Every business leader wants to be the bold visionary who pushes their company over the next threshold of success, or the revolutionary thought leader who redefines an industry for the foreseeable future. Not every leader is concerned with, or is capable of, transforming their businesses responsibly and through sustainable decision-making practices. It’s easy to transform a business by recklessly overpromising and driving toward operational ambitions that are catastrophically out of scope. Such a leader may see some short-term success, but their team and their model will inevitably collapse under the weight of too many poor decisions.
It takes a practiced and experienced leader to know how to strike the balance between ambitious business evolution and long-term sustainability, and Jose Tolosa is precisely such a leader. The seasoned CEO and transformation leader has a proven track record of scaling creative and globally-minded businesses, with experience at Meow Wolf, Viacom, and ViacomCBS. Whether he’s building a company into a platform for immersive storytelling and transmedia expansion or establishing strategic partnerships to expand into new media landscapes, Tolosa knows how to transform a business sustainably through sound leadership and decision-making practices.
Today, Jose Tolosa looks out upon the business landscape and sees many leaders falling into the common traps of unchecked ambition and unsustainable business models. Given his own experience as a leader and executive, it’s only natural that he shares his wisdom and champions responsible business development and leadership.
“My experiences taught me that transformation isn’t just about strategy, it’s about aligning people around purpose, navigating complexity with clarity, and leading with head and heart,” Tolosa explains. “Beyond strategic thinking and the willingness to challenge the status quo, you need to stick to purpose.”
A Career of Transformation
Business transformation isn’t just an aspiration or buzzword for Jose Tolosa, it’s the bread and butter of his career. Over his 20+ years in the media and entertainment industry, the moments and projects that stand out foremost in his memory are the ones where the company stood at the threshold of something new, and he was able to lead the team over it. Of these many memories, two such cases stand out as effective case studies of business transformation driven by sustainable decision-making: the evolution of Viacom and its merger with CBS, and transitioning from ViacomCBS to Meow Wolf.
Tolosa had already been working at Viacom for over a decade when the opportunity (and demand) for transformation arrived. The company was at a crossroads; revenues were shrinking, legacy brands were falling into irrelevance, and the industry was evolving at a pace that threatened to leave the company behind. Tolosa was tasked with helping shift the company toward a new future, and he did it by partnering closely with the CEO and executive team to realign strategy, cut significant costs, and critically reinvest in areas with growth potential.
When it was time for Viacom to merge with CBS, thus bringing two distinct cultures and leadership structures together under one roof, Tolosa was already prepared to step in. He led a significant synergy plan, streamlined global operations, and worked across business lines to align creative and commercial strategy. Combined, these events defined his love for helping push a legacy company into the future via strategic business transformation and sound leadership.
“The transformation achieved its goals: we modernized operations, executed a significant cost takeout, and unlocked reinvestment opportunities,” Tolosa says. “Most importantly, we did it with a people-first approach; a difficult program that was ultimately well received internally.”
When Tolosa left the corporate stability of ViacomCBS for the scrappy creativity of Meow Wolf, it was a leap away from comfort toward passion and ambition for what had always driven him: building, transforming, and leading companies through complexity. A significant hurdle and learning opportunity at this time was adapting to the radically different culture while also steering the company through dramatic expansion and moments of crisis. These moments would test Tolosa, but they would also become some of the most powerful leadership experiences of his career.
“I had to bring structure and discipline without dampening the creative spark,” he says. “That journey sharpened my instincts and matured my leadership.”
Sound Leadership and Sustainable Decision-Making
The secret to Tolosa’s career successes, and to any transformative business partnerships, projects, or initiatives, is applying sound decision-making principles at every stage. Sustainable decision-making often starts at the outset of a new project or initiative, because many of the ones that fail or become unsustainable do so because of mistakes either with their initial planning or because they went out of scope. In Tolosa’s experience, starting a project on the right foot begins with aligning the team on the overall vision, ensuring clarity, and creating momentum. That done, it’s about finding the quick wins and easy solutions that empower the team to build and remove roadblocks as they come.
“First is the what and why we are doing something and what success looks like,” he explains. “You have to make sure you have the right people assigned to the right tasks and that there is clarity on how we will achieve something. While the guardrails and expectations are set, I like to empower people to perform their best.”
Effective decision-making can thus be broken down into two key points: maintain clarity on company objectives and goals, and consistently reference and revisit original principles. A leader cannot properly guide a team toward a goal if they don’t know where they are, where they’ve been, or how they’ve gotten there.
Above the project level, effective business leadership is crucial for any venture, sustainable or not. When it comes to growing businesses and leading effectively, Jose Tolosa has identified two primary strategies that have served him well in his decades-long career, and would likely prove successful for other business leaders as well.
First, leading with clarity and calmness in moments of ambiguity and stress is incredibly important for maintaining team cohesion and keeping everyone aligned. In practice, this means identifying problems, reviewing known principles and frameworks, and using all of that information to make a decision to maintain forward progress and build trust. Second, and no less important, is remaining loyal to the team and the relevant stakeholders. It builds the long-term trust and team feeling that will carry the team through hard times.
“I believe great leadership requires a combination of agility, emotional self-management, clarity of purpose, resilience, authenticity, and humility,” Tolosa explains. “These qualities aren’t static; they’re muscles I keep working to strengthen every day.”
