but is everybody still at the table or is there already a half parting of ways and we have to have those conversations first to establish who we're carrying on with. And then it's a lot of conversations because what I'm looking for is the dysfunction and the disconnect. And yes, people get to vent a bit too, but I don't, I'm not looking for the culprits, right? But in that conversation, it's about, okay. what constitutes value in your business, right? How does your business make money or generate value? And what am I hearing in all these disconnects that are the biggest ones that are keeping you away from that, right? Where are the biggest bleeds? And they're not always visible, right? Because some of the biggest bleeds might be as simple as a really dysfunctional relationship between two senior individuals that's really stopped the integrative working of two departments. And nobody's had the conversations and nobody's talked about it. But sometimes it is actually been quite visible, but it's just been managed by a lower level of parm news like, not escalated, right? The supply chain's been running on heroics for two years now, patching and patching and patching, and they managed to keep it going like that. But at some point you can't put a patch on a batch. So some of them were visible, but not seen. Some of them are invisible. be any of these things. But in going around the organization and asking around, you typically find where those gushers are, right? And then the conversation is about which one do we need to patch first or not patch really, right? You need some systemic solution this time. Exactly. And so like when you walk into a business, what are leaders who are getting it wrong about their situation? Like what's one thing that they tend to misdiagnose when they're at the state of panic or overload? Like I could see like You know, sort of some of those, I see it like in like minimum wage jobs where it's, or even we've experienced this, Sean and I have in our careers, like these people, these employees, they just, we just need to get some new ones because they're not doing anything, you know? So it's a little bit of a misdiagnosis as a leader blames their employees, but what are some things that you have that you've experienced in that state of panic? Yeah, I think what happens naturally in overload or I know what happens in overload is that we retract in our own silos, right? And so we pay less attention to others and we see less. And frustration can result in people who used to work well together, no longer working well together or not liking each other. I think I don't like the word role because even in the weirdest crisis is where I've worked, I've not. Yeah, there's always this really dysfunctional individual, but that's not the norm. And if that's the reason something is so dysfunctional, people also seem to know, right? So I think though, there is a lot getting lost in translation. And if you're too busy, that there's just simply no time to figure that out. So people double down, right? As an example, I had a big client and it was really super fast growing ⁓ tech business. And so they were still. beefing up headquarters in the US, but they had already put collaborations in place on different continents to produce and to get manufacturing going. Headquarters was filled with former multinational types, right? So their operations guide was fabulous, great for the job, but he spoke GE. He still spoke entirely GE language and the European entity was a former family business. So these are guys who speak relatively good English, but hadn't signed up necessarily to walk. work in an English speaking business and we're just used to, you know, mom and pop operations, like three, four people. And this guy was asking for GE style vocabulary operations report and he keeps on saying they don't have the data. And I'm like, okay, what is in your, in your head? What's in these reports? Can you tell me? Right. And then you go back and say, okay, what is after? He said, oh, I made my own report and I generate this and it has this in it. And it's this is what he wants. And it's like. 80 % what they're after, right? I think there's that when you're so busy, what we do is keep on repeating the ask rather than try to ask differently to get to it. And it needs some fresh eyes and ears to sometimes bridge that those gaps. think that's just the idea that if things are going wrong, if we just only work harder or people are more committed, but you can't work your way out of chaos. Yeah, I think it's interesting what you said there about, you know, kind of the comparison, the GE versus the family business, you know, and kind of helping bridge that gap of communication, right? You know, and you've got a lot of leadership experience and been in some intense situations. I mean, you've traveled all over the world, right? You've been in Iraq, you've been in India, now you're in New Orleans. So you've got a whole lot of world experience that you bring to everything that you do. I'm curious, how has that shaped... the way you lead today, you know, being in all those different environments. Yeah. ⁓ I mean, being myself, a traveler and a non-English native speaker, think the lost in translation is more in your mind anyway, but it's so much bigger, even people who speak the same language, right? It exists, ⁓ in certain countries and climates, you know, it's also the style of talking. Sometimes it is much more direct or what's acceptable or what's I think I just learned even more so that people want to do the right thing, right? And that people, and to assume that it's coming from the right place and that there's something that we're operating in parallel realities that are not the same. And I think that almost 90 % of my job is figuring out where there is these mismatches in the different realities of the different parts of the business and figuring out how you can explain. to one part from one party to the other, what they mean. And that brings me back to the start of my career because what I ended up being good at was this technicals specialist department trying to talk to project controls and then not. And I'm sitting there and I'm seeing those two dots and I'm seeing the connection and I'm like, okay, can we, can we build this bridge? Right. I think it's that. I think there is just, we should assume that people want to do the right thing. and spend more time trying to understand each other, right? If it's not working, it's probably