MEL #054 | From Perfectionist Engineer to Global Startup President through Cultural Flexibility and Discomfort as a Teacher with Darshan Deshmukh

DESHMUKH (00:00)

Don’t fall for the stereotype of personality, what fits with what role. I did that for the first 15 years. I said, I’m not a seller, for example. And I would shy away from it. What I realized is actually when, and when I started having conversations with the customers, prospects, like directly, my persona of a non-seller was actually a lot more powerful than what I thought.

ADAMS (00:50)

In this episode, I speak with Darshan Deshmukh, president at ProcureAbility, a Jabil company, delivering an industry-leading suite of procurement and supply chain services to global organizations. Darshan grew up in India with strong influences in engineering and math, which naturally drew him toward a technical career. He studied mechanical engineering, worked briefly in software, and then realized he was more interested in how business systems fit together than in writing code.

That insight led him to a master’s in supply chain at Penn State and into manufacturing and planning roles at IBM where he moved from technical roles into leadership and took on global assignments across multiple regions. He later transitioned into startups where he helped build and scale organizations and eventually stepped into executive leadership roles following acquisitions. In our leadership segment, Darshan talks about a defining challenge that came during his first startup experience. The company was growing quickly.

but depended heavily on one major customer who announced plans to shift most of the work to a larger provider within a year. That decision put significant pressure on revenue, morale, and leadership credibility. Rather than sugarcoating the situation, Darshan chose to be open and transparent with the team. The experience tested his resilience and reinforced the value of trust during prolonged uncertainty. Darshan’s advice for aspiring engineering leaders?

Stop waiting for perfect certainty before stepping into leadership roles. Many of the most important career decisions involve risk, discomfort, and acting without all the answers. He also encourages engineers to apply their analytical thinking to people, teams, and organizations, not just to technical problems and to avoid common identity traps, such as believing you are not a seller or not the leadership type. His core message is to take smart risks, trust your instincts, and let discomfort be a signal for growth.

Explore the full episode summary, including guest bio, key takeaways, transcript, and recommended resources in the show notes at drangeliqueadams.com slash podcast. Without further delay, here is my conversation with Darshan Deshmukh.

ADAMS (02:51)

Hi, Darshan. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

DESHMUKH (02:54)

Thanks, Angelique Nice to be here and looking forward to the conversation.

ADAMS (02:57)

I am too. Can you start out by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

DESHMUKH (03:01)

Sure, it’s been a long time back now. ⁓ So I grew up in India and my dad had a small scale engineering manufacturing firm and my mom was a ⁓ teacher in math. So as a child, analytical numbers was kind of one of my interest areas. Like I remember, like we always joke about it as like, even as a kid, like six, seven years old,

I will always remember like the statistic in the newspapers, like you read the newspaper and you remember the numbers. like numbers was always one of my kind of favorite part of the like growing up. And that was, and then ⁓ I grew up in India. like in late 80s, early 90s, that that was basically most of the career paths within like, if you are good in numbers, if you are good analytically, then engineering or medicine were like the two career tracks.

And both my parents basically were in that space. So I was kind of almost kind of groomed into that and then did well in entrance exams and got into one of the top engineering schools. So that’s how I got into engineering.

ADAMS (04:03)

Okay, so there definitely has some family background there. Can you tell us how you picked mechanical engineering?

DESHMUKH (04:08)

So I think it was a little bit of a… So I was interested in building and putting the pieces together. If I want to think about it, what interested me, it’s less about engineering and building stuff, but it was more about deconstructing a problem into smaller pieces and being able to solve those problems. And I think that’s the skill, would say, even as my education, that’s one of the biggest takeaways for me was…

no matter whether it’s engineering or organization or people, your ability to deconstruct a problem and being able to solve it piece by piece and putting it all together, that was always kind one of my interest areas and I was kind of passionate about. And mechanical engineering was like, I grew up in Pune, India, which is kind of a manufacturing hub in India. Most of the automobile manufacturing was there, like while growing up.

⁓ there were like four or five different models of cars in India. That’s it. Like there weren’t a lot of people that drove cars. But there was a Mercedes plant in Pune, which was like they’ve manufactured Mercedes like outside of Germany. That was one area where they manufacture it. And that was one of my dream cars like growing up like, ⁓ that’s Mercedes. Like you can look at it then. And, and I think I saw that as a career to get into kind of automobiles and getting into kind of building stuff. And that’s how I got

And one of the programs that I went to in Pune, that’s one of the top mechanical engineering programs in India as well. So it kind of all pieces kind of fit together and I got into mechanical engineering.

