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Unlocking the Potential in People – a conversation with author and HR professional Ernesto Gómez
9 Plays3 days ago
Regrowth: How Organizations Can Overcome Stalling by Unlocking Their People’s Potential
When experienced HR professionals like Ernesto Gómez and Michael Millward start a conversation about work, they quickly get into one of the most insightful explorations of modern HR thinking you’ll hear this year.
Host Michael Millward speaks with Ernesto Gómez, author of Regrowth: How Organizations Can Overcome Stalling by Unlocking Their People’s Potential, about why people, not products, processes, or technology, are the true engine of organizational renewal.
⭐ What’s Inside This Episode
Ernesto’s unconventional path from serial entrepreneur to leading operations worth $1.3 billion, and eventually to becoming the HR leader of a 45,000‑person global company.
The shock of moving into HR—and why he discovered it’s one of the most intellectually demanding functions in business.
Why organizations stall, and how stagnation is rarely caused by people themselves but by self‑inflicted structural and cultural barriers.
The three pillars of regrowth:
- Talent density — ensuring mission‑critical roles are filled with truly exceptional people.
- Culture — the scaffolding that allows talent to shine rather than suffocate.
- Mindset — the collective beliefs that determine whether people feel able to innovate, pivot, and grow.
A powerful discussion on why most employees operate at only 50–60% of their potential, and how leaders can remove the obstacles that hold them back.
The importance of hiring for values first, then attitude, then skills—because skills can be taught, but values cannot.
🎧 Why This Episode Matters
If you work in HR, lead teams, or simply care about how organizations evolve, this conversation will make you rethink how growth really happens. Ernesto argues that companies don’t stagnate because markets change—they stagnate because their people aren’t given the conditions to adapt, experiment, and flourish.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. The all-in-one podcasting platform that makes every stage of the podcast production process so easy. Visit Zencastr using the link in the description. It has a built-in discount.
00:00:20
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida.
Guest Introduction: Ernesto Gomez
00:00:40
Speaker
Today, Ernesto Gomez is going to explain to me how organizations can break free from stagnation by focusing on their most valuable asset, of their people.
00:00:51
Speaker
Ernesto is based in Mexico. Unsurprisingly, I haven't visited Mexico yet. If I'm ever lucky enough to go to Mexico, i will be sure to make my travel arrangements at the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I get trade prices on trains, flights, hotels and holidays as well as all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:01:13
Speaker
You can do the same by using the link in the description which has a built-in discount. Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:29
Speaker
Very importantly, on The Independent Minds, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Hello Ernesto. Hello Michael, how are you doing today?
00:01:41
Speaker
I'm doing very well, thank you very much. I hope you can say the same. Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised that you haven't visited Mexico yet. I have friends who have visited Mexico and it's it's it is on the list, but I just haven't got there yet. It would be a wonderful experience for you or anybody in your audience. So um I would strongly recommend it. I will have a look at the Ultimate Travel Club and see what deals they have on holidays in Mexico and and look forward to it.
Ernesto's Career Journey
00:02:07
Speaker
You sound as if you're enjoying the so the beaches and life in Mexico, but I'm sure you had quite an eventful and interesting career as well before you wrote the book Regrowth. So please tell me a little bit about your career as an ah HR professional? started off as an entrepreneur, actually, many, many years ago, trying to challenge myself into ideas. When I was young, I was full of ideas. And I started about 12 to 15 companies in Mexico and also in the US. And at some point in time,
00:02:41
Speaker
Due to my knowledge in in the food business, I was asked to consult a very large CPG company here in Mexico, which is the leader.
00:02:52
Speaker
And also it's a very important company throughout the world. It was a six-month stint to turn around a business for them. That turned out to be a 23-year journey.
00:03:04
Speaker
they They asked me to stay. ah we We were able to turn around the business. For ah many, many years, I was getting large operations. The largest was one that whose revenues were $1.3 billion. dollars wow
Complexities of HR Work
00:03:19
Speaker
This company has, just for you to have an idea, ah more than 45,000 employees in 18 countries.
00:03:26
Speaker
For some reason that I'm still trying to figure out, the CEO of the company said, you know what, Ernesto, you always complain about the HR function because you say they're slow and they don't really, you know, deliver.
00:03:39
Speaker
So why don't you take over that HR position and see if you can do better? It was challenging me. I was at a stage in my life where I thought it would be interesting because I've always liked to innovate. And I say, you know what, this may be a wonderful space to do to do that.
