MEL #012 | From Struggling Employees to Thriving Teams with Shuchi “SK” Khurana

SK: Give it a try to turn people around and try to know the underlying dealing with people. You’re not saying, I’ll just throw you out and bring a new one in. It’s not like an apple you got old, I’ll buy a new apple. That’s not how it works.

They’re are people, you treat them with respect and you try to figure out what’s going on.

ADAMS: In this episode, I speak with Shuchi Khurana, who goes by SK, CEO and President of Addiguru which focuses on real-time monitoring solutions for additive manufacturing. SK’s journey into engineering was inspired by his father, an engineer, and his passion for math and physics. Growing up in India, he pursued material science at a top engineering school before moving to the US for graduate studies at the Ohio State University. After gaining industry experience in research and product management,

SK transitioned into entrepreneurship, founding multiple startups, including his current venture Addiguru In our leadership segment, SK shared insights into managing underperforming team members through two case studies. In both instances, he emphasized the importance of understanding the root causes of performance issues, providing structure and support, and investing time in mentorship. His approach led to significant improvements in productivity, demonstrating the value of patience and personalized guidance in leadership.

SK advises engineers aiming for leadership roles to carefully consider the responsibilities and challenges of management. He highlighted the importance of mentorship, both giving and receiving, and recommended taking time to develop leadership skills rather than rushing into managerial positions. His parting advice was to maintain honesty and authenticity, build relationships, and continuously seek learning opportunities. Without further delay, here’s my conversation with SK.

Hi, SK. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

SK: Thank you, Angelique for having me here.

ADAMS: Can you start out by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

SK: Sure, yeah. Engineering, my father is an engineer and always admired his professional abilities, even helped him do things around the house. I grew up in India, so

Definitely, I really enjoyed those things, especially putting electrical wires. I still remember as a teenager, we had to set up our doorbell ring. We lived in a kind of a condo building. It was a small condo building, but our apartment was on the third floor and there was no doorbell ring. So we ran along or we wanted somebody to ring our house, there was no wire like at the front of the building at the first floor. So we set it up. So anyways, that I remember that, hey, I helped him with that and we set it up and it worked very well. It was very helpful. And I always enjoyed math and physics and growing up in India at that time, there were a few things you could do.

Either you became a doctor or you became an engineer. If you were, if you’re, or you went into finance, you know, so definitely math and physics was exciting to me. Pure sciences was not that exciting, but engineering definitely was exciting. I think from the family standpoint, as well as from, you know, my experiences as a teenager. So, so yeah, I went to the engineering school, one of the top schools in India.

I did material science and engineering there. For various reasons, I chose material science, but every aspect of engineering excited me. I am that kind of person who likes designing stuff to going deep into material science, to going deep into writing code. So that makes me jack of all trades, master of none sometimes.

ADAMS: And then you decided to go to graduate school. Can you talk a little bit about that decision?

SK: Yes, so I was joking about jack of all trades, the master of none. So, but then I said, I need to become a master of something. So let’s pursue masters in engineering. And obviously the top engineering schools are in the United States and there are good career opportunities here afterwards as well. there are various, especially in back 20 plus years ago, even for masters in engineering, for thesis based masters, you could get a tuition waiver and maybe sometimes stipend. So that actually helped me coming from India, coming to a totally new country, being able to support myself on a very small stipend, but actually not having pay a tuition was a big deal. So I got into Ohio State University in a very good engineering program to do my masters.

And yeah, I started, I joined that and soon within masters, I had an opportunity to choose the project that I wanted to work on. And I chose a project which involved a simulation. So computational material science became my expertise.

ADAMS: And then after graduate school, I know you were in industry for a little while and then went into entrepreneurship. Can you talk a little bit about those transitions?

SK: Yeah, it was gradual. I really enjoyed doing technical work and I enjoyed going deep into the technical work. And I am glad I got a position as an engineer in a contract R &D firm which did very high-end research and development for both commercial and for the government sector. And I was able to work on very interesting cutting edge solutions, but also multiple projects for different technologies. So I really enjoyed my work there and then slowly got some managerial and leadership roles over time. And then slowly got into product management and product development. The company that I worked for was a small a hundred plus people company doing a lot of technical work. They had a lot of patents, but they were all just sitting there as blocks on the wall. And I talked to the CEO at the time and said, hey, we are just paying money to maintain these patents. Are we doing anything? Can we commercialize it? And he asked if I wanted to do it on the side.