ADAMS (05:36)

And you’ll have to clarify the career path a little bit for me if I’m wrong, but I do know that you then went back to school to work in supply chain at Penn State. So I’m also a Penn Stater. And so did you actually work in engineering for a few years before you went back to school for that? Or can you just talk a little bit about what those transitions were like?

DESHMUKH (05:54)

Sure. So after undergrad, I think this was late 90s. And late 90s is when in India, the software engineering was starting to pick up. The overall IT outsourcing was starting to pick up. And Pune was one of the hubs because it was engineering center. And it’s called Oxford of East because we had so many engineering schools as part of the oral ecosystem.

lot of American companies, a lot of European companies were setting up their shops in Pune at that point in time. So after I graduated, that was one of the areas I got into actually software engineering. Like even if I was mechanical engineer, I was hired as a software engineer in one of the one of the multinationals. And I wanted to do masters. And as part of that, like I was kind of figuring out what I want to do. Software was one of the ways to kind of okay, start

making good money. that was the point, like early 20s, like you don’t know what you don’t know. And then you kind of also exploring that, right? So software was not my thing. I enjoyed working there, but actually building software was not like my passion. And then I was kind of thinking about what I enjoy most and operations and kind of how these pieces fit together.

was an interesting part of it. the software that I was building was in supply chain. It was ERP. So how the business processes fit together was kind of something that really excited me. that’s OK. Supply chain was a new term in like 99, 2000s that time. So everybody called it operations. And I thought it was operations. And then Penn State called it a supply chain program.

⁓ And PennState is one of the top supply chain programs in the world. And I kind of was looking at this could be a good way to kind of learn about myself on from a training perspective. Engineering, you learn some analytical technical skills. Now software, kind of know what you don’t want to do. And then the next thing is, okay, do you want to do more on the business process side? And that’s how

I got into kind of supply chain and I did the master’s in supply chain at Penn State. And I was lucky to kind of get a full ride. I was able to kind of come to US, did two years in grad school in Penn State and then got into IBM. I did my internship at IBM. That’s where I got into supply chain and more focused on like traditional supply chain management.

ADAMS (08:13)

Okay, can you talk a little bit of just about your career trajectory from there?

DESHMUKH (08:16)

Yeah, sounds good. So I started in manufacturing. I was in Rochester, Minnesota, where we were doing ⁓ basically low-end server manufacturing. And my first job within IBM was in supply-demand planning. So this is like as of supply chain as it goes, the demand forecasting, figuring out the models. So now that connected my interest area within numbers and the statistics and those things with the business process and being able to kind of

touch all these different things was one of the great things that came out of that role. And then I spent around three years in manufacturing, grew up within manufacturing. My first management job was in manufacturing as a worldwide materials manager. And I did that for a couple of years. And then that’s when I got basically pulled into services side because IBM was transitioning from hardware to

services organization around that time. And I got pulled into on the services side of the supply chain. And that was a new part of supply chain. say, everybody thinks about supply chain, everybody thinks about actually nuts and bolts of actual parts, right? But if you think about services or labor, that’s a very big supply chain just from a management perspective, right? So I got into more on the services side. And this is where

I think I got lucky in a way from a career perspective. in the initial three, four years, I grew as a kind of a leader more on the traditional way on the manufacturing side. And then over the period of time, I got opportunities to work in global environment. So my first assignment was in Latin America and Brazil. Second was in Eastern Europe. Third one was in India. I had worked in India, but not really. like that was going back like the grownup version of working.

And then I spent three years in Hong Kong, where I had Asia Pacific responsibility as a leader. And I think what, if I want to kind of a little bit do an introspection around it, how did I grow up as a leader there is I was a very shy, introverted engineer while growing up. It’s almost like painfully shy.

And I think some of it comes from the intro personality, but some of it also how you’re trained, what your environment looks like. I did have like all of the traditional imposter syndrome check boxes. That includes like one of your perfectionists, you want to be the subject matter expert before you talk about anything. You want to have the answers for everything, right? Like all of those things were kind of part of my traditional personality and a lot of engineers actually do have that.

And when I started working in the global environment and worked in different countries and different cultures, I think that completely changed my outlook of who I am and being able to drive change and drive consensus across the cultures. So for example, when I went to Brazil, it’s a very social environment. I was fish out of water when it comes to think about like,

Think about going there as a leader for a team that is always socializing outside of work. That was a lot of work.

