“We have a major decision to make and the team is not moving forward.”
Pressure narrows a team's field of vision and quiets the voices that would challenge a decision. The standstill is the symptom.
Human Performance for CEOs and executive teams
High performance is designed.
I design the conditions that allow your executive team, and your organization, to perform when the stakes are high.
I spent 27 years in air traffic control, from the frontline through to the design and implementation of the company's Human Factors programs. An environment where the judgment of the person doing the work, the ability to anticipate risk and the quality of decisions carry real consequences. Today I work with CEOs and executive teams, in aviation and beyond.
Human Factors → Human Performance → Human Systems → Human Sustainability
ENAIREFounded and led its Human Factors department
2,200Professionals covered by the critical incident response program I designed and implemented
EUROCONTROLAccredited specialist and former co-chair of the Human Factors sub-group
European CommissionDeputy Chair of the expert group on the Human Dimension
In aviation, the consequences of a decision are visible the same day. In an organization they take months, and by then the problem has a different name.
What I usually hear
When it makes sense to call me.
“The company works. I want the next stage to be better than this one.”
What made the company successful so far may not be what it needs next. Knowing what to preserve matters as much as deciding what to change.
“Something serious has happened and I don't know how to handle the impact on people.”
What the organization does in the first hours shapes trust, recovery and what comes next.
“We are introducing AI into processes that matter and I don't know how it will change people's work.”
Technology or a new operating model may look clear on paper. Their real impact shows in how people decide, coordinate and adapt.
“We are losing good people and the exit interviews don't explain why.”
The explanation is seldom found in an exit interview. The working system usually tells a more useful story.
“I have been here four years and I don't know what will remain when I leave.”
Leadership is also the quality of the system that continues when you are no longer in the room.
My approach
See. Shape. Sustain.
I work with CEOs and executive teams when an issue that matters to the business calls for more than a one-off answer, or when growth has outpaced the way the organization used to work.
I start by understanding how decisions are made and what information actually reaches the people making them. Then I work on the conditions behind them, from coordination to the voice of the people doing the work. And I check that the change holds: that the organization sustains its results when demands rise, without asking people to give more. That is what I call sustainable performance.
See
Understand the system.
Explore how the organization actually works, beyond its formal structures and processes.
Shape
Design the conditions.
Work with people and teams to reshape the dynamics, relationships and ways of working that need to evolve.
Sustain
Make change last.
Develop the capabilities and conditions that enable improvements to endure over time.
Our work
How we can work together.
Every engagement starts from a specific situation. Content, scope and format are then custom-designed around it.
Executive Intensive
Protected time for a CEO and their executive team, on what determines how they think, decide, communicate and coordinate through a transformation, a change of scale or a sustained period of pressure. It also covers what nobody raises, and what the team does well without noticing.
FormatFrom half a day to two days, or a two- to three-day retreat. Agreements are documented before anyone leaves the room.
Executive Advisory
I work alongside the CEO or the executive team through a period where a single session is not enough: a succession, a transformation, a crisis, or a decision whose effects unfold over months.
FormatAn agreed cadence through the year. We set the focus and the signals that will let us judge progress.
Keynote
Take off before you land.
Turning the human capability you already have into results.
We talk constantly about landing things: the strategy, the results, now the AI. Perhaps we start too late — before asking for results, you have to create the conditions for a team’s capability to take off.
Drawing on real situations from air traffic control, the room learns to look at its own organization: what capability it has and is not bringing into play, what is holding it back, and what — amplified — changes performance. Not a talk about teams that work badly, but about what gets left unused.
Other talks
Superpower skills
The capabilities that can’t be automated.
Human Performance under pressure
Deciding, communicating and coordinating when the stakes are real.
Teams that get it wrong together learn together
Just Culture and compliance.
Natural intelligence
What AI can’t do for your team.
Specialist programs
For organizations where a serious incident, fatigue or sustained stress can affect both people and operations. I design programs that prepare the organization beforehand and support it afterwards, and I train the people who will sustain them internally. Born in aviation, adaptable to any sector.
A project of several months, or a review of a program already running.
A first engagement
It starts small.
Initial conversation
Twenty minutes to understand your situation and share an initial perspective: what I see and where I would begin.
