Businesses are constantly looking for ways to grow and expand at speed, due to the ever-changing business landscape and consumer demands. With his experience and expertise in helping businesses scale, MTM Evolution CEO Tomasz Micek is passionate about supporting businesses, not only to this end, but to help them develop leaders, so that these businesses can scale sustainably.
Having accomplished his career goals during his 26-year tenure at Hasbro, Tomasz Micek – known to all simply as Tomasz – now sets his sights on developing the next generation of CEOs. The result? MTM Evolution: a first-class business consultancy company.
Tomasz is a seasoned professional when it comes to helping businesses thrive. In fact, after more than two and a half decades with multinational toy conglomerate Hasbro, Tomasz had become such an expert that he decided it was time to pass on his knowledge. Thus, MTM Evolution was born.
“I was thinking a lot about the biggest value I could add to others – how I could support businesses globally, which developed into this consulting company,” he tells The CEO Magazine. “I knew I had something to offer to the market – to companies that want to grow and are open to gaining experience from someone who has driven a considerable amount of change throughout his career.”
Having worked his way up the ranks at Hasbro, culminating in his appointment as Senior Vice President, General Manager of Asia Pacific, in 2021 Tomasz decided that creating his own company felt like a “natural evolution”.
“It sounds like a lot, a quarter of a century,” he laughs. “But with Hasbro I could explore new places, new challenges, new projects, and that kept me engaged. All CEOs are responsible for growing their companies, but it’s also so important to feel like we’re all growing personally with the company, and must work together to achieve this. That was the case at Hasbro.”
Skill diversity is a career strength
Having started his career there as a sales representative, Tomasz says he was able to grow alongside the business, honing his relationships with customers, understanding their competition and driving the business forward.
So when it came to applying his expertise to his new company, assisting a diverse range of businesses across both Asia and Europe, Tomasz felt he was well-prepared for the task. That said, he is quick to add that irrespective of experience, a good leader never stops learning.
“We need to be flexible and adaptable to different visions, different values and cultures of companies.”
“I am amazed how I am still developing myself, and working with smaller companies than Hasbro has shown me different ways of thinking,” he says. “Since starting MTM Evolution, I have learned a lot about different philosophies, and how we need to be flexible and adaptable to different visions, different values and cultures of companies.
“But one thing is common between all the companies I’ve worked with, and that’s that ambition is everywhere.”
His success as a leader is thanks to an approach that prioritizes an “openness to learn, develop and the capacity to see the bigger picture,” he says. And though he admits he’s always been driven, Tomasz also says he is grateful that he changed roles frequently while working for Hasbro, as it gave him a diverse spectrum of experience and business knowledge.
Having his name (MTM are his initials, Micek Tomasz Mariusz) intrinsically linked to MTM Evolution is something Tomasz says underpins the entire business strategy.
“The brand of MTM Evolution will grow at the same time as the brand of Tomasz,” he explains. “That’s how I am clear about the way I will continue to do business as a trustworthy partner, giving honest advice and analysis of organizations, not presenting just advantages and opportunities, but also their weaknesses and threats.”
A leader of people
While there is no supply chain that MTM operates with, due to its nature as a consultancy business, Tomasz does emphasize that building trusted relationships within the industry will always be a valuable tool.
“It’s super important,” Tomasz says. “There has to be a certain level of confidence that companies treat each other respectfully.
“The pandemic showed the challenges many companies faced, and having partners you can rely on was hugely necessary. We must be wise enough to assess unexpected challenges and the role of CEOs is to look one step ahead.”
From here, Tomasz is looking to offer services within the United States – an essential step if MTM Evolution is to become a truly global company. “Even if we want to expand in Asia, we must talk about North America because it’s a huge economy,” he says. “Opening a branch in the United States is my objective for 2024. We’d be offering adjusted services for European and Asian companies who would like to expand into North America, and vice versa.”
“Think about how we communicate our decisions with respect – this is what people value in leaders the most.”
Tomasz enthuses that ultimately, people are at the very heart of MTM Evolution, something he says is applicable to any company. “My slogan is ‘expanding businesses,’ but expanding doesn’t mean that the organization must be bigger,” he explains. “Expanding has far more meaning. Expanding is thinking broader, thinking beyond what the organization was before. And this is very much connected to my philosophy that people are super important.
“Even if I am working with big companies in China or Japan, behind these great brands there are real people.”
Tomasz encourages all CEOs to prioritize engaging their employees.
“Think about how we communicate our decisions with respect – this is what people value in leaders the most,” he says.
When reflecting on his legacy, both at Hasbro and with MTM Evolution, Tomasz says he’s incredibly proud to have influenced people that are now great leaders themselves.
“I am a leader connected with the people,” he says with a smile. “At the end of the day, the question is, ‘have you impacted someone’s development?’
“The greatest gift has been colleagues telling me that I was inspirational to them.”