Imagine a company town hall where frontline workers ask about capital allocation and middle managers offer ideas on long-term strategy. Or a supply chain team prompting resilience planning and employees at every level connecting their actions to value creation. For many CEOs, this kind of engagement might sound aspirational, but at Ingersoll Rand, it's our reality.
That wasn't always my view of what leadership or engagement looked like. Early in my career, after completing a dual master's degree at MIT, I took a job as an hourly supervisor in an aerospace factory. While many of my peers headed to investment banks or consulting firms, I found myself managing 16 frontline workers on the shop floor.
I thought my business school training — steeped in theory about lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, and waste reduction — would leave me more than prepared for the task. But I quickly saw the gap between theory and reality. Efficiency gains benefited the company, but for workers, it often meant fewer overtime hours and less pay.
Management wanted tighter margins; employees wanted income stability. Incentives weren't aligned, and behavior reflected that. I learned an enduring lesson: strategy alone doesn't drive results.
I took incentive alignment to its full potential in 2017 when, with the support of our largest shareholder, KKR, I instituted a broad-based shared ownership plan for every employee at the company I ran, Gardner Denver. From the manufacturing floor to the front office, everyone became an owner. People had a stake in the outcome, and they acted like it.
Ideas flowed more freely, teams spotted and solved problems earlier, and employees took pride in identifying and implementing improvements. For example, by training thousands to act as owners when managing cash — from inventory to collections — we built financial discipline into the culture. Gardner Denver merged with Ingersoll Rand plc's Industrial segment in 2020, and I became CEO of the new Ingersoll Rand, Inc., a global leader in mission-critical flow creation and life science and industrial technologies.
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