that. It's not ill intent or it's not incapability or it's not half the time we're not talking the same thing. It's just believing inherently that people mean the best and they're good. Yeah. They have different circumstances behind them that we can't see different upbringings and you're like, you work with people from different cultures and like, you know, like that all plays a part into it. There's kind of that classic triangle of like people, process, and profit in businesses, right? In your experience, which one do businesses think is usually the issue and which one is it actually? I think it's pretty aligned that for me it's always people. And then I do think that people also, that most businesses also assume that is the culprit when things are not working right. people not working hard enough, people not doing the right thing. But ultimately for me, what processes is about is generating a better opportunity of having that shared reality or that shared language. And so if you have none of that. or you don't, or it's not actually relevant or functional. I don't think large groups of people can work effectively together, right? There needs to be some structure as to how we work together. And if we have to reinvent that every time, it first of all costs a lot of time, but we also don't quite do it. We sort of think that we've agreed a way working and the opportunity for misalignment is even bigger. I don't necessarily see, I think a big differentiator. And how people see where the challenge is and where the challenge typically is. Yeah. think, I think, I think though there is a, process to me is the enabler, the facilitator and gets under invested in or wrongly invested in just as frequently, right? Which makes the card house fall apart sooner. Yeah. you know, process I think is such an important thing for businesses. And I think it's hard sometimes for business leaders of all sizes, especially in a small business, you think, ⁓ it's just the people. I need the right people. I need the right people. But I think as they grow as a business leader, they realize how important process is and having something that's repeatable so that when they get to the point of being able to hand that off to somebody, it works the same like they expected because they put the person into a process, not the process on a person, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think that's so important. So let's talk about when you come into a business, right? You're an advisor, you've been in corporate world, you're no stranger to making very high impact, high stakes decisions that can make or break a business, right? So what is your approach when you come into a business and they're really having to face a tough decision and everybody's like divided? How do you bring everybody together to help make that decision? Yeah. So I'm big decision-making freak, right? I think just a lot of people, I love decision-making as a process and totally believe in putting some structure and effort in it. If you talk about a business as a body and then the business emergency room, I think decision-making is your circulation. And without decision-making or with decision-making, many other things become easier. There's a few different ways. Typically when it's difficult decisions, they're also trying to take too big a decision in one go. Right? It's like, okay, how are we going to get to world peace from this? Yeah, but so typically we need to cut it down a bit. And yes, the business as is probably indeed, you know, that people know in their belly cannot continue as it is. And it's probably also oversized or it's going to have at least as a bare minimum, a huge dip in a period in which it cannot sustain maybe the team or the people that it has and if it wants to recoup. So that's not a secret though to anybody in the organization. And the fact that you finally choose to address it and tackle it and talk about it sometimes is actually a big relief to people. It's quite often that I come in that people realize that there's still a long road ahead, but the fact that the business has a phase, right? But the leadership has admitted that, listen, we're going to get some help because we can't keep going like this. It's almost a relief, right? I think if you've not been feeling well forever and you don't know what it is and you're putting it off. There's also some sort of relief at finally admitting and going to the doctor, right? And saying, okay, you know, beginning of something better. Then in decision-making, I think if you actually work through the decision-making process, right? If we strip it down to saying, okay, how much, how many people do we have to let go and what's that going to look like and how are we going to shape that up and how do we do that? If you actually put the time into do proper decision-making and look at all the alternatives and you then come up with the best possible solution. You can talk people through it. People, may still hurt, right? But people can follow the logic and they can understand why that's the most sensible thing to do. And they also understand that your primary goal is to keep that business alive and that ultimately people come second as in, if I have to choose between keeping everybody employed, but then not having a business that doesn't make sense either. Right? So there, yes, there is pain and there is sadness and there is challenges in there, but If you can actually get through the most logical and sensible solution, that's a very different game than if you're a black box and pulling a solution out and it just looks as if you put no effort or work in to try and figure out anything else. Right? If people feel that you made an effort to try and do the best you could in the situation you're in, very different. One of the things I'm hearing you say in that too is. clarity around what that decision has to be. Because I think as business leaders, when we're in those situations, We see, all we see is the big decision because it's panic, right? We see what could happen if we don't make a decision, but then there's that, without the clarity of understanding how that decision. is going to affect everything and what it's going to mean. You know, I really do think it's hard to make those decisions and those tough calls. Yeah. And decision paralysis is a very real thing, right? We're in another week. Do we get a different insight? Do we get more information? And we all do what we do in our personal life too when crappy things