MEL #065 | From Technical Expertise to Meaningful Impact Through Strategic Thinking and Asking Why with Dr. Bharat Madan

Speaker A: What is it that we are trying to solve? Why are we solving it that matters? Most of the people are able to say what and how. I come in and say, why do we want to do this? And that helps us to decode few things, apply necessary, uh, tools which are needed for that specific scenario instead of applying everything that we know. Everything is simple if you keep on asking why.

Speaker B: From the Tickle College of Engineering at the University of Tennessee. This is Mastering Engineering Leadership, where we talk to engineers about their career journeys, discuss real life leadership challenges they've tackled, and get their actionable advice on how to achieve success as a leader with an engineering background. I'm, um, your host, Dr. Angelique Adams. In this episode, I speak with Dr. Bharat Madan, founder and Managing Partner of D Journey Advisory, a decision stage advisory for leaders driving AI transformation and value creation in Complex transitions. Bharat describes growing up in India with a civil engineer father who inspired his love of mathematics and problem solving. That early exposure made engineering an obvious career choice, while his curiosity about computers led him toward information technology. After graduation, he quickly discovered that engineering was about much more than programming. Early assignments in strategy and healthcare technology taught him that connecting ideas, understanding business problems, and applying engineering thinking across domains were just as valuable as technical expertise. In our leadership segment, Bharat shares the story of introducing innovation into a traditional manufacturing company. Instead of relying on executive mandates, he built momentum from the shop floor by encouraging frontline employees to identify problems and develop solutions. His advice to engineers interested in leadership focus on becoming outstanding people and problem solvers rather than chasing leadership titles. Leadership grows naturally when engineers combine technical excellence, patience, empathy, and continuous learning. Explore the full episode summary, including guest bio, key takeaways, transcript and recommended resources in the show notes@drangeliqueadams.com podcast without further delay, here is my conversation with Dr. Bharat Madan. Hi Bharat. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

Speaker A: Hey Angelique. Thank you so much. So happy to be here. So glad that you gave me this opportunity.

Speaker B: I'm thrilled to have you here. Thank you. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

Speaker A: So, originally I'm from India, right. You know, Angelica, I'm based out of Luxembourg, but I. I grew up in India. And in India there's a saying that you first become an engineer and then you decide who you want to be. Jokes apart, right? My dad is an engineer. He's a civil engineer, and I think he instilled that passion of studying mathematics and solving problems. Right. So he would always challenge us when we were growing up asking different mathematical problems, taking us to the construction sides, talking about how engineers create, you know, new things, applying knowledge, and how passionate he was because he, he grew up in a very difficult scenario. So he studied himself and he worked hard to become an engineer. So it was obvious for me that one of the choices or foremost choices for me would be engineering and then I'll decide who I want to be. But as an education, uh, this was clear. So that's how I got into engineering and I picked up information technology, computer sciences. Because while I was growing up in high school, I loved computer sciences, I loved algorithms, I loved how we could talk to the silly machine and make it do weird stuff. So that, that got me into engineering. And yeah, since then I just keep on learning new things about it.

