Director, Lean Global – Commercial
Johnson Controls
At Johnson Controls, we are transforming the built environment through innovation, operational excellence, and a relentless focus on continuous improvement.
As
Director, Lean Global – Commercial, you will play a critical leadership role in shaping and accelerating our enterprise Lean transformation across the Commercial organization—driving strategy, building capability, and delivering sustainable business results at scale.
This role is designed for a seasoned Lean leader who thrives in complexity, partners confidently with senior executives, and leads transformation through people, systems, and culture—not tools alone.
About The Role
The
Director, Lean Global – Commercial is responsible for setting direction, enabling execution, and ensuring sustained impact of Lean across the global Commercial business. This leader serves as a strategic partner to executive and regional leadership, guiding enterprise problem‑solving, policy deployment, and operating system maturity.
You will lead large‑scale transformation initiatives, influence decision‑making at the highest levels, and develop Lean capability across leaders, teams, and regions—ensuring Lean is embedded into how the business operates, grows, and competes.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise & Strategic Leadership
- Serve as a senior leader and thought partner driving Lean strategy across the global Commercial organization.
- Lead complex, cross‑regional transformation efforts aligned to enterprise priorities, growth objectives, and customer outcomes.
- Shape the long‑term roadmap for Lean maturity, capability development, and cultural transformation.
Strategy Deployment (Policy Deployment)
- Translate enterprise and Commercial strategies into actionable priorities through structured deployment.
- Ensure alignment from executive leadership through regional and functional teams, with clear ownership and accountability.
- Guide leaders in connecting Lean initiatives to measurable business outcomes.
Governance & Operating Systems
- Establish and oversee Lean governance, including standards, methodologies, performance management, and sustainment mechanisms.
- Ensure consistency while allowing flexibility to meet regional and business‑specific needs.
- Monitor progress, risks, and outcomes using data‑driven dashboards and reviews.
Executive & Senior Leader Partnership
- Partner closely with senior executives to enable alignment, decision‑making, and execution of strategic initiatives.
- Provide objective insight, challenge respectfully, and support leaders in modeling Lean behaviors.
- Act as a trusted advisor in navigating complex organizational and change dynamics.
Stakeholder Engagement & Influence
- Serve as a key connector across executive, regional, and functional stakeholders.
- Build strong relationships that enable transparency, trust, and collaboration across the enterprise.
- Influence without authority in a highly matrixed, global environment.
Transformation & Continuous Improvement
- Lead enterprise problem‑solving efforts that address systemic issues and unlock performance.
- Champion a culture of continuous improvement focused on customer value, flow, and simplification.
- Ensure Lean is applied beyond operations into commercial, transactional, and end‑to‑end processes.
Talent Development & Capability Building
- Coach, mentor, and develop Lean leaders, practitioners, and business leaders globally.
- Build a scalable Lean talent pipeline and community of practice.
- Elevate leadership capability through teaching, coaching, and role modeling.
Risk Management & Sustainability
- Identify enterprise‑level risks to transformation success and proactively mitigate them.
- Ensure improvements are sustained through leadership behaviors, management systems, and standard work.
- Balance speed of change with long‑term organizational health.
What You Will Do
- Lead global Commercial Lean initiatives aligned with enterprise strategy and operating system priorities.
- Guide and sponsor major transformation efforts tied to growth, margin, customer experience, and productivity.
- Enable vertical and horizontal alignment across regions, functions, and leadership levels.
- Sponsor and oversee value stream transformations and enterprise problem‑solving.
- Establish expectations for Lean rigor, outcomes, and leadership behaviors.
- Facilitate and sponsor Obeya rooms, strategy reviews, value stream transformations, and Kaizen governance.
- Leverage data, insights, and root‑cause analysis to inform strategic decisions and recommendations.
How You Will Do It
- Identify global synergies and best practices; enable sharing and scaling across regions.
- Partner with regional and functional leaders to drive ownership and accountability for results.
- Develop leaders’ ability to lead Lean, not rely on Lean experts.
- Standardize where it matters; simplify and streamline ways of working.
- Introduce innovative CI approaches, tools, and thinking appropriate to business context and maturity.
- Balance strategic direction with hands‑on engagement where impact is greatest.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Quality, Operations, or related field (advanced degree preferred).
- 10+ years of progressive experience in Lean, Continuous Improvement, or business transformation roles.
- Demonstrated success leading enterprise‑level, multi‑region or global transformation initiatives with measurable business impact.
- Proven ability to influence and partner with senior executives and cross‑functional leaders.
- Strong business acumen with the ability to connect Lean to strategy, growth, and financial outcomes.
- Deep systems‑thinking capability and end‑to‑end process perspective.
- Exceptional communication, facilitation, and executive‑level presentation skills.
- Experience building, leading, and developing high‑performing Lean or transformation teams.
- Strong change‑leadership capability, resilience, and judgment in complex environments.
Preferred
- Experience applying Lean beyond manufacturing into commercial, transactional, or enterprise processes.
- Background in operating system deployment (e.g., enterprise CI systems).
- Lean / Six Sigma certifications or equivalent experience.
- Ability to travel 50–80% globally.
HIRING SALARY RANGE: $156,000-235k (Salary to be determined by the education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of the applicant, internal equity, and alignment with market data.)
This role offers a competitive Bonus plan that will take into account individual, group, and corporate performance. This position includes a competitive benefits package.
The posted salary range reflects the target compensation for this role. However, we recognize that exceptional candidates may bring unique skills and experiences that exceed the typical profile. If you believe your background warrants consideration beyond the stated range, we encourage you to apply. To support an efficient and fair hiring process, we may use technology assisted tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), to help identify and evaluate candidates. All hiring decisions are ultimately made by human reviewers. For details, please visit the About Us tab on the Johnson Controls Careers site at https://jobs.johnsoncontrols.com/about-us
