The journey of Glasnost: from telling time to building the clock

When I started Glasnost, I was mostly busy with clients. Delivering great work, hitting deadlines, solving problems. Classic founder time: you are involved in everything, because without you it falls apart.

Until I read Built to Last by Jim Collins and came across the concept I now use in every growth program: Clock Building, Not Time Telling. The idea is simple. You can be someone who can tell the time (handy, but dependent on you). Or you can build a clock that tells the time without you (infinitely more valuable).

Translated to companies: you can plug holes every day, or you can build a system that keeps running when you are not there. Most founders do the first for years, until they hit the wall.

At Glasnost that realisation hit around ten colleagues. We delivered great work, clients were happy, but the company would immediately collapse without me. That insight was the starting point of a transformation that took years. It came down to four things.

Vision

First step was formulating a clear vision. We imagined a future in which Glasnost not only excelled in PR but became market leader in creative and strategic communications. We made that vision tangible by hanging our BHAG as a poster on the wall.

Sounds cliché. It was not. Because every time an applicant walked in or a new client sat in the office, they saw where we were heading. It became a topic of conversation. It became a selection criterion. And internally it became the yardstick to decide whether an initiative fit or not.

Culture

Then we focused on culture. Not the poster version, but the real one: how do we make decisions, how do we treat each other, what do we not tolerate.

An important step was sharing profit with our colleagues. Not a bonus scheme with complicated formulas, but a clear message: if the company does well, everyone does well. That changed the conversation about money. It changed the conversation about responsibility. And it strengthened the sense of ownership, because colleagues literally became co-owners of the result.

People

At one point we ran into a labour market shortage we could not solve by recruiting better. We decided to train talent ourselves through a traineeship for fresh graduates.

That cost time. That cost money. And it was a real investment at first, because those trainees produced less than they cost in the early days. But it built a pipeline of mediors who grew with us for years. Far longer than the average in the PR sector. And those mediors eventually became the backbone of the company, precisely because they had grown up in our culture.

Systems and processes

Finally we looked at our processes. With a lean coach, we mapped the most important workflows, literally with post-its on the wall. Which steps were in our quote flow? In our reporting flow? In our feedback loops with clients?

It was confronting. We were shocked by the number of handovers, the number of people unnecessarily involved, and the number of steps we did "because we always did it that way." By streamlining, we made the work more transparent for everyone and built a foundation we could keep growing on without me having to make every decision.

Read more on the background in the explanation of lean manufacturing.

Six years after the sale

On 2 October 2020, I sold Glasnost and Fitzgerald to an agency group. Three months later I handed Glasnost over to Henk Boersen, who had worked there since 2013, and stepped out of daily management. What happened next fits into one word: nothing. Within two months, the company operated fully independently. And profit did not fall, as you might expect when a founder walks out the door. It rose because the company kept growing. That is no joke. It is exactly what you see in a company built to operate without you.

The second proof was more painful. From the moment the deal was signed, I worked closely with the group and saw from the inside how the other companies operated. Glasnost was one of the few where the founder could step away without anything happening, and our processes proved more advanced than those of the group itself. I had joined assuming it would be the other way around. In your own company, you can spend years believing your clock works. You only know when you place it next to someone else's, or when you step out and someone else steps in. I got both at once.

What remains now, almost six years later? The Glasnost name is gone: it became part of Ace PR in early 2025, announced in a three-minute phone call. The company continues under Henk, with a different name above the door. Seven people who learned their craft at Glasnost now lead a company larger than Glasnost ever was, or started one themselves. In May 2025, a hundred and thirty former colleagues drank the final bottle of our own vodka. The Last Bottle. A full stop after what had been.

What we built was ultimately not a company but a training institute. We never started one; we built one by accident, using precisely the things that build a clock: taking the second seat, rhythm, letting people make decisions in front of the client, and values you can hire and let people go by. When you make yourself dispensable, you make your people employable. Elsewhere too. That is worth more than every euro I ever received.

What I would build differently now

Ask me what I would have done differently with what I know now, and the answer comes in ten seconds. Nothing. I simply would not have sold it. A company that can operate without you is two things at once: the company that commands the highest price if you sell, and the company you do not have to sell. I had built the clock that kept every route open, and I used it for exactly one: the only route where you give it away. It has taken me almost six years to be able to say that.

What I would have built differently is the second clock: the numbers. At Glasnost I worked with five different bookkeepers and controllers over four years, and throughout that time I did not know how much was left. The organisation's clock was running; the accounting clock had stopped. Anyone who cannot see their own numbers cannot wait, and anyone who cannot wait makes decisions under pressure.

And the mistake I now see most often among founders who want to build a clock after reading Collins? They delegate and call it clock building. You recognise it by one sentence on the work floor: "ask" followed by someone's name. As long as that name is yours, the process lives in your head and not in the system. The test is simple and uncomfortable: which fixed meeting in your company continues on the day you are home sick, and who chairs it then?

The impact

Clock building has fundamentally changed how I look at growth. Not because the clients noticed (although they did) but because I started to position myself differently in it.

I no longer worked in the business, I worked on the business. Decisions were made by others, often better than I would have made them. I could be away for weeks without work grinding to a halt. And most importantly: there was something larger than me, something that could keep existing for years longer than I would be involved myself.

That is what clock building delivers. Not just a scalable business, but also the freedom as a founder to choose your next step.