Companies don’t last for 100-plus years unless they do a lot of things right. But Ingersoll Rand, the 143-year-old home of such iconic brands as Club Car, Thermo King, and Trane, thought it could do even better when it launched a lean transformation about four years ago. As part of that effort, it put a big emphasis on developing people, including senior leaders.

To learn more about the company before its presentation at the March 2014 Lean Transformation Summit, I called Dan McDonnell, vice president of operational excellence. He described a program for developing people’s lean capabilities that is moving ahead on several fronts.

Developing capabilities

Like their counterparts at other companies, leaders at Ingersoll Rand from senior management to supervisor tended to spend most of their time in offices and conference rooms or on computers or phones. “It’s how we tend to do work today,” said McDonnell. “It’s how we we’re taught as managers.”

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