ADAMS (11:18)

I’m so glad you said that. just want to share, know, I had a team in Brazil on the last role that I had and, you know, I’d go and of course they would organize the full day and then they’d want me to come, you know, have dinner with them and then they’d organize the weekend. so by like this, by week two of this two week trip, I went to my direct report and I said, please, please, please, can I just

have dinner out of the hotel vending machine tonight. Like I really just need to stay in my room and regroup. So I know exactly what you’re talking about. So please continue.

DESHMUKH (11:49)

Yeah, but I think the learning from that is if I want to drive change and create credibility, you have to adjust to some of these cultural nuances as a leader. And then you figure out what’s the balance that works for you as an individual to be productive. And I think that was kind of the learning. Brazil is one example. But I think I would use when I did the Asia-Pacific role, I had

the team in Japan, I had a team in Australia and New Zealand, I had a team all the way up to India, so like 16 different countries, right? And every country is different, like in how you drive change. And I was in a traditional American company that has a global presence, but trying to drive change in Japanese environment was a very different learning experience. And I think even today, like it’s been 15 years since I left IBM,

All of the people that I worked with in Japan, they’re still in touch. We still kind of communicate with each other. So like once you got into the in-circle being able to drive that change was not easy, but it was a lot more effective as compared to doing like traditional command and control style. With Australia and New Zealand, Australian teams, it’s all about building credibility. If you don’t have the credibility, you’re not getting anything like what you want to try as a change.

And you go to more on like the Southeast Asia, including India, a little bit more command and control where you’re project managing, keeping it on track and driving that. So using all of the muscles of your leadership all at the same time, because these cultures are so different, was kind of a great learning experience in my twenties. I think that built my kind of just the DNA as a leader. And then the…

Like going back from that whole perfectionist thinking that you need to have answer for everything to, yeah, if you have 80 % answer, that’s still better than most probably most people can get to. So it’s okay. And then drive that as part of the overall organizational change was kind of a learning out of that whole experience. And then that also build the confidence, like in general, like going from a…

that really introverted shy person to somebody that is working with 200, 300 people across 16 different countries. That kind of builds a different type of skill set as you kind of do that role for a while. I did that for six years. The global roles came back, did a global director role in headquarters. And then I jumped into a startup and moved to Seattle. And this was the first time where it was purely

consulting service delivery role. And it was a building role, means we had no, it was like starting from customer one, right? So we’re kind of building that. And I basically became a CEO there, later the global operations. And I think it was a character building experience in a different way. So I worked in an IBM in a like, kind of these emerging markets environment, which has its own challenges.

But when you go to a full startup environment, it’s like you realize how much you over rely on the organizational construct that these big companies provide. Yes. Just the ecosystem and everything. I remember I moved there in January and ⁓ in February, the first thing we moved into a new office because we became like 20 people organization, we’re getting new furniture.

and then trying to kind of get like everywhere is like, and then me and my CEO kind of trying to, okay, so where does the furniture go making those decisions? Like, when you’re at IBM, it’s like, you’re not thinking about these things. Simple things like, oh, now who sits where? Like, why do I have to deal with that stuff? Right? Like, you go into this big corporate, it’s like, you have a desk, I mean, people just show up. But I think what that did is really, it

ADAMS (15:37)

All right.

DESHMUKH (15:42)

gave me that shock that was necessary to kind of be comfortable with that startup environment where it’s bootstrapped. It’s kind of you are, you are taking care of the problem in a little bit more of a firefighting way, but there is an adrenaline rush that comes with it. So, we, I did that for basically around eight years. So we built that company and we grew to around 300 people and exited that.

in 2017. And then I did. And then at the same time, both of us counted the MBA program at MIT. And I was kind of going through that transition of, so I worked for around 12 to 15 years, 15 years or so. Now the question is, okay, what’s next? And I had done one startup

Do I want to continue doing that? Do I want to become more of a corporate exec or do I want to kind of continue to build something? And I had like some ideas around the entrepreneurship and, that was one of the things that I was exploring. That was number one. And number two, think the reason I did MIT program was goes back to that imposter syndrome a little bit. still felt inadequate in a way, even after the success. And I think it was all about, I think when I look back,

there was always a sort of, and it still is there, and I continue to kind of manage that. There is an expectation on myself that to be that super person is you wanna have the answers for everything. Like most of the moms go through that, right, as part of the, and I had that. And I kind of going into the program, it’s like, oh, now I’m going to MIT and everybody around me is gonna be much smarter than I am. And…

