MEL #055 | From Academic Research to Business Impact through Hands On Leadership with Dr. Rahul Maharsia

MAHARSIA (00:00)

If I don’t build a successful team behind me who’s able to carry on the good work, I have not succeeded yet. It’s not just me solving the problem. It’s me also sustaining the solutions.

ADAMS (00:36)

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Rahul Maharsia Senior Vice President of R &D and Engineering at Insulation Technology Group. 

Rahul did not grow up knowing he wanted to be an engineer and spent years searching for direction. His parents recognized his natural problem-solving ability before he did and encouraged him toward engineering, which ultimately gave him clarity, purpose, and momentum. After starting in mechanical engineering in India, he came to the US., pivoted through industrial engineering, and completed a PhD focused on materials and composites. In our leadership segment, Rahul shares how his leadership growth accelerated when he began stepping into problems without waiting for a title or formal authority. One defining moment came when he was asked to tackle a critical manufacturing issue threatening the survival of a business. By moving to the plant floor, building trust with operators, and leading through action, he helped transform yields,

stabilize the company, and earn an executive role. Rahul encourages engineers to stop waiting for permission and actively seek opportunities to solve meaningful problems. He emphasizes the importance of adaptability, continuous learning, and pivoting as the world of engineering changes rapidly. Above all, he stresses that purpose, effort, and peace of mind matter more than titles or linear career paths. 

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

ADAMS (02:07)

Hi, Rahul. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

MAHARSIA (02:10)

Thank you so much for having me over here Angelique so nice to see you.

ADAMS (02:13)

Good to see you too. I’m thrilled to have you here. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

MAHARSIA (02:19)

Yeah, sure. My journey into engineering wasn’t like the typical one. I was not the child who grew up taking apart equipment, radios or rockets or anything like that. I really didn’t know for a long time what I really wanted to do. I moved through school. I was curious, but I didn’t have the clarity for a while, which at the time felt like a disadvantage.

because I saw everyone else kind of had their career path figured out, they knew what they were doing. I was just still searching. But then what changed my life was something very simple, but powerful. My parents, essentially they noticed a spark in me before I saw it in myself. And then they saw the way I solved problems and the way I naturally leaned into, know, structurally, logically thinking about things that kind of nudged me more towards maybe you should be in the

the technical field and they pushed me towards engineering. And they saw a version of me that I couldn’t see. So I think that changed everything. once I stepped into engineering, I found my purpose, my passion, my direction, I enjoyed it. ⁓ Although I did struggle in the beginning because it was a big transition from what I was doing to ⁓ educationally the level of effort and work needed. So in that sense, I was still kind of figuring things out.

But eventually I did figure it out and I was quite successful at, it took me a long time, but I found my feet into the engineering field. So that’s, you know, it’s a little bit non-typical, atypical type of a reason or a story of how I got into engineering. And I’m glad I did because naturally, obviously the problem solving piece that my parents identified.

is exactly what gets me going even today. That’s a key part of my career today.

ADAMS (04:00)

Yeah, that’s great. And I mean, you you liked it so much that you decided to continue on to get an advanced degree. Can you talk a little bit about your decision to do that?

MAHARSIA (04:08)

Yeah, absolutely. So I come from India. I did my bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed everything. And I think I was always very curious and I’m like, you know, how does it feel to not only design or make things, how does it feel to industrialize things? So that’s why I came to the US to pursue my industrial engineering degree. And then, you know, typically for

foreign students to come in, we look for opportunities to get our tuition waived and to find areas to work in. And I just happened to come across my professor at that time. And he happened to be working in the field of composites. And I was very, very curious and interested and I enjoyed, I started enjoying the research work with him. So next step is, okay, let me pivot a little bit and move into. ⁓

materials science and I ended up doing my PhD. I continued working with my professor and ended up doing my PhD in engineering with the focus on composites. And I’ve primarily been in the materials world one way or the other, either composites or ceramics since then. yeah, that’s my journey into where I am today.

