Case 01
Building high-performance operations at a USD 17 billion institution
Banco Nacional de Costa Rica · Deputy General Manager, Operations · 2024–Present
Context. Banco Nacional de Costa Rica is the country’s largest financial institution, with approximately USD 17 billion in assets. As Deputy General Manager of Operations, I lead 1,700+ employees with an annual operating budget of approximately USD 160 million across credit processing, transactional services, security & investigations, customer experience, and operational support.
Intervention. I designed and deployed an enterprise-wide strategy execution system — integrating strategy maps, balanced scorecards, and initiative portfolios across all business units, cascading accountability to second-level management.
It was navigating regulatory pressure, legacy technology, union dynamics, and organizational inertia simultaneously — making decisions not everyone agreed with, and sustaining momentum through complexity.
Key Initiatives
- Automated 98% of priority process initiatives
- Achieved 100% corrective action closure across all units
- Reduced non-conforming outputs to 0.67% (target: 10%)
- Decreased customer complaints by 49% in targeted areas
- Generated 3 new revenue streams and grew fee income 25% above institutional targets
Institutional performance at this scale is not a framework problem — it’s a leadership problem. Clear accountability, disciplined measurement, and the willingness to make uncomfortable decisions consistently.
Case 02
Building a Latin American reference model from a 71-person subsidiary
BN Valores · CEO · 2018–2023
Context. BN Valores, a brokerage subsidiary of Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, managed USD 1.8 billion in assets with a team of 71 people. Before 2019, the company lacked a formal strategic planning system. Strategy was centralized among 3 people, budget drove priorities, and execution was disconnected from vision.
Intervention. As CEO, I led the design and implementation of a comprehensive management system that connected strategy to daily operations across the entire organization — 37 strategic objectives across 5 perspectives, with accountability cascaded to every team.
Shifting from a centralized model where three people made most decisions to a system where 71 people were accountable required changing how the organization thought about ownership, performance, and leadership itself. The breakthrough came from making results visible, making accountability personal, and proving — quarter after quarter — that the new system delivered outcomes the old one couldn’t.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Budget drives strategy | Strategy drives budget |
| 3 people in strategic planning | 71 people executing strategy |
| Decisions based on intuition | Scientific thinking in decisions |
| Quality management system | Organizational excellence system |
| Training by demand | Development by competency model |
“BN Valores has established practices that position it as a reference model in Latin America.” — National Excellence Award Evaluators
When you make accountability personal and results visible, even a small organization can perform at levels that earn international recognition. The system worked — but only because the leadership behind it was willing to confront resistance and sustain the change.
Case 03
Managing one-third of a bank’s intermediation economics
Banco Nacional de Costa Rica · Head of Trading Desks · 2016–2018
Context. Before moving into executive leadership, I managed the bank’s treasury trading desks — liquidity, foreign exchange, fixed income investments, and derivatives. These desks generated approximately USD 218 million annually in net intermediation revenue, representing roughly one-third of the bank’s total financial intermediation income. This wasn’t a support function. It was P&L exposure at institutional scale — where every decision carried direct consequences for profitability and balance-sheet risk.
This role required real-time decision-making under market uncertainty, regulatory constraints, and capital optimization pressure — every day. It built the financial judgment and risk discipline that later became the foundation for how I approach institutional leadership: measure rigorously, decide with conviction, allocate capital deliberately, and accept accountability for outcomes you can’t fully control.
Case 04
Repositioning a brokerage firm from last place to above-industry profitability
LAFISE Valores Costa Rica · Interim General Manager · 2012–2013
Context. LAFISE Valores operated in a highly competitive and regulated capital markets environment. Prior to my appointment as Interim General Manager, the firm had underperformed relative to the market and ranked at the bottom of the industry in return on equity.
The challenge was to stabilize performance, improve profitability, strengthen risk controls, and reposition the business competitively — within approximately one year. In a volatile market with compressed margins, there was no room for sequential fixes. Everything had to move at once.
Key Initiatives
- Identified and developed new revenue opportunities in brokerage and investment services
- Strengthened oversight of market, liquidity, and operational risks
- Improved internal coordination and accountability structures
- Reinforced decision-making discipline under volatile market conditions
Sustainable financial performance is rarely the product of isolated commercial success — it emerges when strategy, risk management, organizational discipline, and institutional stewardship operate coherently.
Institutions don’t outperform because strategy is smarter. They outperform when leadership creates accountability, aligns incentives, and sustains execution through complexity.
From a turnaround mandate at a struggling brokerage to a USD 17 billion institution, the pattern is consistent: sustainable institutional performance — and the growth it enables — emerges when leadership aligns strategy, people, incentives, and execution into a coherent system. The cases are different. The leadership principle is the same.
How I think about leadership →