The two years there, what I got out of the program, even if the classes were amazing and the professors were amazing, I loved every most of the classes that we had. What I got out of the program was very different than what I thought I would get out of the program. So, so number one is I think learning from cohorts, like we had a lot of entrepreneurs, lot of corporate execs and different careers, different industries. So learning from that, like it’s expected, but the amount of learning I was able to get out of that was a lot more than.

thought it would be. was number one. Number two is, I would say, like made a lot of lifelong friends as part of the program, which was, I thought in my late 30s, am I going to really meet people that I’m going to be friends with? But I think some of my close friends now are from the program. they can do this. That’s that’s kind of another thing that I got out of it. And the third thing I would say it’s a confidence about

my own abilities. Like two years in, I realized like you are surrounded with most probably the smart, one of the smartest people, group of people that are on the planet, if not. And then you’re like, you’re not, not as bad as you think you are. you might be as, you belong in the group. think that, confidence was, and it’s not about the smartness, but it’s around like really being comfortable with who you are.

and being able to kind of own that. I think that was kind of one of the things that I’ve got with the product, which I would think is that’s the best thing that kind of came out of the program for me. And then as part of the transition, I did a couple of startups in the middle and moved into more on the tech side, on the product side. Still on the services, but still startups. And then started with Procureability ⁓ four years ago.

in basically more on the CEO role and became the president in a year. And we exited to J-Bill. So we’re part of now J-Bill, a manufacturing conglomerate two years ago. And now we’re part of their services organization running consulting and advisory for supply chain services. So it’s like, if I want to kind of summarize it, like really started as more on the manufacturing side, got into services.

a lot of global roles where I built a little bit of a leadership muscle, transitioned to startup, then four startups now in 10 plus, almost 50 years, I guess now, in the startups. And building my skillset around building the organization globally has been one of my focus areas.

ADAMS (19:42)

Yeah, there’s a lot that I want to touch on.

Something that really fascinated me about what you were talking about in your career trajectory,

was this sense of recognizing, you started with the different international assignments, but then you also brought it over to your, in particular, your first startup assignments, where you realize I’m in a completely different context. And in order for me to be an effective leader, I’m gonna have to show up differently. So differently from your default setting. And so I’m curious,

with all of that behind you, if you go into a new context now, sort of how do you assess, okay, this is the context that I’m in and this is what Darshan needs to do in this situation in order to be the most effective for the team and the stakeholders, but also not completely burn yourself out, right? Because you still have these preferences, we all do, of how we wanna behave. So can you talk a little bit about that?

DESHMUKH (20:39)

Sure, and I think I can do that maybe in different roles that I did. like when at IBM, it was that traditional corporate growth. And I was in my early career. So like going into an exec role over the period of 10 years, you’re doing a really good job in not only showing up, delivering outstanding results, but also building your relationships, network, getting coached, mentored by execs, and then like somebody supporting you in your career.

So I think I went through that traditional track around that. I think when I moved to the first startup, yes, I had mentors and coaches from my previous life, but it’s not the same as having somebody at work helping you solve the problem. So like when people say, you’re lonely at top when you’re and they’re in a smaller scale, but it is because like it was like three or four of us

like always solving the same problems, statements together. And so you kind of learn from each other, but at the same time, it kind of, it’s a microcosm of group thinking, right? So you have to kind of be aware of that, that yes, you’re solving problem, going from problem to problem to problem and being able to reframe your thinking to say, okay, it’s okay to think practically right now because it’s all about survival. Let’s get it done, right? I think that was kind of the…

transition from like that strategic career thinking versus to really like getting more bootstrap. I think one thing that I learned from when I moved to the startup is it’s important to be authentic. Like don’t spin. think in a corporate, you kind of get away with a little bit of spinning because it’s a bigger infrastructure. But when it’s smaller set up, it’s very hard to hide.

the realities. So and I learned from that, like, and it’s with people as well. So when you’re talking to people, when you’re kind of getting things done with them, like if you are real about where you stand, what your expectations are, then it’s easier to kind of drive that as a conversation, right? Clear is kind like that. And it’s I think that kind of hit me as kind of an individual is like,

tell how it is real and then people generally would bend backwards to do things for you, right? I think that becomes kind of very clear. I think the second piece is it’s okay to be, and that was like a learned lesson, as a leader, it’s okay to be vulnerable. Like showing that vulnerability, sometimes with that whole command and control expectation at the top, drives a very wrong behavior.

