What does your job at Telefónica involve? How has your career at Telefónica developed over the last three years?
Well, let me tell you that the last three and a half years have been dizzying, challenging and a steep learning curve for me, so I could tell you that, together with an exceptional multidisciplinary team, we are at the epicentre of the digital transformation of Telefónica Hispam.
In 2021 I had the opportunity to join the Hispam Digital Transformation team with a focus on the 8 operations. My main tasks were based on defining agile governance guidelines for the region, which involved defining, implementing and managing the Business Agility maturity assessment, agile teams and metrics to evaluate agility performance.
The Business Agility maturity indicator and the Time to Market of functionalities became quarterly objectives for each operation.
Something that I value highly and that was an example of agile value delivery is the construction of an Agile Governance tool, automating the management and loading of indicators and available to the 8 operations in the region. If I could do it, I would export it to all Telefónica operations.
I dedicated myself to promoting and strengthening the culture of measurement, with our mantra, ‘what is not measured is not improved and what is not improved you know what happens… it degrades’. We all find it difficult to record and this is something I have been doing since university. Don’t ask me why, but I find value in documenting, in recording, of course with a purpose, with just what is necessary for future decision-making.
Learning about the evolution of business agility and governance guidelines in operations provided me with the ideal framework for everything that the following challenge involved in 2024, which was the creation of the OIA, the Artificial Intelligence Office, an initiative that we built from scratch where I collaborated in the research, design, definition and implementation of the governance model, the life cycle of AI solutions, organising the work with an agile approach, involving experts from various disciplines in the co-creation of guidelines.
What I highlight from this experience is that we strengthened the vision of work by looking at the entire life cycle of AI product development, focusing on the problem to be solved and not on the solution, thinking and acting like a startup, validating the business hypothesis, the proof of concept and the subsequent MVP delivering value to customers.
I had the responsibility of building and managing the inventory of AI use cases, as a single source of information, and also of deploying the compliance domain and the principles of responsible AI, accompanying the launch of the global compliance tool in the region. In fact, we were one of the first to join the register of AI use cases and their respective risk analysis, mitigation recommendations and, last but not least, I dedicated myself to conducting formal both formal and informal, with the aim of raising awareness of the OIA, its roles, responsibilities and governance model, leveraging everything in a change management process that has been very challenging.
At the beginning of 2025, with the evolution of the operating model in our region, I returned to my parent company, Telefónica Uruguay, in the role of Head of Compliance, where my main tasks include ensuring that the organisation complies with Telefónica’s applicable regulations, being an agent of change by promoting a corporate ethical culture through the implementation and supervision of policies, internal governance guidelines, training programmes, and managing the risk management system .
Telefónica works in many areas, we want to be sure that the actions we take have these risks under control.
One of the things I value is the opportunity that Telefónica gives me to do what I like, to learn, to investigate, to connect people, to propose ideas that are welcomed and valued and, not least, to always challenge myself.
What does business agility consist of?
It is an approach that companies follow in order to adapt to change and respond quickly to customer needs. In short, it involves developing and strengthening a set of skills, behaviours and ways of working that allow organisations to be more flexible, adaptable and achieve their objectives.
This approach goes beyond the simple adoption of agile methodologies in projects, encompassing a complete cultural transformation that drives continuous innovation, normalises experimentation and evolves its business model to remain competitive in an increasingly dynamic and complex environment, putting the customer at the centre of all decisions.
What are the main characteristics of business agility? What are the competencies of Business Agility?
- Having the customer at the centre.
- Strengthening teams with agile principles, practices and mindset.
- Shared vision and direction between teams and the organisation.
- Betting on creating the company’s value chains in simple and flexible processes.
- Aligning strategy with execution.
- Having leadership that leads by example.
- Promote a culture of continuous learning, without fear of error.
- In every corner, foster a culture of innovation.
Why is it sometimes difficult for companies to adapt to change?
Resistance to change arises mainly due to comfort with established processes, maintaining the status quo and fear of the unknown, especially when there is a rigid organisational culture.
Traditional hierarchical structures and legacy systems hinder the agility needed to adapt quickly to new market demands and emerging technologies.
How can a company’s agility be measured?
Our adopted model for measuring business agility was based on 3 domains:
The first is business results or outcomes, defining indicators of response to strategic objectives that translate into operational objectives in each of the teams, for example, NPS, revenue, churn, depending on the strategic plan. By measuring this domain we answer the question: Do our products or services satisfy the needs of customers or the business?
The second domain is that of performance measurement, defining, for example, delivery time, variation in the work delivered by sprints, bottlenecks in workflows. By measuring this domain we answer the question: How efficient are we as an organisation?
And the third is adherence to business agility through an assessment of skills and competencies that measure the maturity of the company’s level of business agility. By measuring this domain, we answer the question: How much are we acquiring the capacities and knowledge and becoming more competent?
These three results correlate at the level of the agile unit, portfolio or business segment that has been defined.
Maturity, tools and change management are needed. It is essential to be able to know how the state of the transformation is going, generating an action plan and measurable improvement that drives it. In my experience, we must be brave enough and empowered to take a different course of action the moment we see that the path is not going that way and, of course, celebrate successes, however small they may seem, they encourage and drive us to achieve our business objectives.
What is the best way to adopt business agility? What challenges do companies face in this process?
In my experience, the first and biggest challenge is cultural change among people. We often focus on the process, on implementing a model, a framework, a methodology, and this only takes us so far in the transformation. True organisational change requires cultural change through people and therefore in the organisation.
The first step is to determine what stage of maturity we are at in terms of the three pillars of business agility (results, performance and competencies), and to have a clear strategy with short- and long-term objectives that have the backing of senior management. Measure, inspect and adapt.
The next important challenge is to be clear at all levels of the organisation that agility is not just about delivering faster, but about delivering the right value at the right time; in simple terms: speed should not be the only objective, quality, adaptation and customer satisfaction are equally important.
Who do you nominate from among the people who work at Telefónica for this interview that you consider to be excellent at their job?
Uhm, I have several in mind, both at regional level and in Uruguay. I’ll start by nominating Andres Horta who, with a great team in Digital Transformation in Uruguay, articulated the birth of several competencies of Business Agility in the operation, and Luisa Ocampo in Digital Transformation Colombia, with whom I worked