00:03:55
Speaker
Lo and behold, for the last 10 years, I've been working in HR and I found my calling. I've studied and learned everything I've been able to and get acquainted with lots of people all over the world in the function.
00:04:10
Speaker
And it has been really a joy. And now that I retired, I'm still working on the HR space as a consultant now, but trying to help people and organizations to be their best.
00:04:26
Speaker
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when you had that conversation with your chief executive, thinking about what you must have been thinking to yourself as he gave you the challenge of HR. As someone who spent his whole career in in ah human resources, what was the most surprising thing that you've discovered about working in ah HR? You know, HR is a fascinating field because you have to work at the same time at three levels, you know, short, medium and long term.
00:04:56
Speaker
In business, especially when you are a public company, you work quarter by quarter and maybe looking a little bit into the future. But HR demands for a person to resolve all the important issues ah in the moment, but also to have the foresight to understand how the company will evolve and what kind of soft wiring and talent you're going to need for the company to face the the upcoming challenges. So you have to really think in the long, medium and short term And switch from them.
00:05:36
Speaker
And also, of course, the as much as there are proven practices that can really deliver results, when you are dealing with people, there are no black and whites.
00:05:49
Speaker
Ain't
Value of People in Organizations
00:05:50
Speaker
that true? It's amazing. There is ah an author called James March. He was a professor at Stanford and he used to say about the HR space that God gave all the easy problems to the financiers and gave the hard problems to the HR people.
00:06:08
Speaker
Because, you know, when you're dealing with math or we're predictable things, it's a lot easier to make decisions. But when you're dealing with people, and especially in an environment of change, it is really, really challenging too to find what's, you know, the best solution.
00:06:26
Speaker
And it's always a give and take. But I find it fascinating. And I plan to devote the next 10 years of my life in continuing growing in this field. It is fascinating and it is something that no two days are ever the same. That's for true. You never know what is going to happen when somebody arrives in an ah HR ah department and says, I'd like to speak to someone. and And the solution that you created yesterday for someone else is just not going to work for the person who's sitting in front of you now.
00:06:55
Speaker
You know, the important thing is to understand that whoever approaches you has's a point. Yes. It may not be the point that you want to hear, or maybe it doesn't really fit into the grand scheme of things.
00:07:07
Speaker
But everybody has a point, ah and and more than likely it's a good point. So you have to really be open to understand where this other person comes from and then make sense of what's behind the complaint and try to work from there.
00:07:21
Speaker
And at the same time, it is important to avoid drama because oftentimes complaints are the result of a some friction that may or may not be relevant to the to the business.
00:07:35
Speaker
Take away the drama, understand it the issue behind the complaint, And then try to make sense of what the solution would be. Yes. There is there are no two identical days in the ah HR. Not at all. And of course, as you say in the title of the book, that the people inside an organization are the most valuable asset. They are the only asset that can appreciate in value by developing solutions. new skills and the other part of the title which is really interesting to me is that this idea that people are the way out of stagnation yeah in the book you talk about organizations growing and then reaching a plateau and almost moving on to stagnation you say i used to say there is no staying standing still in terms of an organization you're either moving forward
00:08:24
Speaker
Or because other organizations are going to be moving forward faster than us, we're actually going backwards. So there's no standing still. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the stagnation is when the innovation stops, when people stop being interested in in improving things.
00:08:40
Speaker
That allows another organization to bypass you, to overtake you. That's completely right. You know, we are used to think of organizations in terms of products or services. So you think about, you know, a bank or you think about a store and immediately you think about, you know, what they, you know, the value they offer. And maybe you're able to go beyond the product or service and understand, ah you know, the capabilities of the organization. You can think in terms of capabilities.
00:09:08
Speaker
It is harder to think of organizations in terms of capabilities. people because it isn't intangible. It's difficult to see. But think about it. When you get into the office early in the morning and nobody's there, you turn on the lights and you all you see is desks, computers, and the organization is not that.
00:09:27
Speaker
As soon as people arrive into their desks and start working, all of a sudden the organization comes alive.
Innovation and Regrowth
00:09:34
Speaker
That's the organization, really. Everything else is just means to an end. Yes. ah But it's difficult to understand that part and to to deal with it because it's an intangible and it's hard to grasp.
00:09:46
Speaker
And what you're saying about stagnation, I really believe that the main enemy of organization is stiffness, which leads to a stagnation. All these practices or everything that you do today may not be what is required in the future.
00:10:03
Speaker
And we can see many companies that have been successful up to a point where conditions change and what used to work doesn't work anymore.