It’s okay for people to see the vulnerable side of you as a leader. It actually connects you better with people. I think that was also learning when I moved from like corporate to a startup, I think that was a lot more effective as one. I think the third thing is, some of it is changes in the cultures, some of the environment, but some of it is also how you change as an individual. I moved to a second startup, which was

very fast-paced, very product startup, very abrasive culture. And when I started, like the first one of the first conversations I had, okay, so who are you gonna fire? That’s how you’re gonna gain the credibility within the company. was like, then you hired the wrong person. This is like, I’m here to build, I’m not here to fire, right? 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have had that conversation with that individual. I would have said, why do you want me to fire? And it’s like,

But I was able to defend my point of view as, as confident as, as could be like you’re building a services organization. This is not kind of fire and create. I’m going to scare people out and then build my credibility within the organization. If that’s what you’re expecting, that’s not the right, I’m not the right person for it. You can hire somebody else, right? But I knew I was the right person. So there was that confidence around it. But I think I didn’t have that in the first 15 years of my career. I think I had.

I got that type of confidence being able to say, okay, who you are, you know who you are, being able to defend your point of view, being able to contribute in the way that you see it fit, but then also can learn from adjusting the styles as you kind of go along. So I think if I want to kind of summarize it, it’s really as I made these transitions into various startups, going from a corporate to a consulting to a product startup,

⁓ back to consulting. I think all of these kind of helped me kind of round myself up just from a personality perspective on how you’re going to drive the change within the organization.

ADAMS (24:56)

And what about the different cultures? You talked about all this international experience you had. And so you, would say by far have the most international experience of the people that I’ve interviewed so far. And so I’m curious, how do you overlay the different situations, the different contexts related to working in different locations, geographies and the cultures that they have that are both culturally due to geography, but also probably culturally due to the different companies that you’re interfacing with. So you’ve got all of those different contexts as well.

Can you just talk a little bit about if there’s anything in addition to what you’ve said that helped you to navigate those situations as well?

DESHMUKH (25:31)

So I think this is an interesting one. think I could use an IBM example, but maybe I’ll use a different one. this is when I started with my first startup. We were in Seattle. And I came from IBM, which was a lot more later back when I was there, but still IBM, right? So it’s still stuffy when you think about culture, right? And I went to Seattle and

people who are showing up in flip flops and shorts and it’s like, we’re in a consulting and why are you in flip flops? Because our client is in flip flops and shorts. Like why are you worried about it? Right? And then I had to kind of adjust to that. It’s like, I’m not used to like people just showing up in shorts or jeans, right? That type of thing. And, but then we also had a office in Pittsburgh, which a lot of our clients were on the financial services side, which was a little bit more.

dress up. So we had like an office in Pittsburgh, Seattle, which was super casual because most of the clients were tech. And, then Pittsburgh office was a little bit more formal. And, in the, and another interesting, so we used to have, you could bring docs to work in Seattle. You could not bring docs to work at Pittsburgh. So we are different within the organization. Now,

Now, the reason I think I say that is as a leader, I think we tend to have a bias on what we are comfortable with. But being able to adjust to what you’re trying to attract as a talent is something that you need to learn from. So for example, we worked with pretty much all the top tech customers in the Bay Area and the Seattle area. And we used to go into the office and all the stuff that these tech firms offer.

That’s the environment that you’re living in and that’s the talent that you’re trying to attract. That means you need to create some version of it within your own environment to be able to attract top talent, right? So being able to drive that. And I it’s a very superficial cultural conversation, but it’s important because you’re building, right? And that’s very critical. And then I think as a leader, you need to be able to flex. I don’t have the preference to be that super casual, but I needed to be comfortable with it. Right.

And then you have other end of the extreme, which may be a little bit more formal on the financial services side, how do you drive that as part of it? I think if I extend that to international, I always kind of use one example. So my last role at IBM, I had a global role and we’re driving the transformation across the globe in a specific supply chain problem. And one eighth or one ninth of the influence dollars were coming from Japan.

And I was sitting in New York and all of my leadership team was in New York and we were trying to drive a transformation in Japan. And I remember we used to get on the calls basically at 8 PM Eastern time till like 10, 11 o’clock, always with Japan team trying to, okay, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And it was like that tradition. And it was, this was in 2009. So right after financial crisis. it was super focused, like we had to make sure that you are saving dollars and those types of things.

