A Q&A with Ivan Doruda, CEO, MGID

By R. Larsson, Advertising Week

Q: How has your time on the frontline impacted and reshaped your approach to business?

It forced me to accept that my best laid strategies won’t always pan out as intended. War is an onslaught of situations where your plans can and regularly do go wrong, often at the worst possible time, through no fault of your own. Transitioning from a world of order and process and predictability to one of such chaos was a steep learning curve.

My instinct was to cling to points of reference from my past life and follow those who had more maturity or seniority, assuming experience would translate into being ready for anything. That approach didn’t last long. The truth is, no one can fully prepare for real conflict, and no one can prepare you; not even military personnel. Nothing from your civilian life or second-hand experiences can come close to simulating the intense pressure, speed of change, and exceptionally high stakes of real people’s lives being on the line.

You have to learn fast and apply that learning immediately. There is no space for theorising. It’s a case of developing instincts more than developing knowledge, to be adaptable and take each moment as it comes. Your survival and success, and those of everyone around you, depend on staying agile, ready to adjust to whatever happens.

Returning to the business world, I’ve tried to bring this flexibility with me, alongside a greater level of stoicism. My philosophy is to focus on what I can control and pivot where I stand, rather than wasting energy on trying to change things that are out of my hands.

Q: How have your experiences impacted the way you manage and engage with your team? How do you keep your team motivated?

I’ve become a big believer in autonomy as a performance driver. On the front, I found that someone’s leadership qualities are not automatically conferred by their position. The right person to take charge isn’t necessarily the highest rank in the team, it is whoever can grasp a critical situation and see the clearest way forward in the moment.

For those assigned as leaders, the smart move is to enable rather than suppress autonomy. Anyone who’s spent time in the professional world will have encountered a time when their initiative was crushed by seniors who want to protect their status, or simply their ego. If a leader sees someone who wants to take control, they should give them the opportunity, and then judge what they do with it.

There’s a saying: one warrior alone in the field is not a warrior. This applies to general management too. Effective missions, in war or business, depend on understanding that no one can do everything single-handedly, and all the training and skill in the world is worthless if it is not backed up by the collective power of the unit.

Seeing leadership tested in war has reshaped my view of how teams should be guided. People don’t need detailed rulebooks for how to do their jobs; they merely need a directive and the means and space to execute. The leaders who earn respect are those who know when it’s time to step up and know when it’s time to step aside.

Q: You’ve said previously that you believe people are the true ‘supercomputers’ of any organisation, why?

This is a thought that struck me while reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As fans know, the Earth is one of two supercomputers intended to explore the meaning of life: the first gave the infamous answer of “42”, and Earth was built to figure out what the question was.

What really captured my imagination is the idea of the entire planet as a supercomputer. The calculation power of the machine comes from everything on Earth, from its tectonic processes to all organic life, so it’s fuelled by combined community intelligence. To my mind, this concept is just as applicable in business.

Organisations are fuelled by their people and run most efficiently when the workforce is in sync: functioning as a streamlined and unified whole, or like a supercomputer. Achieving that means creating setups where inputs and processes are configured to ensure every element (i.e., employee) can iterate and produce the best outcomes, without too much interference.

Fundamentally, it’s about setting the main objective and establishing frameworks that allow people to work at their maximum capacity, and naturally gravitate towards where they are needed.

Q: How do you think your unique career journey has put you in the best position to drive MGID forward?

Ten of the fifteen years that I’ve been working in advertising technology have been spent with MGID. The length of my connection has fostered a deep understanding of the company and its culture, and I have become genuinely passionate about preserving its DNA.

The spirit of MGID has always been entrepreneurial. We closely monitor market shifts and have built the organisation to quickly recalibrate at scale. Maintaining this agile mindset is essential for us to remain true to who we are while continuing to deliver what our clients and partners need.

However, obsessive preservation can easily lead to stagnation. There must always be room for outside experience to add value. In my first years with MGID, I found surprising uses for knowledge that I never expected to apply in business. That included harnessing insights from my aerospace engineering degree, about development feedback loops that create a self-sustaining innovation cycle, with continuous information flowing between clients, teams and software experts.

Following my homecoming as CEO, I’m keen to do the same again. For instance, working at GroupM (now WPP Media) was a useful opportunity to see the industry from a new angle, looking past MGID’s open web focus and peering inside the walled gardens. Gaining an enhanced understanding of the challenges and constraints of the media giants allows us to build more robust and wide-reaching strategies.

Q: What piece of advice would you give to any business leader from your own experiences from the frontline?

Never lose sight of the day-to-day issues facing your team. As a leader, it’s easy to become detached, especially when you’re no longer so directly involved in the “doing”.  The fact is that the people on the ground see the most and take the fiercest heat, which means they have a clearer view of whether tactics actually work and what changes are needed.

So, as much as strategy matters and should be your North Star, you also need to remember that once you lose touch with the real action, you also lose touch with the reality of your business.