ADAMS (05:17)

Now, can you talk a little bit about your career trajectory and the different roles you’ve had?

MAHARSIA (05:21)

Sure. I started about 18, 19 years ago, something like that. initially, again, the curiosity and the pivoting piece kicked in where, I’ve done my materials. I’ve done the PhD, done a lot of R &D theoretical work. But I want to gain some practical experience. How do I find my, you know, how do I leverage all my educational background in the best possible manner?

And I came across this great company where I started as in the operations area as an engineer, because it gives you a lot of exposure into what happens on a day to day basis when you go from R &D and theoretical world to the practical world of making things. And it was a fantastic experience, particularly because one of the key things that I learned there was introduction to, I got introduced to Six Sigma methodology of problem solving.

That’s exactly the kind of structured tool that I needed because my bent of mind and that tool basically come together. And it prepared me for the next stage in my journey, which is I was recruited by another company, again, as a process engineer in operations. But this time, this was exactly the sort of materials that they used to manufacture, which I had a PhD in.

So it’s ⁓ like a Disneyland for me to do whatever I need used to get to use all the skills that I have learned so far. luckily it was ⁓ not luckily, but through luck and through a lot of hard work, there was a lot of low hanging fruit in that company that I was able to address pretty quickly. And I rose through the ranks pretty fast. And one of the lessons in that journey is also.

Why I was able to do it is because I identified there was a vacuum. There was a lot of low hanging fruit that no one was addressing. I was very capable of addressing it. And I just stepped in. I stepped in and took the leadership role without any formal roles or anyone telling me to go ahead and do this. I just took it upon myself. And then suddenly I started showing these results and everybody got curious and they, yeah, you should continue. they started giving me teams and roles and

In a span of four to five years, went from being an engineer to I entered in the boardroom as a VP of operations initially. And then I became a VP of R &D and innovation because operations is great for a while. But at the end of the day, I got to get back home and focus on things that I’m best capable of doing. So I came back to innovation R &D at that point of time.

And for the past 10 years, I’ve been in this area managing different innovation teams globally. Since then, I’ve been at two or three different organizations, but always in the same function. And ⁓ here I am right now. I’m managing about seven to eight different teams globally across Europe, North America, South America. And I’m thoroughly enjoying what I’m doing right now. So it’s been a journey.

ADAMS (08:18)

Well, I wanted to reinforce something you said, which was, you early on you took the initiative and filled some gaps and identified some problems that you could solve before you got any kind of formal leadership authority. And I just wanted to make sure our listeners heard that because it really is so important and quite a common.

sentiment that I hear leaders say is that I didn’t wait for anybody to say you have the power to do this. I was constantly looking for to solve problems for my company. And through that kind of behavior, I earned my way into leadership roles. is sounds like you really rose through the ranks quickly. How did you manage your leadership development while you were, you

managing sort of the technical side of things. How did you go about your own process of self-development?

MAHARSIA (09:07)

Yeah, I think there is a combination of some of it is just your natural instincts and talent. Some of it is then followed by learning through experiences. But when I started out naturally, I stepped into leadership where I wasn’t assigned a team, a role or a support in terms of growing that way. So I had to use my natural instincts and talent. By nature, I’m very cooperative. I like to build an environment where people

are able to share their ideas, have open discussions, and work in a very cooperative manner to solve the problems and put emotions aside. And I tend to do that very well naturally. But then there are also times, maybe three to 5 % of times when you have to bring out that, I don’t like to say it, but ugly side in you where you have to put your foot down and get things done. And I’m quite capable of switching between the two. And that’s a very key.

message to everyone that sometimes it’s very important to be nice and to do things the right way, but there are sometimes where you have to put the foot down and get it done one way the other. So it’s a combination of those two things, but eventually at some point of time, it gets you only so far, right? After that, you’re learning from your experiences and you know now, okay, that worked and this particular experience, my skills did not work. This is how I’m going to handle next time.

