KB-12 Faces
Igor Glebov on opportunities that break the glass ceiling
Several months ago KB-12 founded an advertising market leadership development program, Partners' Lift. It has been headed by Igor Glebov, a person who has 17 years in marketing communications and went all the way from a junior project manager to the agency's executive director. In his interview, he talks about his professional career, management philosophy, the Partners' Lift program, and the opportunities for leaders at KB-12.
How did your story with KB-12 (group of companies) started?

When I got in the company, there was no KB-12 group. It was a marketing agency where I came as a group head (in KB-12 structure a group stands for a team) and a junior business partner.

I never recruited my own group from scratch, I had an already formed team that reached financial indicators, and I was there to improve their performance and efficiency. Then I set a goal: try not to sack anyone from the initial group. I guess, it is my inner philosophy that got Sasha Panov, the KB-12 CEO, to like me. We were friends and he saw my attitude towards business and offered to join his agency.

What did you do before and how did you arrive at being a manager in an advertising agency?

My professional bio includes around 17 years on the advertising and marketing communications market. I started off in various political PR campaigns. This project determined my career, because I definitely was not learning to be a PR specialist at university. According to my first diploma, I am a systems engineer. That moment I went the path of marketing communications and got the second education, this time — connected with PR; then I started from the very bottom in advertising agencies.

At some point, I made a turn towards the client, and then I understood that I am not the person to work with clients.

We have two kinds of people on the market: client type and agent type. The former is more about stability and long-term planning, they like working within the same brand and analyzing things. Agent business is something more dynamic, at the same time its effect can be seen on a shorter distance. For instance, you made an event for 10,000 people and you immediately got your energy boost, saw the results, and moved further: new tasks, new pictures before your eyes. This was how I moved through my career to the position of a clients director, and then to an executive director of an agency.

This position meant doing business itself, rather than implementing projects. Technically speaking, all the tasks I performed in my previous position, I also had at KB-12.

Why was it so important for you not to sack anyone?

I have always valued the team and the loyalty of the people I work with. I think that within the advertising agencies' activity, where human capital is the key resource, loyalty is extremely valuable. You need to be careful with it and never waste it. There are many professionals on the market and they can be pretty successful, but if they have no sympathy or empathy towards the company they work at, employing them makes less sense than, say, slightly lower-level professionals who are involved in the company's life and activity.

I set a personal goal to work with the team's internal motivation system and at the same time not seem as a tyrant or authoritarian, but be a partner-manager and a person who tries to create the best environment for their high efficiency and self-fulfillment, rather than tells what to do.
With the KB-12 heads, Dmitriy Stanchuk and Aleksandr Panov.
You mentioned your education. How important do you think it is to have a relevant education to work in advertising now?

As a person who has collected 3 diplomas: 2 higher education ones and a certificate on Executive MBA business school graduation, where I even acted as a guest expert, I would say it won't hurt. But even in 2016, when I was receiving my last diploma, the information that was taught at universities was somehow obsolete and not always applicable. This is true. Market and technologies change so rapidly that they cannot be captured by a relevant educational program. However, all the universities I studied at taught me a useful skill: think in the right way and ask the right questions in various situations.

For example, when entering the managing position, you work within the expertise you have gained, your problem assessment focus is narrow. However, your picture must be much bigger, you need to consider many aspects that you previously paid no attention to. If you do not have a focused education, having this bigger picture in your mind is rather hard. First of all, university teaches you to ask questions and it does you a world of good.

I got my first director position with a team of 12 people, back in 2010, when I was promoted from a senior manager. Then I had my own clients that I was developing, it was the level of freedom and responsibility when nobody interfered with what I did. However, at first, I was not so efficient to manage the team — I made the mistakes common for young executives. It is recognized that now the managers' age has decreased, but unfortunately, many young bosses lack sufficient skills they can gain from experience.

How does inefficient management look?

Well, when I did not see people's loyalty to the team as the most important factor, I thought that first of all a talent has to be efficient and no one was indispensable. I was very black-and-white in my actions.

However, actually, it is not quite right, because you need to develop a dialog with every person. The idea of emotional intelligence and communication flexibility was the basic issue I then tried to fix.

You must have chosen your own management principles, based on this experience.

Yes. First, I realized that there are no bad employees. It can be that the position is not suitable for the person. I started watching it, noting strengths and weaknesses, correcting people's inner development, and learnt to offer people a choice.

Second, the principle I based all my teams on is creating the environment, where everyone feels involved in the common cause, without giving crazy KPI and building a sweatshop system. It is as important when you have the idea of the team belonging: you do not think that a screw up can lead to losing your bonus, you think that you will let the team down.

Tell more about the Partners' Lift program. Why does KB-12 need young executives?

Let's start with KB-12 initially being a player that went cross-current, developing unlike others on the advertising market. Our company has always adopted the partnership cooperation philosophy, instead of a strict top-down structure. We have a matrix system with a bunch of teams. Of course, the teams should be headed by strong specialists and managers. Translating this model to the traditional one would have this manager as an executive director or a partner of a small boutique agency. There are not a lot of people like this on the market. Hiring this kind of professional once in 12-18 months, makes it a complicated process. Such positions never get to hh.ru, as well as such talents also do not place their resumes there.

As a rule, it implies another way of search and communication, these people should be interested by something. Money is not always the key point here. These talents can value their level of freedom, competences and self-fulfillment much more, because they already have a good salary where they work and everything is fine. However, they can either get bored or have a superior manager who interferes with their business.

One way or another, building relationships with the candidates and hunting them to KB-12 takes quite some time.

