Emotion Group's Executive Series Surfaces a Cross-Industry Consensus on the Human Root of Business Failure

Monterrey, Mexico - June 18, 2026 / Emotion Group /

MONTERREY, Mexico — June 16, 2026 —

"Human factors predict business failure before the numbers do," said Adriana Jacobo Álvarez, Founder and CEO of Emotion Group. "These executives did not come to confirm what we believe. They came to share what they have lived."

Executives Across Four Unrelated Industries Converge on the Same Finding: Human Factors Predict Business Failure Before the Numbers Do

Emotion Group's "Personas que Sostienen y Lideran Empresas" series surfaces a cross-industry consensus — validated by leaders in industrial automation, financial services, marketing, and insurance — that organizational performance breaks down through people before it ever shows up in a dashboard.

Four Industries. One Diagnosis.

When executives from industrial automation, financial services, marketing, and insurance sit down independently to discuss organizational leadership, they are not expected to agree on much. Their industries operate on different cycles, their customers are different, and their risk profiles bear no resemblance to one another. Yet in Emotion Group's ongoing executive conversation series "Personas que Sostienen y Lideran Empresas," four senior leaders — without coordination — arrived at the same diagnosis: in every organization where performance eventually collapsed, the warning signs were human before they were financial.

That convergence, rare in any structured business forum and rarer still when unplanned, is the central finding of the series' latest cohort — and it is the finding that Emotion Group, a Mexico-based organizational development firm operating across Mexico, the United States, and Latin America, has built its entire methodology around.

[H2] Industrial Automation: The Manager Who Didn't Fire His Best Person

José Luis Gil Guzmán, Managing Director for Hispanoamérica at Carlo Gavazzi Automation — responsible for commercial operations from Chile to Tijuana across more than two dozen countries, with 44 years in the industrial control and automation sector — described the moment he chose not to fire a high-performing team member whose results had fallen sharply.

"I approached him and asked: what is happening? This is not your normal performance profile. He told me what he was going through. So I said: take the time you need — one week, two weeks — and I will cover your accounts. He came back and became one of our strongest contributors." — José Luis Gil Guzmán, Managing Director Hispanoamérica, Carlo Gavazzi Automation

Gil Guzmán's account cuts against the dominant management reflex: when numbers fall, remove the element. His alternative — treating the performance gap as a signal worth investigating rather than a verdict to execute — is what he describes as the operating principle behind his team's consistency across 25 years in senior leadership.

Financial Services: When the Hardest Leadership Challenge Is Internal

Jesús Gustavo Garza García, PhD, CEO and Co-founder of Soluciones Financieras GAMMA, CEO of MIRI CAPITAL LLC — with real estate operations in Texas and Spain — and Non-Resident Scholar at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, identified his hardest leadership challenge not in market conditions, regulation, or capital. It came from himself.

"I came from the public sector where everything had to be ready today and perfect. When I built my own team, I realized I did not have the same resources. I had to become more patient, more human. I sacrificed a large part of my personal life for work — and that is not healthy. Results are better when you respect people's space." — Jesús Gustavo Garza García, PhD, CEO Soluciones Financieras GAMMA; Non-Resident Scholar, Rice University Baker Institute

Marketing & HR: When You Measure the Wrong Things, You Destroy the Right Things

Juan Carlos Adame Leyva, CMO and growth strategy executive with more than 20 years serving B2B and B2C companies across Mexico, Latin America, and the U.S. Hispanic market, and creator of "El Blog del Desempleo" — a professional community exceeding 325,000 members on LinkedIn — named the structural failure he observes most frequently: HR departments that do not understand the business they serve.

"Some organizations measure 100 flyers put up on a wall and call that a KPI. HR has to understand the business — its purpose, its real drivers. When you measure the wrong things, you make wrong decisions everywhere. And when leaders do not have the courage to flag problems, those problems compound silently." — Juan Carlos Adame Leyva, CMO & Growth Strategy Executive; Creator, El Blog del Desempleo

Insurance: Presence Is Not a Soft Skill. It Is a Leadership Requirement.

Noah Couttolenc, Director at Quálitas — a major vehicle insurance carrier in Mexico — and a business executive with more than 25 years in the financial and insurance sectors, traced the leadership gap to something deceptively simple: physical and emotional presence.

"Being there — truly being present for your people so they know they can count on you — is one of the five things that actually matter in leadership. The new generations want immediacy. Part of our job is to help them understand that the learning comes from staying through the difficult moments, not leaving when things get hard." — Noah Couttolenc, Director, Quálitas Santa Fe

What the Data Looks Like Before the Data Breaks

Each executive was asked the same question: when results fail to materialize, what are you actually observing inside the team before the numbers reflect it? Their answers, drawn from industries that share no structural similarities, were structurally identical.

Gil Guzmán watches for performance anomalies in individuals whose baseline he knows well, and treats a sudden dip as a signal requiring a conversation, not a verdict. Garza García listens for the first appearance of blame and external attribution: when people stop owning outcomes, accountability has already collapsed. Adame Leyva looks for the gap between what an organization promises its people and what it actually delivers — the incoherence that, once visible to employees, destroys the psychological contract. Couttolenc monitors whether people feel safe enough to admit difficulty — the erosion of that safety, he argues, precedes every team performance collapse he has observed.

The pattern is consistent: in each account, the human failure preceded the financial one by weeks or months. The dashboard caught something the organization had already done to itself.

The Methodology Behind the Series

"Personas que Sostienen y Lideran Empresas" — People Who Sustain and Lead Organizations — is a structured conversation series conceived and hosted by Adriana Jacobo Álvarez, MBA (IPADE Business School), Founder and CEO of Emotion Group. Each episode convenes a senior executive from outside the organizational development industry and asks them to reconstruct, from direct experience, how human factors have shaped business outcomes in their organizations.

"These executives did not come to confirm what we believe. They came to share what they have lived. The fact that their accounts converge — across automation, finance, marketing, and insurance — is the finding. It means the human leadership gap is not an HR problem or a culture program. It is a business risk that appears in every sector, at every level, before the numbers do." — Adriana Jacobo Álvarez, MBA, Founder & CEO, Emotion Group

About Emotion Group

Emotion Group is a Mexico-based organizational development firm specializing in conscious leadership, high-impact communication, and employee commitment and empowerment. The firm operates across Mexico, the United States, and Latin America, serving corporations of 50 to 2,000 employees in manufacturing, automotive, logistics, retail, hospitality, healthcare, and financial services.

Every intervention is custom-designed and measured against business KPIs — turnover, productivity, organizational climate, and employee commitment — at 90 days post-engagement. Certified methodologies include DISC Discovery, Tetramap, and Lego Serious Play. Clients include Banorte, FEMSA, PepsiCo, Carrier, Telefónica, Christus Muguerza, and Tecnológico de Monterrey.

In 2023, indicators at Crisa Libbey México were described by plant leadership as critical. Following a full organizational intervention by Emotion Group, the plant reversed those results within twelve months. Plant Director Fernando Cerda confirmed: within one year, plant leadership re-engaged, team cohesion recovered, and performance exceeded targets.