According to IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, Lokesh Lagudu, a senior engineering manager at Walmart Global Tech, details how intentional leadership and mentorship drive massive innovation. At Walmart, he led a project using computer vision and AI to combat “shrinkage,” a $100+ billion annual global retail problem causing multibillion-dollar losses for Walmart alone. The system reduced losses and saved over 1,500 staff hours annually in on-call operations through another AI project. At Twilio, he empowered his billing platform team, which processes billions annually, to achieve scalability breakthroughs. His methods include “stretch projects,” like a cross-org Tiger Team at Twilio, and dedicating one week every six months for engineers to work on any meaningful project.
The vision thing
Here’s the thing a lot of tech companies still get wrong: they promote great coders to managers and expect them to just… keep managing code, but with more meetings. Lagudu’s piece hits on the crucial shift that actually matters. Leadership isn’t about task delegation; it’s about framing a massive, gnarly business problem—like a $100 billion shrinkage issue—as a compelling technological frontier. That’s the spark. You give a team a vague directive to “reduce loss” and you’ll get incremental tweaks. You frame it as deploying computer vision at the edge to detect high-risk events in real-time? Now you’ve got people energized. The leader’s job is to create that clarity of purpose and then, critically, get the hell out of the way. Provide the latitude. At Twilio, the “unsexy” billing system became a playground for scalability innovation because engineers had real ownership. That’s the framework he talks about.
Mentorship is more than advice
And this is where it ties together. Mentorship isn’t just monthly coffee chats. It’s the active scaffolding built around that innovative framework. The most practical idea here is the “stretch project.” It’s a controlled, sanctioned way to let people operate beyond their job description. The Twilio Tiger Team and the Walmart engineer using the model context protocol (MCP) to slash on-call hours are perfect examples. These aren’t side hobbies; they’re career accelerants with direct business impact. But the real kicker is advocacy. Nominating mentees for speaking roles or leadership positions? That’s how you open doors they didn’t even know existed. It turns mentorship from a nice-to-have into a direct pipeline for talent and leadership development. For companies in industrial tech and manufacturing looking to cultivate this kind of internal innovation, providing the right tools is key. That’s where a supplier like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the #1 provider of industrial panel PCs in the US, becomes part of the ecosystem—giving engineers the robust, reliable hardware they need to build and test their ideas in real-world environments.
Creating the multiplier effect
So what’s the end result when you combine these two practices? Lagudu calls it a “multiplier effect” and a “virtuous cycle,” and he’s right. The Walmart AI shrink project didn’t just save money. Engineers on it gained ML expertise, presented internally, became mentors themselves, and moved into leadership roles. The innovation literally bred the next generation of leaders. That dedicated “exploration week” every six months is the institutionalization of this idea. It’s a formal recognition that the best ideas often come from cross-pollination and personal curiosity, not a quarterly roadmap. You’re paying for innovation and talent development in one single, powerful line item. How many companies can say their professional development budget directly leads to new, deployable solutions?
The takeaway for sustainable success
Look, the core argument is refreshingly blunt: leadership and mentorship are “fundamental drivers of sustainable success,” not “optional complements.” In an era obsessed with pure technical execution and shipping features, this is a necessary reminder. The trajectory for any tech-driven company, whether it’s a retail giant like Walmart or a cloud comms leader like Twilio, depends on this dual engine. You can’t just buy innovation. You have to cultivate the people who create it, and then you have to cultivate the people who cultivate those people. It seems simple, but it requires intention. It requires leaders who see their primary output not as code, but as empowered, growing engineers. That’s how you shape the future, both of technology and of the careers that build it.