happen, right? We kind of go like, maybe if I squeeze real hard, will go away by itself. And unfortunately it doesn't. And so I think showing off your as a leader, your humaneness in that and then kind of saying, saying, okay, I also hope that this will blow over that there was a magic one. I've had to face reality that we're going to have to work this and I'm not sure where we're going to end up, but I'm now going to put in the effort because we can't also keep doing this, right? So somehow, and if it's not necessarily affecting your people immediately, if your business isn't somehow in a strange limbo, And you don't know when you're in that situation that you described Sean, where you're like, where do I start? And what does this look like? I think then giving your people that respect by actually saying out loud, saying, okay, one, we're now in this situation. It's also a bit new to me and unusual. This is what I know or not know. You know, this is where I have some major blind spots, but based on what I know today, I think our next best step is to try and aim for that. But I'm also not entirely clear yet how to get there because then you're inviting your team in to say, okay, we're a bit, yeah, we're in this together. And people start to think from their own capacity and capability, or even maybe past experience that was an entirely different company or different industry and kind of go like, okay, what can I then do to maybe help in this situation or bring in other factor information that might be helpful to make that decision? Right? So if you don't know, there is actually a decent power in. Admitting that and just saying well, this is my intent. I'm this is also a bit new for me, right? Yeah Yeah one of the things that I've I had a leader one time tell me is that your lack of a decision is also a decision Right and and when you don't make a decision You're completely giving up your power and your control and your ability to choose Because you chose not to make a choice, right and I'm curious You know, how do you, when you have somebody like that who just can't make a decision, is there one way or another that you do something else that you do to try to push them and get that clarity so that they can feel empowered to make that decision? Yeah, I do think there, unfortunately, there are certain individuals who, who are in positions. think everybody can learn to make decisions faster and better. I do also like with anything else, if you're really not. predispositions to do any of this, right? If you are really somebody who gets almost a physical reaction to ambiguity and stuff. Yeah, we might need to alter something and, and put, move some of the decision making away to different or better places, right? Then you're, do think there's people who are just simply not well placed for that. I do also talk sometimes about the story of, you know, in the Dutch, the literal translation is in the land of the blind one eye is king. I think it translates somewhat like that in English, right? But there is so often in life also situations where, yeah, you're not the best place to make the decision, but also nobody else is going to do it. And so you need to, right? And so I think accepting that and then say, and, ⁓ guiding people through the idea that if you are really stuck on something and you don't know where to go, if you don't move, you get no progressive insight. So maybe don't make that decision, but make a decision about at least one or two logical steps that you can take that don't throw you immediately into the abyss that will give you progressive insight on the situation, right? So. Because doing nothing, you're just going to drift. The forces that be are going to apply to you and you're going to end up in a different place anyway, where you maybe even have less control. Right? So yeah, there is something other that you can do than making not a decision, which is making a smaller decision. But without action, you're not going to learn anything or make any progress and you're going to lose your, your, your team's trust in the process. Right? Exactly. You know, every entrepreneur. of has that moment, I think, where there's one, what am I doing? know, like they have that moment. What was that moment for you and what helped you find your way through it? Yeah, I'd it's intriguing, right? Because I've really worked in some really crazy places and I can write books about crazy stories and crazy situations. I bet. I just have monsters in my head as to what constitutes sales. in American style and business development American style. I'm Dutch, I'm from the Netherlands. And if there's one thing we don't do is use our own name and superlatives in the same sentence ourselves. Right. And even if somebody else does it, you're supposed to go like, ⁓ right. You're no more special than anybody else. ⁓ And I knew, I know like it's truly like that, right. I grew up in the town where the current king was going to school and you went to the same school as I did. It's very, you know, very normal, like nobody's special. And so my work had always come to me through referral and stuff. And so now I'm saying, Hey, I'm actually going to pitch myself in this region of the world, very specifically doing, and I want more volume, right? Shorter duration. So some level of selling and pitching for yourself and stuff comes into that. And yes, I understand that I'm solving some real valuable problems for people. I've not necessarily had a lack of work, but still in my head, it's just like, I have to sell me that dragon. I haven't slayed at all. I struggle with that notion and I'm not sure I can lie down to that, but it's made me want to give up at times because You know, I have a husband with a career, have three teenagers. So there's been faces in the last couple of years where there was a lot going on at the same time. It all taps out of the same energy source, right? So if life everywhere else is not going amazing, I think it's even harder for me to kind of go like, look at me, pick me, I'm here. You know? So to me, it's, and it's people laugh at that. So like you've, you've been on stages in front of thousands of people you've lead. you know, billion dollar projects and teams and of hundreds and hundreds and then you're slayed by that. I'm like, yeah. And it's, it's also the last time I've applied for a job was 2001. I literally applied once for a job and everything else was internal or through. So I've never had to do this, right? It's not