Speaker B: And can you talk a little bit about some of the things you've done with your engineering degree? And then I know you also went on to get additional education, so can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I, especially in my case, right. So I did my engineering and in India, in engineering schools, while you're already there, the companies, they would come and visit the campus and then they'll recruit you, right? So one of the, one of the largest Indian IT service providers, they were visiting the campus and they offered me a job. So after my engineering, I joined them as software, uh, engineer trainee. And, and it's one of the major learnings, right. So after four years of graduation, again, they asked us to go back and learn more stuff about engineering. Right. So we were sent for an internal school for four months, all sponsored. So it was a job, but for four months we were learning different programming languages, different data structures, applications for it. Right. How do you apply what you have learned now in a professional scenario? So in four months we learned different things. We were working on different applications from banking to insurance to healthcare. But at the end I was asked to join corporate strategy. Being an engineering conglomerate, this company was called Larson, or it's still called Larsen and Toubro. It's a huge engineering conglomerate in India. They construct everything from nuclear plants to roads to bridges to information technology. So I started with them as a software engineer trainee. But within four months I was in the corporate strategy department where we were working more on solving business issues. How this engineering company, which was into manufacturing domain, how can this become now a professional IT service and consulting organization? So I was working with McKinsey and uh, Boston Consulting Group at that time, helping them to do the IPO preparedness program. And that was my first application of what I learned as an engineer, which did not involve programming but it involved connecting the dots, it involved solving the issues. And this I did for about six months to one year. And immediately after that I moved to business unit strategy. That's where I started to apply engineering fundamentals. I joined a group called Healthcare um within the large company we were setting up healthcare IT organization for the American market, HIPAA compliant electronic health records and personal health records. So very quickly I had to learn the agile programming, agile management and the product management to develop a product. So I worked more towards the aspect of identifying the business problems, right. Doing the market study and converting them into product specifications and then working with the architects to develop those solutions. So uh, essentially I did not get too much of hands on in the early days in programming, but that's where I keep on, even with my son, I keep on talking about it does not mean that that's not engineering. Applying different things in a different way is engineering specifically for the current context. When now you can wipe code, right? People who have not learned by hard the programming aspects, which we did for four years now, you can do it on day one, right. So you, if you have logic, you uh, can start to apply things and get the results. So that's how I started to apply what I learned. And one of the other most important things, at least from the college where I was coming in from uh, the engineering school that I learned was how do you prepare yourself at a very, you know, with the, within the constraints and solve the problem. Right. So in the engineering school we had so many topics we were bombarded on, right. So the application's time was limited but at the same time we didn't know we had to find different ways to solve those aspects and then very quickly turn out, you know, the results similarly in the current uh, context. Right. So when I was working we had to work on different problems, identifying, searching on different things, researching on it and then trying to just connect the dots together and solve it. Yeah, that the hardening part really helped from the school.

Speaker B: So one of the things that comes to mind on what you're talking about, you know you've, you've done work in various different domains. So you talked about healthcare records. And then of course you and I met while we were both at Appram, which is a uh, heavy manufacturing environment. And now you're, you have your own advisory business in AI and so you have, I'm sure there are probably other stops along the way, but you have been in situations where you're Devising the strategy and implementation in very different domains. And I'm just curious how you go about educating yourself and coming up the learning curve on these different domains such that you can, you know, help advise on strategy.