To get started, I created a plan and showed it to him. They liked it. They actually asked me to do it full time. So I took six technologies from the portfolio, which were at different levels of commercialization. A couple of them were almost commercial products. A couple of them were like very, very early stage, but the technology was proven. took them all and got into a so-called department, one person department called Product Line, Product Line Department. And I was the manager of the one person department, but it gave me a lot of good information, good knowledge, as well as, and then I decided to pursue my MBA as well. So I did my MBA part-time MBA from Ohio State University. And I think it helped both, both the role and the role helped me in my education as well. So coming out of that, I was really, you know, we commercialized a few products. I learned a lot. And then I said, you know, I got introduced to entrepreneurship during my MBA, took a couple of classes, which was about technology commercialization and doing it as a startup. so we, you know, I thought about why not start a company. And at the same time, my wife finished her PhD and she got a job in a different city. So, so I had to leave the job in that company anyways, so like this is a good time to start, start a company and see how it goes. And I said, we’ll give it a year or two and we’ll see how it happens. Even when I came to United States, I said, we’ll give it a year or two and see what happens, know, what things take. So be careful when, when say, Hey, a year or two. So yeah, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So I started a company and realized quickly that it may not work out, but then at the same time, another person who was looking for a co-founder came in our arm with the technology. So we started that company and we ran that medical device startup for about six years. I then left the company. The company is actually still there, but it’s still a shell and people are still working, but I left it. It was almost eight years ago. And then I started working for a large, large company. And then the story is again, once an entrepreneur, it’s difficult to say no because new ideas come to your mind and you keep saying no till something you really can’t say no to. And that’s what came to my mind is this company, Adiguru. The idea was pointed to me by one of my mentors. I was talking to him about different things and I looked into the market and I looked into the technology. It all appealed to me and that’s when I decided to leave the job and start Addiguru in 2019.

ADAMS: There’s two things that you said in your career journey that I wanted to ask you a little bit more about. So one is this idea you said, let’s give it a year. Let’s try it and give it a year. you have taken some pretty big risks or maybe not risk, maybe you didn’t see them as risk, but you’ve made some pretty big changes is maybe a better way to say it in your life with this idea that you would just give it a year or two. So leaving India and then, starting your first entrepreneurial venture. I’m just curious where that idea comes from, where this sense of, let’s just try it see what happens. And if it doesn’t work out, I can always pivot. I mean, I think a lot of people feel very stuck in what they’re doing and don’t have either the courage or the risk tolerance or I’m not exactly sure how you would characterize it, but they wouldn’t think to do that. So I’m just curious if you have any thoughts on where that where that comes from?

SK: I don’t know where that comes from, from the family or something, because my father, my grandparents, and all come from very so-called risk-averse family. never, I mean, didn’t have any business in the family or anything like that. But I guess taking maybe, and some of the risks were not even calculated as, for example, well, coming to US was a pretty easy choice because there was, know, tuition was paid off. was in my early twenties getting a master’s degree anyway. So it was, that was, I won’t say that was a huge risk. It was a cultural risk, but it was also in your early twenties, you know, it’s exciting to see other parts of the world. So, that too, you know, it’s very low financial risk for you.

But I think the biggest risk people told me, and I didn’t realize it was a risk, is when I was doing very well in that company, I was working in which I started and was getting more and more leadership roles. But instead of keep climbing the ladder, I moved into product line management and people came up to me and said, hey, you were doing so well and you’re doing so well, why you’re taking, moving to this? If it doesn’t work out, it’ll look bad on you. And it never even, I was like, don’t think so it’ll look bad on me if it doesn’t work out okay, at least I’ll know this doesn’t work or maybe it doesn’t work for the company and I’m okay. Either way, but if, you know, company sees it okay, I’ll move back to the previous job or find something else, you know. I think trusting your abilities is important. Maybe that’s what it is. I trust my abilities and yeah, it’s a little bit of financial risk but if you have other basis of finance covered, then you’re Okay, for example, starting this company Addiguru in 2019, I knew for a year or two, I will not get paid anything rather I’ll have to invest money from my pocket. But my wife has a full-time job, she has health insurance and we had some say, we don’t live a very fancy life. financially,

Okay. Yeah. We won’t be able to take very nice vacations or anything like that, but you know, we should be fine. was nothing, you know, like big cost cutting yet to do, to do that. in 2009, I think, leaving that job and the financial market was not that good. Was not a bright idea because it was not a good idea. It was, it would have been smarter to figure out, you know, to do something on the side rather than starting something on your own and just leave the job, a well-paid job. So I’ve made some decisions which I would go back and say, yeah, not the smartest ones.