00:10:13
Speaker
And what is behind that shift? It's people. People is what makes the shift possible. So when you stagnate, you're right, it's because you are failing to renew.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yes. And the organization is made out of people. So in the end, the renewal, it's relevant to people. and you have to work on on on the renewal of the company all the time.
00:10:37
Speaker
Addressing the problems and barriers that stop you from evolving or from innovating with the mentality of renewal, because up to a point, you're going to hit a bump. yes I called my book, Regrowth, because of that. that The reason i I chose that title, Regrowth, is because in business and also people, there is no 45 degree ascending line that goes forever and ever and ever.
00:11:03
Speaker
We normally grow and all of a sudden, We hit a plateau, maybe even regress a little bit, stay there for a while. And I chose the the title Regrowth for my book because what I try to propose is what do you do to recalibre and to, you know, from where you're standing, lift into the new chapter for your growth? Yes. It's relevant to yeah talent density, culture and and mindset. Yes. And when i was looking at the book and the title, um, regrowth, one of the things that it made me think of was that the only time that in a traditional organization, and I emphasize a traditional organization, the only time that that type of organization really shows an interest in the potential of the employee making a sweeping statement here, I know, but is at the recruitment interview stage.
00:12:02
Speaker
And when somebody has been appointed into an organisation, the level of interest from the organisation in the development and growth of that individual employee and the team of employees that that person is part of seems to diminish.
00:12:18
Speaker
We have an annual performance review, but questions like, okay, so where are you now? How have you changed from where you were 12 months ago or six months ago, when the last time that we had this structured conversation?
00:12:30
Speaker
How have you grown as a result of what has happened in the organization, what's happened in life? How has that enabled you to do more within the organization? What are the opportunities that you're now thinking about that you weren't thinking about six months ago, 12 months ago, because you've developed? And it is this development of the people which drives the development of the organization, not the other way around.
00:12:58
Speaker
That is a ah brilliant, brilliant insight, Michael. Thank you for sharing that. I'm going to just make a question for you. If you think about yourself, just just yourself, you think about the way you're performing today compared to the potential that you think you have.
00:13:16
Speaker
More than likely, We think about ourselves as not finished products. We think about ourselves saying, well, I'm performing today at at this level, but i know i have more in me and I have not reached my 100% potential yet.
00:13:33
Speaker
I've asked this question to many CEOs. If you were to compare actual performance of your people with the potential do you think they have, Where do you think they stand?
00:13:44
Speaker
The answer that I get the most is 50%. They could be doing a lot more. they I know them very well. I know they're capable of delivering more, but they are just maybe 50% or 60% of what they can do. yeah And the next question is why?
00:14:01
Speaker
Why do you think that happens? Oftentimes what I hear is, bureaucracy, hurdles to get approvals, people are working in silos and things like
Core Concepts of 'Regrowth'
00:14:10
Speaker
that. That's terrible because, you know, wasting human potential is a terrible thing to waste. It is. You cannot have afford to do that. Exactly. It's a terrible thing to waste.
00:14:19
Speaker
Talk about when people in the organization are performing at best 50% of their potential. And then you think, okay, why?
00:14:30
Speaker
you could spend all day listing off the reasons why people within organizations are not fulfilling their potential. An awful lot of those things, as the examples that you've just given us, will be nothing to do with the people themselves.
00:14:45
Speaker
It's administrative, it's organizational structure, it's things that have nothing to do with the people themselves. And given the opportunity, I think most people will want to say, well, yeah, I really do want to do a great job. Not a good job, a great job, because doing a great job means that all sorts of other opportunities will come for me as well. But there's all sorts of different issues.
00:15:11
Speaker
Which I think the issues around people development are encapsulated in in the the core concepts that you're putting into the book. Can you tell us a little bit about the three core concepts of the book?
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, of course. As you were saying, i realized that when an an organization does not reach its potential, it's mainly because it is a self-inflicted wound.
00:15:36
Speaker
It doesn't have to do with people, as you were saying. There is a system in place that you have to work with that it's composed by three dimensions. The first one is talent density.
00:15:49
Speaker
The second one is culture. And the third one is mindset, or the individual and collective mindset of the organization. In organizations, we are, as you were saying, we are in the people business. But actually, what we are is we are in the mindset business, you know, because what people believe they can achieve is what they end up achieving.
00:16:11
Speaker
And if they don't achieve because they didn't think it was possible, it It was ah just a ah barrier or a mental model in their minds that prevented that from happening. In my book, I explore the determinants of those three elements. And it's a system because talent is extremely important in an organization.