Um, and you would get on these calls and then for two and a half, three hours, you will just keep on, keep on hammering the message and use you. You would see that the Japanese team is super polite, but you know that you’re not driving the change because I think the, and I had that conversation with the leader in Japan. Like, uh, I said, like, it’s been a month. I feel, I don’t think we’re making progress. And I said,

like you are using the wrong tactic because you’re using very command and control project management style of approach. You want, if you have relationships here, you’re the way the program is run is super American way. You need to change that. Otherwise you’re not going to go anywhere. Right. So then we kind of, okay, so let’s quickly do kind of the brainstorming sessions within the Japanese team to figure out what would work.

And we kind of ran that and then we built like consensus internally, let’s drive the change differently in Japan as part of it. And then next six months, we were able to drive a lot of change. But I think it’s one of those where like you, we as a leader have a mission. We are so blind, not blinded, but we’re like super focused on one mission. And we know this is the way that you know, you’re going to drive the change and you try to force fit within different cultures and it doesn’t work. And if you don’t adjust it.

you’re not, the results are going to be suboptimal, right? And I think I took that as a learning even in my engagements with the clients as a consulting organization. And that’s why I think we are successful. A lot of global programs is because we know to drive organic change, this cultural nuance is very important and being able to drive that is also very critical.

ADAMS (30:15)

Darshan, can you give us an example of when you’ve used leadership skills in your work?

DESHMUKH (30:18)

I think one of the examples that comes to mind is in my first startup. We started with a couple of large customers to build the consulting business, services business around it. And we’re growing. So we grew to around 60 people in a year. And then we’re up to about 80-ish people globally in year two.

And then year three is, and as you are building the revenue stream, as you’re building the organizational capability, you kind of don’t necessarily focus so much on diversification. You kind of, okay, I want to kind of get to a revenue stream that is sustainable and then continue to diversify further, right? So we are super concentrated with one customer. Doing an outstanding job, we actually were runner up in the best supplier of the year in year three.

And we said, we’re doing well, we’ll continue to grow. And at the end of year three, they decided you guys are too small, we need to transition to a larger service provider at the end of year three. And this was like, almost like, like we don’t, we have our second customer is not even one 20th of the revenue that is, so we’re not diversified at that point of time.

But we were in a consulting world, which is all labor business. So now what are you going to do? So we got a year to transition. you have a year, we’re going to transition to another service provider. But you are so well integrated with us, it may not go down to zero. It might go down by like 80 % or 90 % of the revenue stream by end of the year. And then we almost kind of figuring out, OK, what’s next for us? Is this it?

or is this one of those where it deflated after year three or what are we going to do? And that was the question mark. So if you think about it, the traditional approach of thinking is let’s spin it. as a leader, we’re going to say, oh, things are great. We have a big pipeline. We can reassess where we are by end of the year. So that type of conversation as a leader.

That happens all the time. I decided, like I was one of the decision makers in that with our CEO, really, this is the one where we want to be very transparent with the team and be vulnerable. Don’t sugarcoat it. Just tell them where we are. Just tell them what we’re trying to accomplish. We decided not to let anybody go.

because it was all labor business. it’s like almost like, you have great people. Your ability to sell depends on having good people. So if you don’t have them, how are you going to sell more work? So there was a little bit of that chicken and egg problem that we were facing. So we kind of said, our goal is to diversify in a year. We may not be able to get to 100 % of our revenue run the rate by end of the year, but our goal would be to get to that by end of the year. And we’re not going to let anybody go unless somebody feels uncomfortable.

⁓ they want to leave, I think it was a, if you think about it for a small company of 70, 80 people to make that decision and communicate that out, it takes a lot of energy to kind of, first of all, then you are having constant communication with individuals too. that, yes, you can drive the strategy and kind of share that with the team, but do they really internalize it and buy into it?

is the next thing. So you have to keep on having that dialogue from an execution perspective. So I spent a lot of my energy for a couple of quarters to keep on having that dialogue. And we started to become very systematic in pushing the additional revenue and diversification. And by the of the year, they didn’t go down all the way up to 20%, but the revenue went down to 40%. So it went from 100 to 40%.

but we were able to diversify and able to capture another 30, 40%. So our revenue rendered from third year to year four was maybe around 75 % of what our render rate was, right? We did not let anybody go. People left organic attrition because people feel uncomfortable with this. But I think what I learned from that is that the comment around being vulnerable and being open about it, that brought us a lot of

And both from a leadership that worked for us, but then also people that work for us. Right. I think that also is like critical. And I think this is where I think the comment around the spinning part, like my lesson learned is wherever possible, be authentic, be transparent. I think that makes it a lot easier for people to make the decisions. And then, and then that also drives a very different type of dialogue organization. So I think that also built a very different muscle.