ADAMS: Yep, that’s totally fair. I think that’s true for many of us. And I like what you said, largely because it’s also the way that I’ve thought about it too. So it resonated with me, but just this idea of, when you come up with a change, you can actually do the risk assessment and be thorough about it. In your case, the financial risks, you know, maybe associated with that one of the moves that you made, you’re like, our lifestyle supports it. Your spouse has a job that supports it. And so even though it might’ve been a change for you, you did the math and you’re like, yeah, we can probably make this work. And I think a lot of people fail to actually follow through and maybe even put pen to paper and go through the full analysis. It just stays in their head and then they kind of get stuck on it. So I just wanted to double click on that. The other thing that you said in your career trajectory that I thought was really interesting time that you went to your company and said, we’ve just got these patents here. Is anybody going to commercialize them? And it sounds like they said, no. you want to take the initiative on that? So you took the initiative 

to do something that maybe the company wasn’t even doing at all at that point or doing at a minimal capacity. And I’m curious where you got the interest in doing the commercialization and also this sense that, yeah, I’m willing to start an office of one and see if I can’t turn this into something.

SK: Yeah, so doing something new doesn’t bother me some people are very worried that, hey, I’m gonna ask them something and they’re gonna say no. It’s like, at the most they’re gonna say no. And I think my grandmother used to tell me that if you don’t ask, you will definitely not get. If you ask, you may get, I think the conversation there with the CEO was on the hallway and it was like, hey, you want to make it a big company? There’s a one way to do it is commercialize. This is one avenue. Have you thought of it? I was a young guy. What did I know about business and these things? And he said, yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s look into it. So yeah, it just turned out to be, okay, I have this idea and I’ll run it by him. At the most he’ll say, Not a great idea, you know, do go do your job. I was okay with that. Sounds good. And so you’ve taken, you know, your deep technical background, your business background, your product development background. kind of, all of these have been, been forming and developing and refining over the years.

ADAMS: And so now you are CEO of Addiguru. Can you tell us a little bit about what Addiguru does? 

SK: Yes. Thanks for that. Adiguru is a small company right now. are actually, we have a, we’re a software company that does real-time monitoring of additive processes, or I should say additive manufacturing processes using sensors and analyzing that data using machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. The idea is that a manufacturing process is being looked at 

by cameras, infrared cameras or thermal cameras, then that data is analyzed automatically to tell a user whether something wrong is going on in their manufacturing process. So this helps with efficiency, this helps with quality control, and then certification of parts as well.

ADAMS: And as CEO, do you feel like you’re back to being Jack of all trades again, or you mentioned that in beginning?

SK: Somebody said that recently. It’s like, I was like, I’m very busy. I don’t have time to do it. Like you do it to yourself. You know that, right? And you do it to yourself. like, yeah. That’s how you manage your time. So that’s the important part. But yeah, I have, as a small company or as a small business, you have to do wear multiple hats. And the reason is just sometimes financial, sometimes it’s just the way it is.

For a very small company, less than 10 people, you cannot hire a full-time HR person. You cannot hire a full-time accountant. You cannot hire a full-time CFO, know, marketing person. And at this moment, our sales director is also not full-time. So as you grow, then you can bring in people full-time and then your job becomes different. So when we were smaller, my job was different. As we are growing, my job is to hire more people, put them in place, and then let them do what they’re doing. Earlier, my job was to manage everyone and everything. It still is managing a lot of stuff, but I’m trying to get more people in place so that they can. And that’s why growth is important, is two reasons. One, it makes overall people more efficient and more focused on what they’re doing as well as, you know, it’s, know, growing also means that you’re helping more people. That’s why you started a company for, your customers and your, stakeholders.

ADAMS: Okay, SK, what leadership situation are we going to be talking about today?