00:16:31
Speaker
you cannot You have a great culture, but you have suboptimal talent. It's going to be very difficult to understand. to compete. So there is a threshold of talent that you have to have to to really compete in the market. But that talent has to be allowed. Permission, I suppose. There has to be scaffolding exactly in the organization for that talent to shine. And that that's what culture does, you know, enables that talent them to do their best. And mainly the mindset part, I get into that is because at some point in time, you have to be aware of when it's necessary to pivot, when it's necessary to shift your beliefs so that you experiment with curiosity, try new things and innovate.
00:17:21
Speaker
it It all starts with talent. And i I call this talent density because in organizations, we have many, many positions that we have to you know fill. ah Some of them, in and in everyone, i would suggest that you can you know have the best talent available ah to big to start with.
00:17:42
Speaker
But there are positions that are mission critical because your competitive advantages are reliant on those positions to really work well.
00:17:54
Speaker
In those positions, your talent density has to be high. And what I mean is that you have to have, you know compared to the average in the market,
00:18:06
Speaker
They're really the best people you can can afford. Steve Jobs said that there are positions where maybe you can have same talent as your competitor or maybe 1.3 times better or two times better.
00:18:20
Speaker
And that's that's good and desirable. But if you have the right talent, you can really have 50 times better ah performance than your organization just because you have the the right person in in the position.
00:18:35
Speaker
So it's really that important. it It begs the question how you filter for that and how you recruit for that but and and ah how you nurture it because otherwise it it doesn't really last.
00:18:47
Speaker
I agree with you that talent is what drives an organization further, faster. You can achieve all of the all of the objectives that you have if you've recruited talent that is capable of achieving those objectives.
00:19:03
Speaker
If you've settled for second best, or you've recruited a friend or family members, or just got fed up one day and said, oh, we'll give the job to them, or people who share a hobby of of yours, there's all sorts of different mistakes that people make within the recruitment process.
00:19:20
Speaker
But part of me thinks that there is a disconnect sometimes between some of the HR policies and some of the strategic policies and strategies that go into play of making the organization work.
00:19:34
Speaker
I see lots of organizations that will think of job titles rather than thinking about the skills that will be required, the knowledge that will be required, the experience that will be required. in order to fu fulfill or complete, successfully complete that objective.
00:19:50
Speaker
It's like, we need this job title. No, we need someone with this skills, knowledge, experience to fulfill that objective. And also because some of the KPIs that measure performance in in HR, the the time to fill for a position, for instance. Yes.
00:20:06
Speaker
Sometimes there are positions that are critical and you're supposed to meet a certain time to fill a KPI. you You start to get it nervous about not, you know, missing your your KPI. And all of a sudden you're pressured to just hire just because you have to hit your metrics. Right.
Strategic Talent Planning
00:20:25
Speaker
That's true. But on that sort of point, you know we started off where you were talking about the today, the middle and the long term of ah HR responsibilities. And, and you know, having worked in in lots of different organizations, ones where, know, labor was volatile, you know, working in some parts of Asia where people said was, well, you can leave one a job at 10 o'clock and have another job at two o'clock because we've got full employment. Part of my job as the ah HR person,
00:20:51
Speaker
director was to have a system in place that sort of said okay for everybody in this organization we have an idea of where their replacement would likely to come from if they say well actually we're leaving are you sure you want to leave well yes i'm definitely leaving fine okay we know enough people for example if an organization loses a contract or is they bid for a contract and another organization wins it Who are the salespeople that put together the bid that won, that we lost? Find out who they are. Those are the talented people that you should be targeting next for recruitment. If you have the key people in important jobs and one of them was to leave, you need to know where those replacement people are um to take over. a bit like with the with a soccer team, any sports team, you know The manager of the the sports team may be watching his own team, but he's got other people going out and watching the competition and trying to identify other players that could be brought in to supplement and strengthen his team.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's why talent planning is so critical. Yes. Because you have to have your pipeline you know as much ready as much as you can and also allow for you know surprises because that that that that always happens. And if the company all of a sudden requires you know somebody leaves and then you start trying to move your pieces, more than likely you have to have some kind of redundancy to be able to respond to that. And it's difficult because companies now have this motto about being so lean that that there is no free space or or slack.
00:22:32
Speaker
I think that ah that this also, it may sound like you're optimizing the system, but But it it will bite you if you don't have a little bit of slack in terms of the resources you have available. Talent planning is really a combination of art and science, in my opinion.