And then at some point of time, I think one of the most life-changing things is I had this manager, he was a VP of R &D, and we were conducting our annual review. And he told me that, you you are extremely talented and you should basically think about leading businesses and larger organizations, but you should A, soften up your skills a little bit more and B,

If you want to do this, have to go and pursue an MBA. And that was a spark which made me think. And that’s where I started my journey with MIT. And I think that changed my perspective completely. I met so many great people. I started traveling. I used to not like traveling at all before MIT. But once that happened, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the process of meeting new people, learning new things from them.

Naturally, the classes at MIT will teach you a lot of these soft skills. There was a lot of coaching available at MIT. And at the same time, within my company, because I had already gotten into the executive level, I was identified for a lot of soft skill trainings, a lot of coaching. I think those things all together help you cover a lot of these gaps, basically. So in my case, that was the biggest contributor.

ADAMS (11:50)

Rahul, can you give us an example of when you use leadership skills in your work?

MAHARSIA (11:54)

Yeah, absolutely. I like to tell this story and I probably told it hundreds of times because it’s one of the most important highlights or peaks of my career that I love to share with everyone. At one of my previous organizations, I had a good 10-year journey, the same organization where I rose through the ranks. The reason I broke into the rank, into the boardroom,

is the story I’d like to share. So this was a time when I was already an engineering manager. I had moved from operations to R &D. And then there was a lot of issues going on in the organization in terms of operationally being unable to achieve their goals and targets due to materials related issues, waste, scrap, yield, those sorts of things.

In the past three years, I had solved a lot of problems, but this was one particular area within the manufacturing plant that was still kind of left unresolved. I had not really attacked it during my time and I had left before that being fixed. And I took it as a compliment that at some point the senior leadership team brought me into a room and basically this was another example of leadership without

a role. They said, well, we have this issue and we have tried everything possible, including internal, external consultants, everything. If we cannot attain this goal, we cannot sustain as a business. Can you please come up with a strategy and figure this out? I took that as a great challenge and a compliment that someone trusts me that much. I went back, I strategized, very simple, very straightforward. And my idea was

Contrary to what the normal solutions that were being offered by other consultants where, the operators are not following this process or that is wrong. My strategy was to go through a journey with the operators and do a daily continuous improvement in problem solving. I shifted my headquarters. Now I’m going down from strategy into the actual journey.

I shifted my headquarters from my office room upstairs to the plant floor. So eight hours of the day, I was literally sitting in the quality lab, sometimes doing nothing, just staring at the wall, waiting for results to come. At other times, I would have samples come in that I can look for the product and look at defects. I was given the option to reorganize the teams to get whoever I wanted to, which I did.

and I took the best and the brightest talent from the entire organization, people who were kind of not being looked as leaders. I saw the potential in them and I brought them into the team to be a leader. And then in a span of the first one month, we went from 60 % yields to 75 % yield. And suddenly I could feel that electrical excitement, I don’t know how to describe it, but you have that.

electricity in the air type of excitement throughout the business, the plant offices everywhere when they saw the results. And suddenly everyone was on board. Everyone wanted to join the journey, cooperate, contribute. And the next two months were again, extremely critical. This was, remember a role, sorry, a responsibility without the role. I was given the freedom to choose my team and operate as I needed, but I took

it upon myself to operate 24 seven for continuous three months without breaks. I chose people who also were willing to do that, sacrifice that for me and my for me and this goal and purpose. And within three months, we went up to 85 % yield. It’s unimaginable from going from 60 to 85%. And we continued that journey for an entire year and we were 97 % plus in terms of yield.

