From the Plant Floor to the C-Suite: Meet Our Newest Advisor, Tim Molek

When you’re in the mid­dle of a hard growth deci­sion, the last thing you need is some­one who’s going to tell you what the text­book says. You need some­one who’s been in that exact seat, felt the pres­sure, and fig­ured out how to move through it.

That’s Tim Molek. And that’s why I’m glad he’s on our team.

What He Brings to the Table

What I find most valu­able about Tim isn’t any sin­gle skill. It’s the com­bi­na­tion. He thinks like an engi­neer (rig­or­ous, sys­tems-ori­ent­ed), com­mu­ni­cates like a mar­keter (clear, direct, built for action), and leads like some­one who gen­uine­ly cares about the peo­ple around him.

He’s obsessed with sim­plic­i­ty, and he’ll chal­lenge you on it. In his expe­ri­ence, most exec­u­tives don’t avoid com­plex­i­ty because they like it. They avoid sim­ple, focused deci­sions because those deci­sions require real com­mit­ment. It’s eas­i­er to spread your bets. But as Tim will tell you, spread­ing your bets is usu­al­ly just a slow road to mediocrity.

He also brings gen­uine expe­ri­ence with growth tran­si­tions, specif­i­cal­ly the moment when a com­pa­ny grows fast enough that the old way of doing things starts to break. He describes it as going from a scoot­er to a train. You’re not slow­er, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but there are a lot more mov­ing parts, and deci­sions need to be made differently.

He learned that les­son the hard way dur­ing a major acqui­si­tion inte­gra­tion ear­ly in his career. He had every work stream mapped: HR, logis­tics, pro­duc­tion time­lines. What he didn’t plan for was cul­ture. When the com­pa­ny dou­bled overnight, deci­sion-mak­ing ground to a halt. Nobody shared the same norms. Nobody knew how to read the room. He fixed it by treat­ing the cul­ture piece like a change project, some­thing he now helps clients do proac­tive­ly, before the wheels come off.

Where He Comes From

Tim grew up the youngest of five kids in a blue-col­lar fam­i­ly on the South Side of Chica­go. He’ll tell you that shaped how he leads. Specif­i­cal­ly, that he’s nev­er been able to look at the peo­ple he works with as just a func­tion or a title.

Col­leagues, Not Employees

He start­ed his career as a man­u­fac­tur­ing engi­neer, then put him­self through night school to earn degrees in mar­ket­ing and finance. From there he moved into brand man­age­ment, worked at Unilever, and even­tu­al­ly land­ed at Freuden­berg Home and Clean­ing Solu­tions, a glob­al com­pa­ny whose prod­ucts you almost cer­tain­ly have in your home right now.

Over the next two decades at Freuden­berg, Tim grew the Amer­i­c­as busi­ness near­ly ten­fold, ulti­mate­ly becom­ing Region­al Pres­i­dent of North and South Amer­i­ca. That meant man­ag­ing P&Ls, nav­i­gat­ing acqui­si­tions, build­ing teams across cul­tures and con­ti­nents, and doing it all from inside a tru­ly glob­al orga­ni­za­tion where he was talk­ing to peo­ple in three or four coun­tries on any giv­en day.

That kind of expe­ri­ence gives you a per­spec­tive you can’t get from a text­book. You learn how Amer­i­cans com­mu­ni­cate dif­fer­ent­ly than Euro­peans. You learn what it feels like to con­vince stake­hold­ers to align behind a strat­e­gy and then actu­al­ly exe­cute it. You learn, as Tim puts it, how to stop pre­sent­ing process and start pre­sent­ing decisions.

Tim on the Les­son That Changed How He Communicates

From Run­ning Com­pa­nies to Guid­ing Them

At the end of 2024, after more than three decades of build­ing and run­ning busi­ness­es, Tim turned the page. He didn’t step away from the work so much as step along­side it, mov­ing out of the seat of run­ning a com­pa­ny and into a seat next to the lead­ers run­ning theirs. Like a lot of exec­u­tives who’ve spent 35 years build­ing and run­ning things, he knew quick­ly that watch­ing from the side­lines wasn’t for him. He want­ed to be back in the room.

But the seed was plant­ed much ear­li­er. Back in 2009, when he first became a gen­er­al man­ag­er, he found him­self at a stop­light on the way home from work, men­tal­ly list­ing all the things that need­ed to be fixed. And some­where between press­ing the brake and watch­ing the light change, it hit him: he was ​“they.” He was the one who need­ed to fix the things.

Tim on the Moment That Made Him a Coach

He went and found an exec­u­tive coach. It turned out to be one of the most impor­tant deci­sions of his career, not just pro­fes­sion­al­ly, but per­son­al­ly. He’s still friends with that coach today.

When he made the move from cor­po­rate life, that expe­ri­ence stayed with him. He went back and com­plet­ed his exec­u­tive coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and start­ed think­ing seri­ous­ly about how he could take 35 years of hard-won expe­ri­ence and put it to work for the next gen­er­a­tion of exec­u­tives. That’s what brought him to Lawrence & Co.

Who He Works Best With

Tim’s sweet spot is mid-sized com­pa­nies in the $50M to $500M range, espe­cial­ly those in the US that are either grow­ing quick­ly or work­ing out how to. He’s par­tic­u­lar­ly strong with mul­ti­cul­tur­al teams and orga­ni­za­tions going through mean­ing­ful growth transitions.

The work takes two forms, and often both at once. With a CEO and their exec­u­tive team, Tim helps turn com­plex­i­ty into a clear, focused growth strat­e­gy, and then build the exe­cu­tion engine and the strength of the team to deliv­er it. That means get­ting aligned on the few essen­tial moves that actu­al­ly dri­ve growth, sharp­en­ing how deci­sions get made, and mak­ing sure the right peo­ple are in the right seats to car­ry the plan for­ward. And with indi­vid­ual CEOs and exec­u­tives, he works one to one to help them raise their own game to the lev­el their com­pa­ny’s ambi­tions demand.

Run­ning through all of it is a belief Tim and I both hold: the best pre­dic­tor of a great boss is a boss who is gen­uine­ly hap­py in their own life. If you’re run­ning on emp­ty, it shows up in your team. So along­side the strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion work, Tim makes sure the lead­ers he works with are build­ing in a way that’s sus­tain­able, for the com­pa­ny and for themselves.

If you’re a CEO or senior leader who wants some­one in the room who’s been where you are, some­one who will push you toward clar­i­ty, chal­lenge your think­ing, and help you build the strat­e­gy and the team your com­pa­ny actu­al­ly needs to grow, Tim is some­one you should talk to.

Watch the full inter­view with Tim below.