SK: I think we can talk about personal leadership where I have experience of a couple of people who worked with me. They were underperforming and how, you know, one can help sometimes underperforming people bring up. So yeah, I will give two examples. One, they’re slightly different, but in the core they are similar. They were underperforming as I said earlier. There was one girl I worked in a company. She was not exactly reporting to me, but she was pretty much, know, I was pretty much like her manager. So because…

Common manager basically would take my input for the performance and she was working with me on the products we were commercializing. So anyways, this girl was underperforming and she just was not up to the mark. She was on her phone all the time. She was doing other things and it was very evident to everyone, but I think it was not evident to her.

My manager wanted to just let her go, but I told him to give her a chance and let me work with her. So I worked with her, not her fully knowing that, you know, not her knowing at all that this was on the cards because that, but anyways, we worked with her. I sat down with her and I realized she needs more structure. And I think that’s a common thing with you know, especially young engineers, young people start their job. Managers maybe sometimes don’t have enough time to give them structure. So she needed some structure, needed a task list, she needed a touch base every day or maybe a couple of times a day to just keep her. And then also some excitement about what we’re doing, why we’re doing. And also a question about what do you wanna do, why you wanna do, you know, things like that. So I sat down, spent more time with her.

Definitely was an investment of my time, but actually it paid off because she was more productive after that, which helped me and the products and other people as well. So she was able to turn around. Similar story with another guy. He actually started a job after grad school. And then in this job with us, he would just wake up late. There were times and the meeting was like 9 a.m. meeting. He would show up at 9.30 and said, sorry, I overslept or hey, sorry, I couldn’t make it. And, he would be late to the meetings and things like that. A little bit with as to his personality, but, his job is not commercial jobs. So it’s not like that’s, but then professionalism is very important. And you can’t work like that. So and show up at 11 AM and work till like 8 PM in the night, you know, you have to work with other people. So you’ve got to adjust. And so, initially some warnings were given, told him what professionalism is and what are his timings and this and that, but that helped a little bit, but then he would slip back. So then obviously I talked to some advisors and stuff and the thing was, hey, give him some more warnings and if not, we’ll have to find somebody else. But well, that was definitely on the cards, but I said, okay, on the same time, let’s let’s try to understand why it’s happening, why it really is happening. And kudos to that guy he was willing to share. And he shared that he had some medical issue and that’s why he couldn’t sleep properly in the night. And that’s why he would feel sleepy during the day and also wake up late and things like that, or even miss a loud blaring alarm on his phone.

So overall his life was a little bit of a mess from that standpoint, you know. And I can understand if you can’t sleep well, it’ll just not only throw your professional life, but also personal life into the mess, which was also further affecting his sleep. So it was making it worse. So just, think talking with me every once in a while and talking out loud helped him. And also he eventually went to a doctor. I think he started exercising also a little bit more.

He’s overall a pretty fit guy. So he just had fallen off. And so he got back into whatever he does. So overall things are much better now. And, you know, things are, you know, not late, rather cognizant of when the meetings are and start some time and things like that. So, which is very helpful. I think his, one of, you know, one of the employees same age as him is very, very professional, makes lists and things like that. So I think they interact also quite a bit and they like each other. So I think good habits are rubbing off onto him as well, which is also great because I would encourage them to talk more and discuss more hand lunches and things like that. yeah, is, what I, my takeaway is, and it’s not that I had to lay off, I had to let a couple of people go just for performance reasons as well.

But give it a try to turn people around and try to know the underlying reason. I think that’s very important because you’re dealing with people. You’re not saying, hey, you’re not an employee. I’ll just throw you out and bring a new one in. It’s not like an apple you got old, I’ll buy a new apple. That’s not how it works.

They’re are people, you treat them with respect and you try to figure out what’s going on. And I think it works out for everyone.

ADAMS: Yeah, I think that’s a great example. Underperforming will happen to any leader. Having someone who’s an underperformer will happen to any leader at some point in their career. I really appreciate you bringing this example. And I like the idea of saying, let’s first start by trying to work with them and seeing if we can’t understand what they need to be better performers.

And you did mention that, in some cases it hasn’t worked out and you’ve had to lay people off. there any underlying signals that you get that kind of has you say, yeah, this is someone I want to continue to work with versus someone that no, this is just not going to work out. I’m just curious if there’s anything you could point to that would help you that decision.

