Grupo Monge

Julieta Alvarez Guzman

1. What methodologies or frameworks do you use to assess the organization's current state and identify areas for improvement?

To assess your organization, you must work very closely with your operations. Help them achieve the strategy/objectives by establishing metrics and a good performance management process at every level of the organization. Once you have established that, you review the company metrics almost daily. With this follow-up, you start to identify the areas you must focus on and that need improvement. Another key factor in assessing your company is procedures. Compare the process with the procedure and question whether what is established as a process is working. Make changes based on what the end user gives you as feedback. The most valuable assessment comes from the people you work with; they are the ones who are dealing with and managing the process; they know what works and what doesn’t, where the stopper is, and, most importantly, they know how to fix it. 

By involving them, you will experience less resistance in the change management process, get better ideas, and achieve results easier and faster.

2. Can you share your experiences from a significant organizational development project you've led?

The biggest challenge of organizational development is to articulate a good change management process to achieve the effectiveness of any project. By saying this, it means coordinating what and when to communicate. Having everyone trained properly and on time, making room for user feedback, and improving or correcting is where the success is for any project or goal. 

"The biggest challenge of organizational development is to articulate a good change management process to achieve the effectiveness of any project."

As a retail company, we have to be agile regarding change. Agile is a matter of speed, flexibility, and knowledge. So, with all this in mind, having the proper set of skills in the organization and the environment (culture) to achieve what the company wants is a priority for HR and should be the purpose of the area. 

3. What are some of the challenges in your business that current services cannot provide an optimal solution?

In our company, we find success by developing in-house whatever our needs are.

4. Do you have any advice, suggestions, warnings, etc., that you would give to professionals in your similar role working in other companies in the HR space in terms of do’s or don’ts? 

In some companies, HR is seen as isolated from the rest of the company, and HR feels they are not involved in the big decisions the company is making. So, I suggest making HR a business unit involved in every task the organization has. 

Educate the organization on what HR can do to achieve the company’s metrics.

Understand your business in-depth.