It also built a different resiliency as a leader. It’s stressful. Like if you think about it, right? If you want to be authentic in that type of environment, it’s hard because now you have to kind of be very transparent around what’s happening. But at the same time, is this too much? Is it too little? Like you’re kind of always kind of balancing that out as part of the conversation with the team.

ADAMS (35:04)

If that’s a great example, thank you for sharing that. There’s two things that come to mind immediately. So one is around workload because you probably had your initial plan for the year to primarily be focused on servicing this existing customer. And now you have to still do that because they’re still your customer. And now you also have to go look for new customers and potentially even

change the work that you do a little bit in order to get those customers. So can you just talk a little bit about how did you manage that shift in workload, both you personally, but also for the team?

DESHMUKH (35:42)

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that was definitely one of the balancing challenges because also, think the third dimension to that is really we didn’t know where the existing customer is going to reduce to. So you want to do a really top-notch job so that that reduction doesn’t go at the level that it needs to be. So that was the first element. What we told the team is if you are working on this customer,

let’s make sure that we are doing a plus job that we’re doing for a couple of years, because that puts the pressure on the customer to not reduce to the level where they’re anticipating it to be. So that’s number one. Number two is, there were key leaders that were really good in selling and we call it farming, basically farming new opportunities with the existing customers, for example. We identified those people and kind of said,

we will give you additional incentive for the year. I know this year is going to suck. And this is from a workload perspective. But if we’re able to increase our run rate on the revenue side, there is an additional incremental incentive. And I know it’s dollars, no necessarily solve all the thing, but it’s also kind of simple incentives rather behavior. Basically we’re committed to make sure that your efforts are getting recognized.

So it’s not only like getting the recognition within the organization, but also financially. So I would like the number two that we did is keeping people kind of motivated and motivated to the mission on how we want to grow. Now that did create a burnout issue with some of the key leaders, including myself, because I think that year was super stressful, just in general. Then the next question became strategically,

How do you drive a conversation managing up? So the partners who are used to making a lot of money on the consulting firm, we only had a handful. It was not like a big partner model. So we went back to them and said, okay, for next two years, don’t assume you’re gonna get anything as a profit sharing because…

I think we are investing for next year, which is different than a traditional partner model, right? This is now you’re thinking like a corporate where they’re saying there is an investment ahead before you can get the return. It’s not an annual S-Corp where you are taking the profits, distributing across various owners, right? But we had that conversation managing up saying, we’re going to have this and, by the way, you will need to sell as owners more than what you’re used to.

And sometimes it’s a little bit, little more taxing without return for the year, but it will pay for it in a couple of years. So that was like the next piece. And then I think the…

I would say building organizational capability took a little bit of a backseat. It was more of a survival. the couple years ago, we need to have India operations, we need to have China operations, so that we invested a lot of energy into like five delivery centers. We put that on hold for a bit because that takes a lot of energy. just the…

drag it has from a capacity standpoint. Right. we said, okay, strategically, let’s focus on a U S only because that’s 80 % of our revenue coming from right now. So let’s focus on that. Let’s not focus on the areas that are not, not going to play into survival game for next 18 months. Let’s tackle that in a couple of years. So like prioritizing that a little bit as part of it. But it’s still, I don’t think, I think if I look back,

I don’t think we did a great job in balancing it. It was kind of almost like a survival, but that’s what you signed up for as part of the startup.

ADAMS (39:15)

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I’m curious about is you mentioned, you know, it’s really stressful, stressful for you, stressful for the other team. And I’m just curious, you know, what strategies do you work for you in terms of helping you manage when you have not just intermittent peak, right? But this was like a whole year, right? At least a whole year. how can you talk, just talk about what your strategies are for managing that?

DESHMUKH (39:38)

Sure. So organizationally, maybe I’ll do a couple of things. One is organization, other one is personal. So organizationally, I think it was all about creating an environment of family. I think that was an easier way to drive that. So because when you’re spending so much time together all the time, where people feel connected to each other, whether it’s a day or a good day, let’s make sure that you have that environment.

Second piece is in that environment, it’s very easy to lose sight of not celebrating small wins. So you lose that sight because everything is just always dragging you down all the time. be mindful of that and be conscious about that. Like every couple of weeks or every month, you’re doing something to celebrate those small wins so that people feel connected to, okay, we’re making progress. So that was kind of like, that’s kind of a de-stressing factor when it comes to that.