So essentially we almost doubled the capacity of that plant. We saved tens of millions of dollars and suddenly the business became sustainable within a span of one year. And at that point, somewhere in the middle of that one year journey, that’s when I was basically asked to continue and I was brought on into the boardroom and offered the executive role. I’ve always believed that

Go for the low hanging fruit. This was not a low hanging fruit by any means, but what I mean to say is if you see an opportunity, don’t wait for the title. Don’t wait for something officially to happen. Go ahead and do it. If you get nothing else out of it, there are two things that no one can take away from you. Number one, the experience and the learning. And second is the sense of satisfaction that you attain because

10 years later here, I am still saying the same story. And I don’t feel bored and I don’t feel tired. And I enjoy saying that story. So that’s one of the examples I love to talk about.

ADAMS (16:35)

Well, I’m glad you still like telling that story because that was really a great example. the first question I have is, what do you think was one of the key things about your approach that had you to either discover what the problems were or understand, what was going on better than these other internal and external experts that they had brought in to try to do the same thing.

MAHARSIA (16:59)

That’s a great and insightful question. The biggest difference was I didn’t know what the problem was and I didn’t pretend to know what the problem was or what the answers were. Most of the other consultants assumed a problem and came up with answers and tried to fit a square peg in a round hole if you will. I had an approach of I will go in and figure it out and to figure it out, I cannot do it alone.

I need a team, I need these expertise, these capabilities. And most importantly, I need the people who are actually making the product. Because one of the gaps was people used to, at least some people in the management team would think that operators are just gaming us and they are not following things. And I strongly believe that 99 % of the people out there

come to succeed. No one wants to come in and fail at what they’re doing and do a bad job. Everyone wants to succeed. If you give them the right tools and the right processes, they’ll get the job done. And I think that was the biggest difference. I went through the journey with all of them as team members. And even today on LinkedIn, I get messages from operators, from supervisors, just saying hello and.

Everybody says that that’s one time that we miss a lot. It was one of the times of our lives. We were trying to fix something big and we achieved it. So I think that was the biggest differentiator. When you don’t know, don’t pretend that you know it. Be honest and go in and figure it out. And answers are all there.

ADAMS (18:26)

Exactly. the other thing that really struck me about what you did was moving your office down to the shop floor in the quality, room and.

It does a couple of things, you get better information, real-time information, because you can see it for yourself. And symbolically, you are letting the people down there actually doing the work know that you care, that they matter, that you want to hear from them. I’m sure there could also be some people thinking, okay, he’s watching us like, he doesn’t trust us, but you probably quickly, if there was any of that, you were quickly able to dissipate that.

were there any sort of feedback or interactions that you got from the folks on the floor about your physical presence there?

MAHARSIA (19:03)

Yeah, so there were two reasons why I did that. Number one is I’m an extremely impatient guy. if the results were inside the piece of equipment, I would probably keep my head inside and follow the process. But that’s one of the reasons. But naturally, I strongly believe that if you’re going to ask your team to work 24-7 for you, you have to lead from the front and you have to sacrifice more. It’s a very natural thing.

never assume that someone is going to listen to you just because you have the title or the role. You have to lead from the front. I think that those two reasons were primarily the ones where I naturally just, didn’t even think about it. didn’t, it was not part of a strategy or anything. just came very natural to me that I, I’m going to do nothing sitting in my office. If I’m solving the problem out there, I have to be out there.

ADAMS (19:51)

Yeah, that of course makes sense. And I’m just curious, now that you’ve had that experience and you said it was a while ago, do you find yourself using any of those same tactics in the kind of work that you do today or maybe even coaching some of your staff to be a little bit more hands-on sometimes when they need to be, or maybe even be a little more humble with…

the operators who maybe don’t have the education or the title that we necessarily have, but are doing the work on a day-to-day basis. I how have you carried that spirit forward, both in your own work and then maybe in the teams that you lead?

