Chartered Electrical Engineer Sagnik Mukherjee has rejoined the company where he started his engineering career – and says his MBA was an important stepping stone to achieving his goals.
London-based Sagnik, 34, is now Senior Strategy Manager in the internal strategy function at energy giant bp, where he spent almost four years of his fledgling career before becoming a Sainsbury Management Fellow.
His career so far has also seen Sagnik work at INEOS, Wipro and Publicis Sapient either side of his MBA studies at INSEAD in Fontainebleau and Abu Dhabi.
And he says the move back to bp is helping him realise his ambitions of making a tangible difference in the energy sector – an ambition which was outlined in his initial business school and SMF applications.
Sagnik said: “It’s not a new direction, but a continuation of a direction that I set for myself.
“When I was embarking on my career, one thing I was very sure of was knowing that I wanted to be in the energy industry. Today is much more complex – it’s energy and sustainability.
“bp was such a great choice for me to start my engineering career at. bp’s structure back then was simpler – upstream, midstream, downstream – like most energy companies in line with the oil and gas industry.
“Today the energy value chains are converging in very interesting and challenging ways. It used to be that you were either in the business of molecules (oil and gas) or electrons (power, utilities). Now these two are converging and it’s a transition from one to the other.
“For me, the goal has always been to drive impact in the energy industry.”
Never wanting to be pigeon-holed, Sagnik says his three years in strategy consulting was an important stepping stone in developing into a well-rounded professional making a tangible difference in achieving sustainable, integrated energy solutions. He believes INEOS helped him move into petrochemicals and pick up experience and knowledge of a different but equally important part of the energy value chain. And, aligning with his MBA, his work with Publicis Sapient helped him develop a business and strategy toolkit, that would help him to become a better business leader.
He added: “At Publicis Sapient Strategy Consulting I worked in different sectors such as smart cities, financial services, retail, and FMCG, picking up diverse functional expertise such as strategy, financial modelling, and digital transformation. This exposure helped me develop my strategy and business management toolkit that is essential for any strategy and business leadership role. I wouldn’t have been exposed to such diverse problem statements had I continued being an engineer and hadn’t done the MBA.
I believe it’s important for engineers to gain exposure across the value chain. It was very important for me to remain diversified.
“Going into my sixth or seventh year in my career, the choices available were technical / ops leadership or project management. I wasn’t content with that.
“I already had good engineering and operations foundations, so my focus was to round up my business and strategy toolkit and leadership experience, and that’s where the MBA came in.
“The MBA took me out of my comfort zone. It was a deliberate step-out to broaden my skill set and into areas I didn’t necessarily already know about.
“The overarching goal was to remain true to my roots of energy supply, sustainability and transition and goal to become a mature leader in this space. It is a positive coincidence that such a role came up in bp where I started!”
Sagnik says his MBA studies and the wide networks that have spawned from it were vital to him getting where he is today – and at a quicker pace than many might find.
He said: “INSEAD was a game changer for my career. People go into MBAs wanting to change their industry, region or seniority. I stayed in the UK, but I changed industry and seniority.
“Consulting was an important accelerant. INSEAD gave me a treasure trove of experience that I was able to progress my career. But it also provided so much more – it is about end-to-end personal professional development.
“That’s why I’m able to come into this new role. It is possible I could have arrived where I am today without the MBA, but it would have taken me a lot longer with a much more challenging learning curve. Most, if not all, strategy roles prefer MBAs with consulting experience, so both of those experiences have been able to move my career forwards.
“At the point in my career, gaining the SMF scholarship de-risked the investment. Not just in a financial sense but also the time and stepping out of my career and security at INEOS.
“It made me even more open minded to embrace new opportunities and learning experiences.
“And having access to the network of both incoming and existing alumni is such a boost. These things help because nobody has the answer to everything. The ability to ask questions to a network like I have is really useful.
“My long-term goal is to be in a role, organisation and level where I can make investment decisions in energy transition. All big companies make decisions that impact society. Being in the position to make these impactful decisions would be exciting and fulfilling, especially because there’s no silver bullet to the energy transition problem – it is always dealing in trade-offs and multiple layers of problem solving.”
Returning to the organisation where he started his engineering career in 2012 after graduating from the University of Sheffield, Sagnik believes it’s an interesting time for the energy industry.
He added: “bp has always played a key role in the energy industry, that was a key motivator for me to join as a grad and key motivator for me to return in a strategy role.
“Generally, when people think of energy transition, they think about everything going electric and cutting the amount of carbon emissions. But it also means existing business will have to change drastically. And consumers will have to change their behaviours and ways of living. There will be a new normal.
“And it’s really interesting because the world has several macro questions to deal with – is the world transitioning at the right pace? Do we have enough non-fossil sources to support our needs? Is it a ‘just’ transition? How do companies, investors, consumers make these decisions and choices? And are those the right choices?”
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