Speaker A: Yeah, the curiosity that's. I've always been curious. Right. So I started to program when I was in high school when we were not offered this as a text, you know, as, as a subject. So, uh, this is one of the issues with me. If you tell me that this is the textbook, then I'm not interested. I'm always venturing around and that that curiosity has always helped me and that put me in this specific unique position where not many people are fitting and not many people are needed at the same time. Right. People who can work at the intersection of different things. Those m. In the Venn diagram, where there's a strategy, there's technology, and then there's change management. How do you find yourself within those intersections is where I, I enjoy being in that position to be able to predict what might happen in different business models by studying, you know, different books, you know, following. I'm a voracious reader, not so much now because of Internet and everything that I keep on exposing myself with. So I always expose myself whatever is coming in the market, studying it and then trying to apply it even if it fails. Right. When we met in Apparam, I was applying one of the books I was inspired during that time before you joined, which was Lean Startup book by Eric Reid. Right. So I was basically implementing the entire uh, startup way of thinking in the manufacturing domain because I was inspired by book and I thought this will work. And I experimented. It worked fine. The ability to understand what is happening in the market and what are the problem statements and asking the right questions and then solving it gives me different kinds of, of happiness. I uh, love to pause, reframe and reflect every single. And that has helped me to move my business from one domain to the other. And I keep on, after 20 years into this uh, you know, industry of uh, being in corporate, being in manufacturing, in entrepreneurship and strategy consulting, I see same patterns keep on repeating. We were just talking before we start, right. So you saw how the lean manufacturing started. And then there was um, you know, WW website, Internet connectivity bomb. Then we talked about digital transformation. Before that it was cloud strategy. And now everybody wants to talk about AI strategy. And every single time the buzzword is different, but fundamentally, how do we fix the process? How do we ask right questions? What is it that we are trying to solve? Why are we Solving it that matters. Most of the people are able to say what and how? I come in and say, why do we want to do this? And that helps us to decode few things, apply necessary, uh, tools which are needed for that specific scenario. Instead of applying everything that we know, just try to solve. Everything is simple if you keep on asking why, right? So we try to find problems for solutions that we have created as engineers or as technologists. Right? So somebody would come, come up and say, I have a patent. You might have seen it much more than me being R and D leader. So the innovation guys, they will come up and say, okay, we have found a, ah, wonderful technology or a solution. This is a patented technology. Let's find a problem that it can solve. I hate that scenario. Although with all full respect to the scientists, it should be the other way around. Um, let's try to ask what is the problem and then see what are the tools available that can solve this problem. And that's engineering because you do not try to create something new. You apply what you know. And yeah, since then I've been doing this and it works so far because I'm able to connect those things by being empathetic with the senior leaders who are trying to say, okay, Bharat, we tried to implement AI strategy. We got, you know, expensive smart guys who developed this AI strategy for us. Now things are not materializing, we have wasted millions of dollars. What is the issue? And we come and start to ask those questions. Did you find the right use case? Uh, are these use case scalable? Did you think about the future? If the AI in this scenario is going to take over, who will take the governance aspect of it? Who will make the decision if your processes are broken? The. Agents. Agents will, will be broken also. Right? Because you're replicating what you know. So asking those questions are, ah, helping us to get those leaders. Go back to the fundamentals of process engineering, process management, governance aspects. Because at the end all those golden books that we have read is much more useful, right? All the things that we have read from high school to graduation, those are the holy grail of everything that we do. Instead of jumping the guns up next,