And I think the third piece is it’s all about communicating where you are clearly. So what we used to do is every month we’ll do all hands where we’ll show exactly where our revenue is, what our cost bond looks like, where we are under, where we are over so that people get to see everything that they’re doing translated into numbers. Right. And then that way

A lot of times private companies don’t necessarily like the owners don’t want to share all of that. Right. But we did choose to share that because then that became a little bit of a easier conversation just from a distressed perspective, because people get to see exactly what’s returning the hard work that they’re putting into. On the personal front, I didn’t do a great job in those couple of years, I think. But I think my approach to that was really finding the hobbies that are that are kind of distressing.

And that included like exercise, cooking, like those are the types of things that I can identify and then you spend as much time as you could as part of it. And that’s, that’s the way

ADAMS (41:30)

All right, Darshan, as we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

DESHMUKH (41:37)

It’s a great question. I have a few from learnings, guess. And so I think the first one is, as engineers, we are kind of trained to be perfectionists in a way, like get the right answer, right? That’s completely counter to risks. So don’t be afraid to take risks in your career, in the jobs, the decisions that you make.

I’m not saying that you need to be like a gambler, but I think when it comes to like that finding that right balance, what is uncomfortable for you as a risk is sometimes okay to do. I think when I look back, all the decisions, even if I grew up as an engineer, I think most of my decisions are more, what’s my gut is saying. And generally your gut is right. And when it doesn’t sit well,

Be aware of it. At least make sure that if something doesn’t sit right, that means it’s most probably not right for you. But I think putting that gut check and making sure that take the risks best on that, that would be number one. Number two, would say, is a lot of times as engineers, what we try to do is we say we’re very comfortable with analytical roles. We’re very comfortable behind the screen. We’re very comfortable in a closed office, which I’m still, by the way, I still would prefer to stay in a closed office.

But don’t be afraid to use that analytical problem solving ability into organizations and people. I think that was my kind of growth within the career is I chose the career, which is all about people and customers and kind of facilitating the conversation. So being able to use that to solve these non-traditional technical problems, don’t be afraid of doing that. think that

there is more value in those variables. If you think about it, it’s still theory of constraints. So you have constraints given to you and you have to solve those within that constraint. Whether it is product, whether it is engineering, whether it is people or organization, it’s still the same. So you can, it’s still numbers when you think about it that way.

I would say the third thing that comes to mind just from a learning and advice is when people say, and we do that for ourselves as well, don’t fall the stereotype of personality, what fits with what role. I did that for the first 15 years. I said, I’m not a seller, for example. And I would shy away from it. I would solution every…

kind of proposal or a problem statement that comes in and kind of come up with like a very creative solution. But I would not be the one that would kind of pitch it and being able to kind of, I would be part of the team that will do the, do the selling, right? What I realized is actually when, and when I started having conversations with the customers prospects, like directly, my persona of a non seller was actually a lot,

more powerful than what I thought. First of all, the guards went down. People were a lot more open about their problem statement. When you are not super salesy, they’re even more open about it. And now you can kind of actually drive consultative consensus building type of selling as part of that. Now, the career that I chose kind of offers that. So that’s great. But

I shied away from like that traditional selling for like 15 plus years and I said, I’m not good at it. And I realized, hey, you’re actually better at it than a lot of other actually sellers. it’s almost like when you go into, first of all, you have the credibility because you have subject matter expertise, but then you are not that little bit of a slick seller. So people are more open to kind of having the conversation with you. I experience that all the time at the conferences where you’re like, it’s

It’s lot easier to have a conversation with me than somebody who thinks that you have an agenda to sell. So that’s another kind of advice I would say is like, don’t put yourself in a box as a stereotypical personality and the type of job. I think we might have better usage for our skillset than somewhere else. And then I think the last one I would say is be okay to be uncomfortable in what you choose.

And that comes from my transition from like within IBM doing these international assignments, so definitely out of my comfort zone. Going from corporate to startup was definitely out of my comfort zone. Going from consulting slash services to product, that was another outside of my comfort zone. But I think every step I took when I look back, I think the lessons learned, how it helped me grow.

was definitely something I would take it with me all the time. And I won’t take it any other way. So I think making sure that even if it feels uncomfortable when you’re making that decision, that’s absolutely okay. as long as you don’t keep on beating yourself up for making wrong decisions, and then that’s absolutely fine.

ADAMS (46:05)

Darshan, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

DESHMUKH (46:08)

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.