Book 20 minutes →Case Session
We work on a live situation. You leave clear on what can change now, and on what deserves closer examination before any further decision.
One-on-oneA private session with you, preceded by a brief questionnaire and a call to frame the case. Within five days, you receive an independent written assessment of the issue and the priority decisions, which we then review together.In person or by video call.
With your executive teamYour executive team, up to eight participants, each completing a confidential questionnaire beforehand. I design a scenario around your situation and observe how the team works through it.
Within five days, you receive a written account of how your team decides and coordinates in practice, which we then review together.Always held in person.
Within five days, you receive a written account of how your team decides and coordinates in practice, which we then review together.Always held in person.
You can begin one-on-one and bring in your team once it is clear what is worth addressing together. From there, each step follows what the situation calls for.
Changes I have already driven
Before advising on this, I implemented it.
I have worked inside a system where one decision, one technology or one way of organizing work reaches thousands of people.
Human Factors in the business plan
I embedded the Human Factors department in the corporate strategic plan, so that it carried weight in safety, operational and investment decisions. It stopped being a technical support function and became part of the judgment behind those decisions.
Fatigue and stress as measurable risks
I built a management system for those risks inside the corporate framework, with its own assessment processes and audits before the regulator. They stopped depending on goodwill and became something that is measured.
A prepared response for what cannot be foreseen
I designed, implemented and led for six years a critical incident stress management program for 2,200 professionals, with its own governance and training. The organization stopped improvising when something serious happened.
The effect of technology on the people who use it
I developed Human Factors standards and assessments for innovation projects. My research at the London area control center measured how automation changed the work of the people using it. The technology decision could then be made knowing its real effect, rather than its intended one.
The gap that pressure widens
Processes say how it should work. People show how it does.
Risk lives in that gap, and so do judgment, cooperation and workarounds that rarely appear on an org chart. Under pressure the gap widens, and with it everything leadership cannot see: what is being compensated for, who is carrying it, and at what cost.
Where a problem surfaces is rarely where it originates. The same people, under different conditions, decide differently; so I start with the system their decisions emerge from.
Drawing on Hollnagel, E. (2014). Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management.
Three questions for your team
- What workarounds does your team rely on that you don't know about?
- What would they tell you if there were no consequences?
- What is it costing your teams to sustain these results?
Background
Twenty-seven years in a room where decisions have consequences.
I know this work from three vantage points: as a practitioner, a leader and a researcher. Air traffic control drew me into Human Factors and Human Performance, and into understanding what enables people to decide, coordinate and keep their judgment when work becomes complex. I now bring that perspective to organizations across sectors.
I founded and led the Human Factors department at Spain's main air navigation service provider, and chaired the CANSO Human Factors group.
I come from an environment where every person’s work matters, and where no one can see the whole system from their own position. It shaped my conviction that an organization depends on the judgment of the people who make it work, and that listening to them leads to better decisions and stronger results. Those same people also need to find meaning in their work, and to do so without losing themselves along the way. To me, that is what sustainable performance means. I treat every person as a professional, with judgment of their own and something to contribute. It is the condition that allows what they know, and the best of who they are, to emerge.
Human Factors specialist accredited by EUROCONTROL and the EAAP · MSc in Human Factors in Aviation, Coventry University · MBA in Aviation Management · Accredited instructor in critical incident stress management (ICISF) · Positive psychology applied to organizations, Happiness Studies Academy · Master's in Corporate Wellbeing, World Happiness Foundation · Postgraduate in Emotional Intelligence, UNIR · Doctoral researcher in Economics and Business, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
References
What others say about my work.
I entrusted her with leading the organizational development of Human Factors in air traffic management. It was a very demanding mission, marked by significant organizational resistance and structural barriers.
Her work consistently demonstrates that sustainable performance must be embedded into organizational design, not treated as a standalone initiative.
An outstanding Human Factors safety expert with operational ATC experience, which is very rare.
Recommendations published on LinkedIn.
Where do we begin?
We start with twenty minutes: you tell me the situation and I tell you whether I can help and where I would start.
guada@guadacortes.com
Advisory
A few lines on your organization, the situation you want to address, and your timeframe.
Keynotes
The date and location, the audience profile, and the expected length. I speak regularly at international conferences and conventions.
I answer every message myself.