Speaker B: we'll dive into a leadership case study exploring a real world challenge our guest has faced and how they tackled it. Don't go anywhere. We'll be back after a short break. Ah, all right, Bharat, can you give us an example of how you use leadership skills in your work?

Speaker A: Yeah, so that's a very broad topic. You need to use leadership skills in everything that you do. That's my personal belief. But let me pick up one of the examples and since we are talking, I'll talk about one of the manufacturing companies example where I was heading digital uh, transformation and digital innovation practice for a very traditional company which is you know, company where a lot of blue collared workers are working. So their, their objective for me was to bring in innovative technologies being used. And I'm talking about few years ago, right the uh, 2016, 10 years ago or so. So when AI was still not a buzzword. So we wanted to bring AI, drones, technology. And my agenda was to try and uh, bring this forward because I totally believed in that. And in the beginning I started with a uh, very traditional way trying to one of the plant leaders picking up one of the examples, can we do it? But then the support was never there. So the top down in presentations and then going through this cycle of uh, manufacturing industry which is quite slow, did not materialize. So I was reading and have been practicing lean startup methodology which is build, measure and learn, right? So you build something mvp minimum viable product which is very useful concept for any engineers then should know it, right. And then measure. So you deploy your product and you measure the results, then you learn from it, right? So instead of building the entire Ferrari, how can you build you know a uh, simple bicycle to go from point A to B and then learn from the experiences. So designing the hypothesis, then running the experiments. So instead of going top down, I developed that innovation process which was about setting up the, I called it learning labs. And in between there was experimental labs and then the design lab so that you can push the things forward using this particular cycle. I start instead of going top down, right. This is where the leadership principles are very deep. I started to go bottom up. I started to launch small innovation days in the plants to uh, motivate blue collared workers. So I would rather, instead of taking permissions, I ask for forgiveness from the plant because I was not doing any, anything harmful the scenarios. Before I reached to the end, uh, there was uh, an innovation day that we established in one of the plants and I knew vision analytics for one of the use cases would work where we wanted to use the cameras and the data analytics to predict and to find out the flaws on the surface of steel, right. How can you do that? And I knew the solution would work but we were not able to deploy it from top down or different aspects. So instead of that we showed them the videos of Pizza Hut or Domino's, I forgot which one was that where they were showing how they use the vision analytics to confirm the quality of pizza. And after showing this we asked that question from the blue collared workers, quality leads. How would you use this if you had to use this? Right. Because they were very excited. What would be your idea from that? And uh, proactively all of them or many of them started to give the same example that we wanted to. And then we said that's a wonderful example, why don't you apply it? Right? We will support you. And that helped us to build the business case. So using that as one of my first success, I went back to the board and we got the support and together with other leaders we were able to launch the entire innovation cycle for the entire company where we were able to gamify uh, this identifying of problem statements from the blue collared workers asking them how would they solve it, bringing them into one team, following the three processes, right. That I talked about in the beginning and then giving them an opportunity to show their POCs or their, I call them pretotypes, not prototypes. Right. So a wireframe, things that people can see, right. If it's not deployed and we let them, people vote for it, right. As if they were venture capitalists. Right. So this, this created a lot of excitement across the company. And at the end there were 10 groups that were selected and the entire leadership team was there to, to listen to those pitches. So we trained the leadership team to act like shark tanks, uh, judges and all the participants, they were there. We made the entire campaign around it. Right. So the couple of the uh, first of all, all 10 were successful. They were able to go back to their plants, they were able to launch those initiatives. The top two were supported by the management team. And the first winner, I think it became a spin off from the company. So it's now a successful company independently itself. So that for me, not just me, everybody who was involved in that activity, every single person from uh, blue collar to white collared workers who came together and worked together, they, they fought against the flow when nobody was believing in them. People thought the manufacturing companies, they are elephants and they move slow. These guys were able to show how they can move in a controlled environment and they all use new tools that we were able to train them. Right? So the business model, canvas, the blue ocean strategy, all those things that a uh, management consulting company would bring in, these guys were using it, right? So they were able to use it, deploy it because they wanted to be entrepreneur. They show that I met up and that for me was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done. Right after that, so many people reached out to me. Some people who were very emotional that they got an opportunity to present their idea to the CEO was, was very exciting while they were talking about things that they did for 20 years. And they are the right people who can make change. Right. So that, that, you know, enabling those guys to use the tools, to use the things that they already knew, and then letting them show what they can actually show. I see myself not doing anything. At the same time, this was something that they, they needed. And I always keep on going back to my students and the people that I coach to talk about that. Leadership is not about just going inside, announcing that this is what I need to do. It's getting the bottom up initiatives, enabling people who know the most and giving them the confidence that they need and let them shine. So you need to sit in the background and then smile and look. Uh, that's the leadership I want to continue, hopefully to continue to live for and be brave. Right. So I was challenged, and even after that, I was challenged a lot about the fundamentals of those things. Why do you want to do this? What are the other things that are useful? Why are you not following traditional project management principles? Sometimes you need to just challenge the status quo as, as the leader and stay firm for it. Right. Live by your values and that's, that's your character. So whatever is your character, live by it and make sure that you follow until the end is the correct leadership, uh, style, according to me.