00:22:50
Speaker
I agree with you. I also think that one of the issues that lots of organizations face is that they think about, well, what people do I need to do this job today? Many have forgotten that part of that talent planning is having people in the organization who can't do everything. but are in development roles.
00:23:10
Speaker
So know if you want to recruit someone from another organization, every time you have a vacancy, you will be bringing people in with different ideas, different ways of doing things.
00:23:21
Speaker
You can enhance the quality of the delivery of the work that you do to by having a proper talent development program, which takes people with no skills and shows them how to do it your way, and do your way to a very high standard without the influence of having history from other organizations in the way they do it. Building on what you say, i suggest in the book also that you have to hire for values, attitude, and skills. Yes. And values are first. Then, of course, the attitude and skill, you can really work with people in developing that. If they have the values and they have the attitude, it's easier build help them build the skills. Having the skills but not values or attitude doesn't really help you a lot. It's true. There is a story about London taxi drivers, which explains that, and a similar story about the Spice Girls, which explains that as well. Which one would you like?
Ambition in Hiring
00:24:18
Speaker
Well, I don't know. Maybe the Spice Girls. Okay, I will tell you the story about the Spice Girls because I worked in an office and which had a car park in Maidenhead. And um at the end of the car park, we found out years later, was the house where the Spice Girls lived before they were famous, when they all lived together. When the Spice Girls were formed, it was two people put an advert in a music industry magazine and saying, we're looking for girls who want to be pop stars.
00:24:45
Speaker
And they interviewed lots of people who wanted to be pop stars. Now the key thing about the Spice Girls was that they're not the Mariah Careys or Whitney Houstons of this world, but they can all sing, they can all dance, they can all be good in front of cameras and talk to the media and all sorts of things. They can do all of that, but as the Spice Girls, they are perfect.
00:25:07
Speaker
And one of the things that the people who recruited the Spice Girls were looking for was a desire to be a pop star. And once they had that ambition, the values that went with it, the understanding of what would be involved in order to order to achieve that ambition, they knew that they could give those people the training, the skills in order to fulfill that ambition, that goal. And so if you can't find people who really want to do it, you won't have the hits around the world. You'll just have people just doing it. But if you get people who say, I really want to do this, then you'll have people who will want to be successful. One of the most successful appointments I ever made was a young chap called Carl. And Carl came straight from school. onto a training program in my department. So, and we said to him, why do you want to work here?
00:25:58
Speaker
And he said, I have absolutely no idea what it is that you do here. I said, oh, that's an interesting response. He says, but I've ridden on the school bus every day since I was 11 past this building and the car park. And I've looked over the hedge and I've seen all the BMWs and Mercedes in the car park. And I thought to have that many BMWs and Mercedes in a car park, you must be doing something good.
00:26:24
Speaker
I want to be part of something good. So I want to work here, please. And I thought, I cannot not give you a job. So he gave him a job and he got promoted and promoted and promoted. And eventually he ended up driving an Audi. Wow.
00:26:39
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah. And now he heads up a department of a very big organization and he's doing extremely well. And I am extremely proud that I gave him his first job.
00:26:50
Speaker
That's a great story. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. He's a great guy. There are three pivotal dimensions which form the core concepts of
Connecting Talent, Culture, and Mindset
00:27:00
Speaker
the book. the Talent, density, culture and mindset. You explained that within any organization, all three will be present in different levels operating for both the individual and individual. the organization and bringing them together is bit like a chain model, I suppose. Everything links together. If it all works, you end up with an organization that is capable of jumping out of the stagnation processes and regrowing and building onto the next level. We haven't got time to discuss
Closing Remarks & Book Promotion
00:27:29
Speaker
the other two. People will have to investigate the book and your website, Anesta. So what is the address for your website? Yeah, my ways website is AspenMindset1.com, AspenMindset1.com.
00:27:45
Speaker
And you can also search me on LinkedIn. I'm Ernesto Gomez Arzapalo, A-R-Z-A-P-A-L-O. We Latin people have two last names and the book is Regrowth. Cool. We'll put links in the description to all of those. Thank you very much for your time today. I've really enjoyed it. And we've made, I think, a very interesting episode of The Independent Minds. Thank you very much.
00:28:09
Speaker
Thank you, Michael. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida, and in this episode of The Independent Minds, I have been having a conversation with Ernesto Gomez, the author of Regrowth, How Organizations Can Overcome Stalling by Unlocking Their People's Potential. You'll find more information about both of us at abusida.co.uk. There is a link in the description.
00:28:33
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Ernesto and I have enjoyed making it. Please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:28:48
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.