Considering ambitious goals of our company on the advertising market, we realize that this manager search track hinders our energetic and dramatic growth. Hence, we decided to look to the managers that hold slightly lower positions than partners and executive directors, and are now client directors and account directors.

These talents have sufficient expertise work-wise, good understanding of business processes, and skills in building relationships; they think in both creative and economic categories. Young managers know what project efficiency is and assess their job through business indicators in general. However, they may lack some qualities for comprehensive management.
Several years ago with the KB-12 team
What can they lack, for example?

There is experience. There are hard skills, and there should also be soft skills.

If you have been an executive for 2 years, but you have been on the advertising market for 10 years, it is important to assess how many projects you have engaged in, what situations have happened to you management-wise. There is a good chance that your vision and open-mindness level is not too substantial and flexible, in some situations you may lack some practical wisdom.

It also depends on the ambitions of a certain manager in understanding the leadership principles. One can learn to be a leader watching two people, given the employees are very different from themselves and from the leader. However, if you cannot make a dialog and negotiate, it does not matter how many different people you will oversee.

When I conduct interviews for Partners` Lift, I spend little time on the candidates' resumes. For me it is more important how they think, how they behave and sell themselves at a meeting, How they are bursting to go into action, how they are interested in the buzz we have.

Empathy, emotional intelligence, ability to communicate with people of various positions and ranks without showing any arrogance are crucial. Most important thing is having a high level of liminal thinking, i.e, striving to understand other people's motivation.

Does the company have any priority advertising directions?

It is useful to make a reference to the market here. Currently BTL and Event experience the hard times due to the pandemic, hence, we do not focus on these directions. However, I cannot say that we eliminate something. We are rather guided by people, assessing them from the points of potential and possibility of fitting in our culture.

We have initially had client groups, there are around 12 of them. The groups are divided according to different directions: there are the ones that do traditional advertising: BTL, digital, SMM, and video production. There is a separate direction — martech services that we develop by ourselves, for example, loyalty programs, customer survey tools, etc. Thanks to our internal resources, we actually cover all range of marketing and advertising services that exist on the Russian market.

Partners` Lift developed into 3 divisions: A, B, and C. They slightly differ from the point of leaders' opportunities. Division C has young Partners` Lift leaders. We always look at the specialist and give them an opportunity to develop their direction, considering their own competencies and clients. At the moment, Partners` Lift has digital, SMM, and video production. However, I hope that with time there will be more directions due to having more candidates.

What kind of support will managers enjoy at Partners` Lift?

We have a number of tools that vary, depending on the leaders' needs. Generally, it is financial and administrative support and help with teams at the first stages: we have internal resources that allow leaders to implement their first projects and not build up on their expenses. I think it is pointless to gather a team and land a manager there, because I believe in chemistry, in a leader picking up their team that is comfortable to work with and has mutual understanding.

Some managers will need clients, and we will provide them for the start, so that the managers can develop their client network. Besides, we realize that there is a transfer period at the beginning, when the team leads are unlikely to make money for the team. It is some time, until they get the grip of the work, win tenders, and then the projects get successful.

Moreover, we offer mentor support as well as educational programs if it is applicable within the complex development.
What is your role as a program leader?

My task is to build a system that can be largely efficient in transferring such leaders to the independent level in no time. Here I can act as an interface for communication with our other departments, a mentor on tackling issues and tracking all needs of young leaders to ensure the environment where they can evolve.

I do not do accounting or dive into projects until I am asked to. I help build a ready-made business that will become profitable and develop the qualities that allow reaching this goal.

You call the young leaders with Partners` Lift entrepreneurs. Why?

I am convinced that an entrepreneur is the best metaphor for describing a group head, the team engine. They have the same responsibilities as the classic entrepreneurs.

Business is an ability to establish relationships with the clients, determine products and services, implement working policy, and collect the team.

This person does not wait for a client or a profitable project to just show up. It is more about them conquering the market themselves. Technically speaking, these are the entrepreneurial tasks.

The difference between the real entrepreneurs and group heads is only in KB-12 hedging risks and taking responsibilities for some expenditures, allowing the leaders to use the agency's money and outsourcing all processes connected with lawyers and accountants.

Why does the program website say that KB-12 does not have a glass ceiling?

It means that we do not limit the group heads' opportunities within our structure in any way. First, we do not think that there is a limit for a manager's bonus, however, many agencies can have such a ceiling-value policy.

We also do not have a penalty thing. We do not employ carrots and sticks, we have rather built a culture where everyone can belong to the team, relating to its ups and downs.

Second, we do not restrict leaders in decision making: they are the final instance, their word is not challenged and cannot be vetoed.

Moreover, it is needless to have just one business, A and B divisions have opportunities to roll out second and third ones if the processes work well. In this case, KB-12 is ready to invest and lend its infrastructure for testing and developing the ideas. The leaders can initiate startups, implement them independently and oversee a team if these actions do not interfere. It is also an opportunity that breaks the leader's glass ceiling. Not many companies can offer having one's own business and profit off the agency services.

Further, to become a partner in the agency, you do not have to build your own agency from scratch, you can become a partner in the structure, where you are now, feeling as a co-owner of a good business. It only depends on your contribution in the company's development.

If at first we say that contribution is expressed monetarily, then further it is non-material: one's reputation, ambassadorship, contribution to the agency's image development.

The KB-12 team grows at more than 30% annually. Of course, the number of projects also grows. Why do you think it happens?

Mostly, due to the right motivation system within the team — it is built so as the group leaders are not only motivated financially, but they are also passionate about their work. If our system was only based on money and rigid KPI, lacking the culture of decision-making freedom, I do not think this growth would have been possible.

How would you describe KB-12 in three words?

Team, freedom, pioneering.