Speaker B: That's a great example. There's, there's a lot of important pieces to that that I want to touch on. I think the first thing that comes to mind is kind of what you were talking about towards the end is I'm sure it was challenging. Right. So you are going against sort of the traditional dogma in a traditional company because you have a vision and you want to bring something new and you wanna, you wanna do this. Bottoms up. Can you talk just a little bit about some of the strategies that you personally use to kind of persevere through those initial stages? Right. I'm sure it was really tough in the beginning, but then once you actually had a success or two, it sounds like it probably really snowballed from there and you got a lot of momentum.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it was, it was hard, right? And it was hard even to continue to, you know, after, even after the success, to continue to make sure that you go to the success 2.0. It's not easy. But in the beginning it was really, really difficult. And I think the boring part and the things that you don't see are the most important things, right? Because when I was developing this, you as an individual or as a team, you would go with your own assumptions that I am passionate about this, this technique, this tool, this process. And I think leadership team should pay money for that. And then you start to feel very upset because when you go in present, you do not get any reaction. And then you start to believe the other guys do not understand. But, but I think what changed us as the team during that time, once we started to receive all those feedback that this will not materialize. And then we went through this phase of feeling upset about the leadership team that they don't understand the kind of vision that we are offering. Challenged ourselves that because we talked about design thinking workshops a lot, right? We did a lot of design thinking workshops in the company itself. Then we realized as a team that are we implementing what we are teaching to the other people? People, which is empathy. When you're designing a solution, you treat your customer right, you think about your customer, you put yourself in your customer's shoes and then you design and engineer a solution. In our case, we were not doing it right. So then when we started to think about each and every 4, 5 leadership team member we were uh, supposed to get approval from, we started to think about what are their challenges, right? As a CEO, you are managing a very difficult scenario. A company that is dealing in a very difficult situation. The market is going down. It's not easy to change a manufacturing company in, you know, like a technology company. You cannot deploy another solution and start to test. They have to be very careful, right? And the profitability is not very high, etc. Etc. So you need to get your attention in that format. So I started to win the trust from the guy who showed more interest in innovation, I would not name that person, of course, and started to show the early results first. So as I said, the couple of examples where I asked for forgiveness, I told them this is something I should not be doing. But hey, look at this particular scenario, we were able to move things forward. The thing that took us six months, now we were able to do it in six weeks or four weeks, right? So this is the money at stake. And things at stake we were able to prove from that scenario. So give me an opportunity because we are deploying a lean startup based work so we will not ask for huge money or any budget. So all I need is your approval. And that helped me a lot because I did not ask for budget. I gave them outcome first. Once the outcome was delivered, they started to put in their effort and trust because they were obviously right. Nobody should burn their budget like that. Otherwise it becomes an innovation. Right. What we see in other companies. This manufacturing company was very useful because it made me very humble, made me understand the value of patience, made me understand the value of alignment. Because if you're not aligned as humans, at the end, we all are humans. So if I was not aligned with all the other leadership team members, things will not fly. And that was what I got. A coach from the leadership team and I was coached by in that particular format that before I would go and present the entire business case, I would go to each and every single leadership team member, have an alignment first, understand, empathize, and then make sure that all those points are validated in the final discussion. And that helped me to push things forward.

Speaker B: Coming up, we'll discuss actionable advice and resources to help you on your own leadership journey. Stick around. We'll be back in a moment.

Speaker A: All. Ah, right.

Speaker B: As we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I can talk about it for next couple of hours and not stop. It's very difficult to summarize in few words, but I would definitely say that all engineers or whoever wants to be a leader should carve themselves out. Right. Should work on themselves during the early days. They should not try to fix the processes in the early days. They should try to learn from each and everything that is happening around them. Perseverance is very important for early starters in the, you know, once you start your career, at least from my experiences. Right. So as, as a young person, I wanted to be, or I still want to be ruthless, sometimes I want to move fast, move fast. Pace is very important. But for leadership style, sometimes patience is the most important aspect. Right. So you, how do you develop the sense of maturity to pause, as I repeated earlier. Right. So you need to pause at a scenario, then reframe how you see things. Right. As a, uh, as an engineer, as a person, as a leader, I always challenge myself. How would I do it differently? What is it that is missing? When the engineers are joining any kind of company, a technology or manufacturing company, they're given a project, they should ask themselves first that how would I do it differently? What is it that other people are missing? Can I add more value?

Speaker B: You.

Speaker A: And then after they have reframed it, try to implement it. Because becoming a leader should not be a destination, right? It should naturally come according to me, right? So I, I would not see myself being leader should not be a goal according to me, right? That's. It should just come naturally. They should be a good engineer, they should be a good human being, they should be a good problem solver, whatever is their value deep inside, right? Just nurture those values and make sure that they use those values, look at things differently, offer those things, be open to change in the early days and also later on, of course, and then see how the results would be delivered. Because people who just want to be leader, they will end up becoming team leaders, not the human leaders. Right? So, uh, I. That's. Maybe I'm wrong, but that would be my suggestion that please work on your human aspects. Please make sure that those values are seen by everyone else. Right? Find a mentor. That's very, very, very important. Find a mentor, a coach who is sitting beside you. Right? So who is cheering for you? Somebody who you can talk to and then take it from there. Yeah.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Angelique. Love talking to you today.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to Mastering Engineering Leadership. Today's episode was packed with actionable insights. Now it's your turn to put them into practice. If you're ready to take the next step in your leadership journey, hit subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might find it valuable. Until next time, I'm Dr. Angela Gaddams. Take care and lead with impact.