Thien Minh Group’s Chairman: What makes ONE TMG?

TMG – Chairman & CEO Tran Trong Kien shares insights on the core values “MỘT” (ONE), striving to build ONE TMG for sustainable and strong growth. 

“I think everyone in the company often talks about the core values and the culture. In my opinion, it is very important for a company to realise there is no such culture, and the best way to understand a real culture is when you get a new colleague or a new associated staff to join the company. And then that person, how they quickly learn how this company gets things done, how this company makes money, how this company behaves when the boss is not around, so that is the culture. 

And I think it’s really important to realise that when you see a company, like TMG, you’ll see how we get the waiter and waitress to work on the first few days, how to see the guys performing on their bus, drivers taking guests from the airport to the hotel, how people in the office responding to emails from clients or partners, how they taking care of inquires from repeated clients, especially this new person. This is the culture of the business. 

It’s not what I preach, it’s not what internal communications preach, this is actually the behavior of a new person when they come into the company, observing others to see how they go to the office, how they arrive on time, how to respond to the inquiries, how they plan their week, how they plan their month, how they plan their year, how to respond to tragic intense, how they focus their time to deliver results.

At the end of the day, I think the important thing about culture is how we collectively perform. So that is what I believe we need to work on a lot at the moment to make sure that TMG’s culture is reflected to all levels, not just what I said. 

We are working at the moment on promoting and keeping universal values that we have been building based on IDARE and the values of integrity and hardworking. 

But I believe we should build it based on three things that are reflected on the three letters “M.Ộ.T”. 

Firstly, we have the “M” – “Meaningful & Magical”. When we do anything, that has to be magical and special, something very different. 

And the second thing, “O” – “Own it”, which means when we build and do things, we should take ourselves full honesty for what we’re doing. 

And we realise that at TMG, although we’re not a big company, we spread out across Indochina and Europe, and we have different teams working in different types of offices. If they are not personally taking care and owning the businesses, that would be very difficult. So the second word is owning what we’re doing, being the boss of who you are. You have to be the CEO of the business on terms and run it as your own business. 

And the third part is “T” – “Together we’re better”. We know that if you act alone as a single small business, you will never be successful, and never be able to have a high impact. So if you work and act together, and share the knowledge, skills and technologies, finance resources, you should be able to be stronger and bigger. 

That’s why the three letters MOT, in Vietnamese mean ONE TMG, is very important. It’s a new focus value and we would be working a lot more and hoping to be able to achieve it in the next couple of years. 

Again coming back to my message, whatever it is, culture or values and preaching, it has very little meaning if the youngest, the first people who enter the company do not believe it and do not act in it.

How the youngest people, how the people just enter the company behave and do their job and get things done, how most of the people believe what is important, that would be the culture. 

We should be moving forward to do magical and beautiful things. Everyone owns their businesses and their work, and then be able to work together as well to get high results overall.”

Established in 1994, TMG has grown from a company with just three employees to an enterprise with more than 2,500 employees worldwide. Thien Minh is now Asia’s leading package travel provider, founded on the mission of always putting our clients front and center. With four business pillars: Destination Management, Hospitality, Online, Aviation – TMG is the ideal host for distinctive journeys featuring truly memorable travel experiences.