Are You Still Giving Advice When You Should Be Asking Questions? — Aditya Kumar, Schneider Electric

Aditya Kumar has spent close to 20 years at Schneider Electric, moving through roles in operations, transportation, data centres, and now regional strategy. Based in Singapore, he supports strategy development for power systems across East Asia, with a focus on the oil and gas and data centre segments. Earlier in his career, he was given the opportunity to set up an operations function spanning the Asia-Pacific region, including India, East Asia, and the Pacific zone. 

Leading a team across multiple cultures and customer segments shaped his appreciation for diversity and inclusivity, and continues to inform how he leads today. He holds an MBA in marketing and strategy and maintains a personal target of completing at least two professional courses each year, including a six-month sustainability course at SMU.

How has working across oil and gas and data centres shaped your view of regional strategy?

Aditya Kumar explains why two seemingly unrelated segments share a common foundation, and why excitement and challenge tend to arrive together.

“Both segments are heavy on electricity, electro-intensive, with a huge amount of technology requirement, and both are on a growth trajectory right now, so that’s where it becomes exciting and challenging as well. Sometimes the growth trajectories are fast, and you need to catch up as an organisation, and that’s where the challenge could be of one type. The other could be that growth is slow, the market is stagnating, or it’s too crowded, and then you have to carve out your niche.”

How does East Asia differ market by market, and what does that mean for strategy?

Breaking the region down country by country, Aditya Kumar argues that East Asia should never be treated as a single entity.

“If you take Singapore, for example, there’s not much growth in either segment, but it still remains a hub where a lot of decision-making takes place for both. If you see Indonesia, there’s big growth in data centres and oil and gas. If you see Thailand, big growth in both segments. If you go to Japan, big growth on data centres but not so much in oil and gas. So the challenges change by geography, and the competitive landscape for us changes too. The landscape of stakeholders changes, the players would change, so the dynamics evolve — not East Asia as one entity, but a group of multiple countries.”

Where is AI actually changing how infrastructure leaders work today?

Aditya Kumar distinguishes between AI used within an organisation day-to-day and AI reshaping how complex systems like airports and seaports are managed.

“When you integrate AI with large, complex systems like an airport or a seaport, it starts bringing knowledge and decision-making support. Topics like digital twins have been evolving in this sector — you find digital twins in urban transportation, in oil and gas, in data centre systems. These twins are then used not only for designing the architecture but also for evolving, simulating, and growing the systems, including operator training and simulation. In Schneider Electric, for example, we offer a lot of services driven by condition-based monitoring, where data is pulled from devices on site and analysed using AI-based platforms.”

What is driving sustainability adoption in East Asia, if not government regulation?

Aditya Kumar describes a market shaped more by self-enforcement and customer demand than by formal mandates.

“The main drivers are the companies’ internal targets. Different sectors have set their own targets — for example, in the maritime industry there are targets set by IMO, but in East Asia those targets are more like guidelines. If you see airports, they’re setting their own targets for green fuel and carbon reduction. It’s very often self-enforced or industry-enforced; we don’t find enforcement by governments out here right now. So for companies like Schneider or our competitors, we need to adapt to customer needs, because some customers ask for eco-friendly, sustainable products, and some do not value it today.”

Looking three to five years ahead, what will define how infrastructure industries evolve?

Aditya Kumar points to two intertwined forces: sustainability and AI, and an organisation’s capacity to learn fast enough to keep up.

“The two themes of sustainability and AI are going to be part of everyday culture, everyday life — there’s no escaping it. The second theme linked to it is the ageing population and the evolving workforce. When technologies evolve very fast, change is not easy for people. So how quickly we adapt in the next three to five years will define how efficient our systems work, how efficient our companies work, and how efficiently employees are able to engage on the job, day to day.”

What leadership principles have mattered most when scaling diverse, multi-country teams?

Aditya Kumar credits his approach to listening and asking questions, particularly when leading the diverse APAC team he built earlier in his career.

“Even if I have an answer ready, I prefer to step back and let the team, or my experts, provide me the pros and cons, the arguments in favour, and feel free to challenge me. So even if a decision seems obvious, there are very often different points of view that can help us a lot. When I was running the APAC entity, having a diverse team from different cultures, different ways of working, and different backgrounds really helped me, because I could get feedback from different generations, genders, cultures, and countries, and they would come out with bright ideas.”

What advice would you give the next generation of leaders?

Aditya Kumar’s answer is less about advice itself and more about resisting the urge to give it too quickly.

“My first and foremost advice is: don’t give advice, ask questions. To be simple about it, I’ve seen a lot of people give a lot of advice and not ask enough questions at the top level. What I would tell the younger generation, especially engineers moving up from operations, is that we tend to jump to solutions too fast. We want to give a solution quickly. What I would tell them is: stop giving solutions, take a step back, ask questions, don’t give advice, and check with others, with your team members, on the best way to work forward.”

What question should executives be asking themselves more often?

For Aditya Kumar, the most important question a leader can ask is about workforce readiness, given how quickly the underlying technology landscape is shifting.

“How do I prepare my teams, my team members, to be ready for the future? I talked about the evolution on sustainability, on AI, on technologies, and that evolution is moving very fast. So how do I keep my workforce ready for the future? And the future is not ten years from now — it’s one or two years from now.”

Why does continuous learning matter so much, even at a senior level?

Aditya Kumar closes by returning to a personal discipline: treating learning as a non-negotiable habit, not a one-time achievement.

“Even for leaders, very often we believe that we have learned enough, we have studied enough, and we know everything. In this changing environment, as leaders and as executives, we need to keep learning. So learning should not stop. What I do for myself is have a target of at least two courses every year — I pick up different topics and finish the certification courses. I try to pick topics that I can apply, closer to what I am working on or what I’ll be working on in the coming months, so that I can apply those learnings.”

Join the Conversation: The Ortus Club’s Executive Network

As Aditya’s perspective shows, leading across fast-moving, electricity-intensive sectors like oil and gas and data centres requires more than technical expertise — it requires the discipline to keep asking questions rather than reaching for ready-made answers. His approach to leadership, built on listening across diverse teams and treating learning as a constant rather than a milestone, reflects the mindset that defines today’s most effective infrastructure leaders.

At The Ortus Club, we host curated executive roundtables that bring together senior leaders navigating these same regional and technological shifts. Join our network to exchange insights on AI-driven infrastructure, sustainability strategy, and the leadership habits that keep teams ready for what’s next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why does Schneider Electric pair oil and gas with data centres in one role?

A: Both segments are electricity-intensive and currently on a growth trajectory, which creates overlapping technology requirements and strategic priorities, even though the sectors themselves are very different.

Q: How are digital twins being used across infrastructure sectors?

A: Digital twins are used in urban transportation, oil and gas, and data centre systems to design architecture, simulate operations, support operator training, and enable predictive maintenance through AI-based analysis.

Q: Is sustainability regulation enforced by governments in East Asia?

A: Largely no. Targets tend to be self-enforced by companies or set by industry bodies, such as IMO guidelines in the maritime sector, rather than mandated by government regulation.

Q: What leadership habit does Aditya Kumar recommend for emerging leaders?

A: Asking questions and creating space for team input, rather than jumping to solutions or giving advice too quickly, particularly for engineers moving into broader leadership roles.

Q: How does Aditya Kumar approach professional development?

A: He completes at least two courses or certifications each year, choosing topics closely tied to his current or upcoming responsibilities so the learning can be applied directly.