Catch the Creep, Dodge the Jailbreak

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

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