Triage Your Business Turmoil with Expert Guidance | 002

Maartje van Krieken: Hey, welcome back. I'm glad you're tuning in. This is episode two of my brand new podcast series, the business emergency room. Today we're gonna still talk about some of the basics behind the podcast and my business. Today we're gonna talk about how I work with people, what the framework is within which I operate, and within which this podcast should also be a useful tool and a resource for listeners like you. So I told you a little bit about my background in episode one. I worked all around the world in complex and collaborations in very diverse teams and organizations, often consisting of commercial and governmental parties, working within complex legal frameworks, perpetually under resourced, usually with a very intense project, timelines, silly, crazy budgets, and usually lots of first in terms of technology or being the biggest, the greatest, the first or whatever, first of its kind in whatever way. So yeah, most of my career I've operated in pretty chaotic and high pressure work environments. It's also where I feel most in my place. So not a bad thing for me. Not everybody's most attractive situation. I also really don't mind operating in ambiguity, and so that helps. My love is all around helping others with the fact that I love actually, I feel fine in these situations, and I do well in these situations, and I know that that is not very natural for most. And so being able to help others with, with within that situation, to me is very satisfying and very, yeah, gratifying, too.

So working with me means, usually, that you give me a call, or you reach out to me in some other way, shape or form, and say, Hey, I think I've reached a point where it's like, now what or what now, and we have a conversation. If you tell me that the pressure is really on and you're not doing well, then based on what you're telling me and how you're engaging with me, I sometimes have these conversations even within the same day. If there is a bit more breathing space, we can also, of course, have it a little later, but I try to react as quick as possible. And then, typically, if we, if we decide that, yes, I can step in and help you out, we set up a really short term contractual arrangement if you are a solopreneur or a small business owner or running a startup. And hence, what you have on your hands might still be quite complex, but doesn't involve a very large team or large organization or large group of people, then that short term contract might be a matter of a couple of days. I've sometimes helped out with situations in a couple of hours, but that's that's kind of rare. If you have a much larger organization, then we could be talking about two weeks, three weeks, particularly if there's a larger organization involved, I would like to come out and see you right, see you and your team, and meet everybody. So we would set up a short term contractual arrangement, and I would come out and engage with you and other parties involved. And we would start talking about everything that's going on, and I would help you filter out what the priorities are, how we can get to a space quickest, that we can actually have some kind of strategy session or get together moment to actually make a largely, yeah, slightly longer term plan. So how, how do we get to calm enough that we can get to strategizing, and I help gather the information and the diagnostics that feed in a in into a meeting like that, in the to a decision making session like that. And I will help figure out some quick fixes to make things calmer. And I can also do a bit of, yeah, light touch interim management to run some run some interference on some of the communication, or something else that's needed, depending on what was the cause of the situation, right? So this is usually quite hands on, being present together, type of arrangement.

And then towards the end of the time that I have with you, we would have this session where we sit down and we formulate. Create a pragmatic and realistic plan of what Now next, and that next is a phase two, and phase two could be is still a, to me, usually a relatively short term you're gonna, you're gonna extend the the timeline associated with that. But I'm not talking about then a strategy or plan for the next 18 months. I'm talking about, okay, what are we now going to do the next month or the next quarter or the next six to eight weeks to try and start back on the road to recovery? Sometimes that's enough, right? So sometimes, when we get to that point, I bow out and things are good to go and and, yeah, you you have the resources, or you know where to find the resources to that are well placed to help you execute this. And so you don't necessarily need me. And so yeah, then I bow out, and then I, of course, check in with you after a bit to see how you're going, and if it's still a follow up conversation needed or whatever, of course we have that. But sometimes it ends there. What's more usual is that in that first phase, I stay involved and I help execute that first level plan. The things I then typically help with is actually start up some of these projects. So that may be that we've identified that you need to really look at your mission and vision again, because there's been so much change in your business that the way it's actually been framed is not helpful in using it as a filter, or using it as a decision making tool, to really think about what work to take on and what not. And so I might help with some workshops and other facilitation to fine tune that, or we realize that we need to assess the status of various things to really quantify some of the challenges that we have on our plate to see, hey, are you going to keep this one as a business, or does this need to go? Which of these scopes are we really going to continue pursuing?