MAHARSIA (20:28)

It’s funny you asked that because right now with the company that I am with today, we have similar issues to what I saw back at the previous organization. So I’m sort of using those same strategies and examples. And of course, I have learned a lot since then through MIT or through other organizations that I’m also applying and using. But yes, I do.

you know, those are things that never go away from you because it’s, it’s a combination of goal. See, it’s a combination of the six sigma problem solving methodology, you know, simple tools like the five wise, you know, just following a plan, right? What should be, what is, and how can we get from cover the gap from what should be in what is have a strategy, a roadmap and ⁓

So that’s the tool piece of it, but in terms of motivating people and helping them go through the journey, absolutely. It’s a lot of coaching and asking questions. One of my direct reports at the current company recently asked me, like, why did I not think of those things that we just talked about? And I’m like, please don’t beat yourself over it. This is what I…

half an hour conversation that we just had that I made you realize all these things. I learned all of that through a span of one year of experience. It’s just my experience that I’m sharing with you. So it may look like, I’m a very smart guy or whatever, but that’s not the case. You will get there too. So it is also, you have to also have that humbleness within yourself to be vulnerable in front of your teammates when you’re coaching them, share your successes and failures with them.

I strongly believe in if someone is willing to learn in coaching them because there was also this one example when at the same organization, when I had moved away from some particular initiative, that initiative basically fell down and kind of failed. What I learned from that experience was if I don’t build a successful team behind me who’s able to carry on the good work, I have not succeeded yet. It’s not just me solving the problem.

It’s me also sustaining the solutions. That’s also a key piece that I learned. Therefore, I always build a team, coach them so that my solutions can sustain. And then I ask them to do the same thing with their employees, behave the same way with the operators, do not say that the operators are not following the process until you can convince me that they have the right process to follow. So I still use the same learnings and examples today. Yeah.

ADAMS (22:57)

Yeah. And I love what you just said about, don’t tell me that they’re not following the process until you can convince me they have a sustainable process to follow. And I just think that’s a great phrase. And I do think that a lot, a lot of people, particularly who are really interested in moving up quickly.

While there are some organizations that may allow you to do that through your own sort of results, I think really strong organizations will do that last check that you just said, which is to say, okay, you can’t actually go anywhere until I’m convinced that what you just accomplished is gonna stick around. Cause otherwise it was really just a waste of time. And so I do think a lot of people who maybe are earlier in their career actually miss that, don’t recognize that that’s actually part of

of doing the work and achieving the milestones is putting a system in place.

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

MAHARSIA (24:02)

So naturally, I mean, we’ve repeatedly talked about, don’t wait for an opportunity to come for you. You should always be out there looking for opportunities. And one advice I would give to everyone after almost 20 years in the industry going through various experiences is, rest assured that just as failure occurs in life, success will come. It’s an up and down cycle.

The only constant throughout this will be your efforts. And I know I’m getting a little bit preaching philosophical over here, but it’s extremely important that you pursue happiness and peace of mind the way I see life where I am right now, having gone through that journey.

I see that it’s extremely important to have a sense of purpose in life, a sense of achievement as human beings. This is our instinct. And please don’t wait for the opportunity to come for you, go out, hunt for those opportunities. Otherwise, you know.

you don’t want to regret 10 years down the lane that I wish I had done something and I wish I was in a different position today. So that’s one piece of advice on a philosophical level. But also I would say for the future engineers, it’s a very different and to be blunt, it’s a very difficult world that we are looking at in the future because nothing is gonna be the same. It’s not gonna be a typical

career transition just because I have a degree, I’ll have a job. AI is real, it’s coming and it’s serious. And please be on your toes and pivot. think pivoting is one of the best things that I have done in my life. If this doesn’t work, let’s try something else. Let’s try something else until you find your bearings in your footing. I know it’s a very non-typical advice, but the way I see where I stand today, I’m very introspective and I keep looking behind and look at my journey. Am I going in the right direction? But that’s what I’ve learned over the years that it’s you know, peace of mind and happiness is important. And that comes from a sense of purpose and achievement. It’s not necessarily going to be only through material things or going out and, you know, enjoying life. It also comes from your work. It’s very important. And the world is changing, guys so be ready for it be ready to pivot.

ADAMS (26:20)

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

MAHARSIA (26:22)

Thank you so much, Angelique, for having me. It’s been a pleasure.