SK: Yeah. think honesty is my very high prior number, pretty high on my values list. So I think that’s what has happened maybe in these two examples I gave is when they were underperforming or they did something wrong, they may not admit something’s wrong, but they did not say, they did not lie. For example, this guy is late for a meeting. said, I overslept. He didn’t say, I had a flat tire. had to, know, with the common excuse of flat tire accident, know, it’s like I was late because I overslept. Like, okay, I’ll give you 100 marks for your honesty. And if you’re honest, I’m going to work with you. You know, I can, can at least trust you what you say, right? If somebody is not honest and they’re underperforming, I would, I don’t know what they’re going to do next because that’s, and personally, I’ll have tough time because if I’m going have a conversation and they’d respond and say something. How do I know it’s true? Right? I have to trust, at least that part has to be clear. Then only you can get to, and then obviously they have to be ready to share what is leading to underperformance in terms of, and be open about it as well. And yeah, there have been a couple of times underperforming people didn’t improve and were not.

And they might be underperforming. think one of the reasons they were underperforming, they were not at just the right fit for what we want to do and they wanted to do and the team wanted. So when the team also came up and says, sorry, we can’t work with this person and this person is not fitting anyways. That’s when it’s like, then it’s a good for them to go find something else.

ADAMS: I agree with that wholeheartedly. And oftentimes, I find that leaders delay too long in moving people either within their organization or out of their organization who don’t fit. And it can be hard and it can feel emotional and you don’t want this person to feel bad about their skills or whatever. But there are roles that need certain things done and some people can do them and some people can’t. And so I just appreciate you re-raising that as well, that sometimes it’s really just a matter of fit and having an honest conversation on both sides. So I do think that’s an important thing for leaders to be aware of, You have to figure out how to diagnose what is underperforming versus what is lack of fit. And sometimes they can, at the beginning, look exactly the same. But as you’ve been talking about doing this investigation, understanding what the root causes are and understanding the other person’s personal motivations and goals, 

can help you navigate which of those two buckets to put it in and then you can make better decisions from there.

SK: Yeah. Yeah, agree. But I haven’t had to lay off people because of, you know, so one thing is, we’re listening on this podcast, just out of context is don’t be on the bottom list of the organization because if they have financial issues, you’ll be the first one to go. So make sure if you’re higher performing or you’re in mid-level, you know, won’t be, know, So, so because every organization, big or small, goes through financial ups and downs. Sometimes they over hire. Sometimes there’s delay in money coming in for some reason. You know, I’ve heard recently, you know, so many companies, tech companies hired so many people, right? And during pandemic.

And then after pandemic, they realize they’ve over hired. So they’ve got so many jobs, right? So it can happen to all big, small companies. So this is my tips to young engineers is make sure you are a good fit. If not, just find something else yourself. If you’re not a good fit or go talk to your manager as well. But hey, I feel like I’m not fitting well. What could be the reason? And if the manager is not able to help you out, then maybe the manager is not a good fit for you.

ADAMS: Okay, SK, what advice would you give to engineers who want to move into leadership roles?

SK: Leadership comes naturally as you progress in your career. Now, whether it’s a managerial role or whether it’s a technical leadership role, it will depend how you want to proceed. If you really are technical and you have nobody reporting to you your entire life, that’s fine. But you will become technical leaders because of your experience and your knowledge.

And at that time, if you’re technical leader, you have to probably mentor young engineers or you’ll have people not reporting directly to you, but they look up to you. So how to give them time and how to nurture them, that will be there. If you’re in the managerial role, then it becomes your director’s responsibility. you definitely, think the biggest thing is you will have to spend time mentoring and nurturing people.

But one thing is having some mentors in your life is, can be very helpful. Direct or indirect mentors, you may call them mentors or you may call them friends. But I know for a few things, I call different people. I know if this person is gonna be able to help me with this question, this question, and they are happy to talk to me because they just, for whatever reason, they help me out.

They’re just nice, people generally help. And that’s what it is, is you get mentors at every stage, you need mentors. And then as you progress in your career, other people like your time and you give them time. think it’s so, so it works out. So it’s a good cycle that keeps going in life and you should maintain it over time.

But if you are itching to become a manager, be careful what you wish for because it’s not easy. And then leadership or managerial role is not easy. It has a lot of headaches. So be careful what you wish for and don’t jump into it too soon. Take your time.

ADAMS: That’s great advice, SK. 

SK: Thank you very much.