So that's decision making, decision quality, risk management, some scope like that. I sometimes also, again, provide a certain level of interim management depending on on what, what's going on with your resources and generally, yeah, I'm the one who still has some energy in an organization that's typically tired and where the emotions are running high and where not everybody can perform at normal levels, right? So then to have an extra person in there, a bit of a jack of all trades, who can help run some interference and catch some of the stuff that rolls off the table, maybe is helpful. So what I also very often do in that first phase is work with teams and organizations to frame up the packages for external help. So if we've established that you've you've implemented some new technology or something else, and although it's nearly there, somehow that isn't working. And it not working is part of one of the big causes why you ended up where you ended up. And so we decided that maybe you need to bring the specialist big in, back in to fine tune the implementation of that technology, for instance, then I can help you put the package together how to smartly source that work and not end up spending more than you need. Or it's maybe clear that you need to hire more long term interim manager or resources, and then that's something that I can help with. I can help recruit. I can help put you in the right direction. I can help with referrals. Typically, there is also stuff that needs to happen right improvement projects or recovery scopes that need to happen for which you internally might have the resources. And those are not always the most logical resources. By that, I mean, there is maybe some work that needs to happen around your supply chain and your invoice payments, and kind of there's a whole backlog around your procurement or something else like that that needs sorting out, right? But your finance team, because of the nature of the situation, is very overstretched, etc, so maybe, but there's maybe a an eager person somewhere else in organization who loves spreadsheets, who loves organizing, and actually has the capacity, and we've decided that we could use that resource for 80% of that work, and then I can help make sure that we leave a person like that with the right kind of instructions, the right kind of empowerment, and kind of set up a resource who maybe isn't the 100% fit, but maybe you know the 80% fit to make sure that they are actually set up. Success to do that piece of work and that we get into a routine of making progress and checking that progress without overloading your you or your fellow leaders in terms of having to micromanage too many things, right?

So, yeah, it's still generally kind of the course clean up and tidy up and organizing scope in that phase, and particularly in organizations with a lot of people involved, where the collaboration and the communication needs work, I tend to stick around a little longer and those so then towards the end of that phase two. Those that month, three months, eight weeks, whatever it is we have another conversation. We we start to make a plan for phase three. And that is typically where I leave most of my clients. So I am used to having a short term involvement. There are occasionally parties who are interested in, yeah, making sure that they also work on their long term business resilience and have learned some tools and tricks in this process that they want to systemically implement in many of these cases. If that's what you want, I would refer you out to somebody in my network. I have a great network of people like me, but not like me, people who do things adjacent to what I deliver, and do that well. So if, if there's somebody else well placed to help you implement some of these tools and tricks more systemically and longer term, I would refer you to the right kind of people, if it's in the space of decision making and risk management, or a whole organizational change trajectory. I sometimes stay involved myself, if it's if it's really in my niche or specialty, and it makes sense to the nature of the challenge, right? But in that case, it's more. There is many. Yeah, I think there are so many different scenarios that I really would like to match you up with the right kind of support, and that might be my niche, but yeah, it might also be somebody else's. So that is much more incidental, I would say. And again, I would still continue to check in. I actually am in contact with, still many of the clients I work with these days, many of them are simply peers that I like to talk to and know what they're up to or to celebrate successes. But yeah, I stay in touch, and if that's welcome, then that goes on, and otherwise it naturally fizzles out, right? There is a variation to this, and that is if you are an entrepreneur with a small business, because I do believe that if you are in a developing business, that that has the potential to become a large organization, your challenges and versus emergencies can still be relatively big compared to the size of your organizations, and then hiring somebody like me can become tricky because it's an investment that's not always possible. So I would say that the original triage that I talked about, that initial very short diagnostics or triage phase, would still exist in the same way. It would just be shorter.

But after that, I offer an office hours set up, meaning that I set up a contract with you, and it's bit like with your gym. You can choose to do, like a 10 class or a 10 office hour session package, or you can have a regular periodic setup, but it would mean that you can, you know, tune into monthly into sessions. There will be setup times. You're not necessarily alone in those but they are small, small group sessions, and you can tune in with the specific challenges that you have on your on your plate, making it much more affordable to have access to something like this. And this is also where this podcast comes in. I believe that if you work in a very dynamic environment, or an environment that goes through lots of change, there's always some small fires burning everywhere. And I think the better equipped we are to deal with those as and when they come up, yeah, the slower the overall build up is, right? And because, to me, being in chaos or a true business emergency has simply been a slow build up of too many little things that are out of whack, and at some point the last thing is the thing that tips it over right, but it's if you can avoid the build up or slow down the build up, it might never get that bad, and that's where this podcast comes. In because it's also the tools that we use to triage and to recover are also the same tools that give a business and an organization resilience. And so I would love for more people to get to some of these solutions earlier, so that we don't have to get to the point where there is really emotional damage and stress damage, right? Where people truly are no longer nice to each other because they're just all overwhelmed, or where we've got burnouts and we've got stress and we've got people missing out on too many things in their personal life because they're trying to keep their business afloat. I don't think that's good for anybody. I wish I'm an innovator. I'm not, but what I did learn that is, if I do my job well, I can support those of you who are innovators, because I believe this world needs so many solutions to make it better for everyone. And so if more good innovations and businesses in the innovation space can deliver, then that's good for all of us. This is the way I can contribute to that. So yeah, that's the way to work with me.

I hope that the tools and tricks are useful indeed, both in the business emergency situations and in earlier phases. If there is specific topics that you would love to hear something about, then please let me know, and we can see if we can prioritize some of those. And thank you again for tuning in. See you next week. Bye.