practiced. It's not. Yeah. just, yeah, I get physical reactions to that. totally get it. I think it's, you know, It's hard to talk about yourself sometimes, right? there's this, you do a lot, right? Like you just kind of talked about it there and all the different hats you wear of, you you've got a husband, you've got three kids, you've got this global business, you're building strategy for these companies, you're leading your own company. That's a lot of energy to output, right? How do you as a, as a business leader and you know, wearing all these hats, how do you protect your energy and your focus across so many different responsibilities? So to me, my work is actually tremendously energizing. I've always worked a lot in loads also through having babies and stuff. just, if I do work that makes a difference to me, that is energizing. So people say, ⁓ you're working quite negative situations. it? No. Well, if I do my job well. And then ultimately it's a healing process, right? So yeah, I work, I did learn though, because that I do need to spend physically time with people, right? I'm very good with this virtual working and stuff, but if I have no peers that I actually see and know people to hang out with, that I find a huge struggle. I'm quite conscious of the energy. Because as I said, if I'm trying to manage my own business, but it's coming out of the same energy that needs everything else, that's a conflict. I live in New Orleans. So the social life in New Orleans to me is also a good replenishment on that. Cause that's a lot of me time. And then I need where I really need to conscious effort is that my days don't get hijacked. Is that if it's like even five minutes, mom, this, I get it. If you could, you know, there's many of these questions don't actually need me, right? If you're calling me and say, what time dad comes home? And my question is, did you call him? And the answer is no. I'm like, ⁓ because that's such a disruptor, right? I love them, but that is not. So I put some effort into trying to get that to a better place, which is if I have a lot of client work and I'm not necessarily a lot home, but if there's days or weeks where I have a lot of my own content work to do or stuff. That's typically the struggle where I don't mind if it's an energy drain because my kids really need me, right? I can live with that. That's life. It's a balancing act. But there are some of these unneeded ones where I'm like, no, that took me out of a really good space for no reason. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So kind of wrapping this up, let's say someone listening really feels like their own version. They're in their own version of the business emergency room. What would you say to them right now and what's the place? to start. If you think things are not going well, but you also don't know where to start, it starts with a conversation, right? Go and talk to somebody. Go and talk to me. Go and talk to somebody else, right? Because actually talking to somebody else through everything that's going on with somebody who's actually geared to just listen and hear you speak. Right. Should unravel a few kind of like, okay, what's the biggest thing that would help today or right now? Right. And I always ask a lot of questions about the why now, because if you're really in the business emergency room space, you're not just a little bit over, but it's like, okay, what is really the thing that needs to happen today or this week? Because otherwise there is no business or otherwise there. Let's then. Tackle that first and then be at a space where there's a little bit of calm where you can carve out one or two hours and say, okay, now what else am I going to change to actually get off this hamster wheel long enough to fix it? Right? So, so figure out what you need to do so that you can create a moment to actually sit and think. sometimes talking to somebody through is the easiest way rather than try to do it in your own head. I think there's so much importance to like what you were talking about there, that idea of momentum, right? Like get a couple things off your plate, right? Just so you can start creating that space to start doing some of these other things, you know, and actually start getting, moving yourself forward. But I, you know, there's that moment you've got to clean up a couple of the worst offenders, you know, in those conversations, you know, to make it. I love that, you know, just the part you mentioned about that and just, you know, get, start just getting going and get a little bit of momentum for yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that decision could also be to stop something, right? Something that's been on your to-do list for 20 weeks and never gets done. Maybe just decide to not do it. That's the mental load, right? And even that can help. I'm now formally deciding I'm not doing this. It's not coming back on my to-do list. Yeah. And sometimes that can remove so much guilt that a leader might carry because they haven't done and they're like kicking themselves because it hasn't been done. It's been on their list for, you know, a long time. And so to finally be able to just let that go, it's almost like freeing, right? To be able to say, okay, now that I've let that go, it's like they have more clarity because they're not sitting there kicking themselves for not doing it. So, well, Marcia, this has been a fantastic conversation. How can people get in touch with you and learn more about what you do? Or if they're in that, you know, that space of like, holy crap, my business needs triage, needs help. How can they get in contact with you? Yes, Marche and Chaos is a sure way to find me on LinkedIn. The first Marche you'll find. My podcast is called The Business Emergency Room. It's available wherever you consume your podcast. My business is called thechaosgamesconsulting.com. But if you look for Marche and Chaos, that's what comes up. And if you are stuck, I'm always happy to talk. They always say, no, you're a consultant, don't give your time away for free. But if somebody is... the semi drowning and willing to spend time talking to me because they think it helps. I will always do that because that's useful and valuable. That's fantastic. So thank you very much for all that. Marcia, like I said, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your insight. And I just love the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed it very much too. Thank you for having me. Awesome.