Chris Koch and
the art of letting go

A company can accumulate businesses rather as a house accumulates furniture: each purchase has a reason, until moving through the place becomes an exercise in remembering the reasons. At Carlisle, Chris Koch eventually chose to rearrange more than the furniture. The company that had owned foodservice equipment, braking products and aerospace interconnect operations would concentrate on the materials surrounding a building. For a chief executive, choosing a direction also meant choosing what to give up.

Koch, Carlisle’s chair, president and CEO, had offered the board a choice of his own. During the competition for the top job, he distinguished himself from two longer-serving internal candidates by promising a different direction. His subsequent tenure supplied the particulars. A diversified industrial company became a focused building products business. The logic of that transformation is easier to understand by following the executive through the operating jobs that came first.

An apprenticeship in things that have to work

His education combined economics and history at Macalester College, followed by an MBA at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. The pairing is an appealing one for someone who would spend years deciding what to retain from an established company and what to change. Economics supplies the question of where resources should go. History supplies plenty of reminders that an arrangement can outlive the circumstances that once justified it.

His working education took place at H.B. Fuller and Graco before Carlisle. At Graco, he held leadership responsibilities in Minneapolis and Shanghai, including responsibility for Asia Pacific operations. These were assignments in industrial businesses, where the product has to be made, delivered and used. A persuasive presentation cannot substitute for a machine or material arriving when a customer needs it.

Koch joined Carlisle in February 2008 as president of Asia-Pacific. In January 2009 he moved to Carlisle Brake & Friction. Group responsibility for diversified products followed in June 2012, then the president and chief operating officer role in May 2014. His route through the company included both geographic responsibility and individual businesses before he was asked to oversee the whole collection.

The handover had a deliberate pace. David A. Roberts, his predecessor, described Koch’s appointment as the culmination of a leadership transition planned over nearly four years. The two had worked together at Graco as well as Carlisle. When Koch became CEO on January 1, 2016, Roberts stayed as executive chairman. The succession preserved an experienced sounding board while moving executive responsibility to someone already familiar with the machinery.

There was a substantial transaction in that apprenticeship, too. In 2015, Koch led the acquisition and integration of Finishing Brands from Graco for $600 million. The business became Carlisle Fluid Technologies. He arrived at the CEO’s desk having worked on the practical aftermath of a purchase: the part that begins when the announcement is over and the business still has to function.

The roof becomes the point

Consider the building envelope, a phrase with the unfortunate sound of something ordered from a stationery supplier. It means the systems separating a building’s interior from the outside. Roofs, insulation, waterproofing, air barriers and related materials must handle water, air and energy. Their relationships give a manufacturer a reason to think about a building as a connected problem.

The 2021 agreement to buy Henry placed a large investment behind that idea. The announced cash price was $1.575 billion. Henry’s portfolio included systems controlling the movement of water, vapor, air and energy, serving residential and commercial customers as well as repair and restoration work. The acquisition closed on September 1. It expanded the places where Carlisle’s materials could participate in a building’s performance.

For the person running the company, this changes the questions that reach the desk. Decisions about a roof and decisions about the walls beneath it can draw on related customer needs. A contractor wants materials that work together and a dependable route to getting them. The strategic argument for putting businesses together becomes more convincing when it can be explained in those ordinary terms. Koch’s direction placed the use of the products at the center of the case for owning their makers.

The converse decision arrived with a sale. On May 21, 2024, Carlisle completed the disposal of Interconnect Technologies to Amphenol. That business made engineered interconnect solutions for demanding applications. It could have a future with another owner while Carlisle pursued its building products direction. Portfolio management requires allowing both propositions to be true.

For Koch, the distinction was about the return a business could earn inside Carlisle. He has described judging operations over a long investment horizon and being prepared to sell. His acquisition rule is similarly pointed: “If you can’t explain your entitlement to win, it’s probably a bad deal.” That question forces a buyer to explain what it brings beyond the money.

A coherent portfolio makes the chief executive’s explanation easier to follow. It also makes the results easier to question. Once the company has chosen its field, the next conversation can turn to whether it serves that field well. Focus removes some of the places where a disappointing result might hide.

Clarity needs a balance sheet

Koch’s public account of leadership returns to clarity. In 2020, he described examining fundamental assumptions, understanding how the business creates value and making sure a strategy has the funding to survive difficult conditions. A long plan requires more than confidence about its destination. It requires enough financial room to keep making decisions along the way.

“Making tough decisions can be lonely and uncomfortable.”

Chris Koch, 2020

That observation is less decorative than many executive maxims. A decision about a business affects colleagues, habits and an inherited definition of the company. Its loneliness comes from the concentration of responsibility. Consultation may improve the choice, but somebody still has to authorize it. Koch’s emphasis on questioning ordinary assumptions gives those moments a method, however uncomfortable the final call.

He also works within a system that predates his appointment as CEO. The Carlisle Operating System embeds continuous improvement across the business. It connects efficiency, problem-solving and customer service rather than leaving them as separate departments’ aspirations. For an executive reshaping a portfolio, an operating discipline matters because the companies retained or acquired still need a common way to improve.

There is a useful limit to the portrait of a solitary decision-maker. A CEO can decide where capital belongs. Teams have to turn that decision into production, deliveries and customer relationships. Koch’s role depends on both levels working together. The strategic choice is consequential precisely because so many people have to make it work afterward.

A scoreboard with several numbers

Outside work, Koch’s documented interests include golf, skiing and hockey. His 2020 recognition as the W. P. Carey School’s Executive of the Year brought another personal detail into view: he and his wife, Amy, have two sons, Christian and Nicolas. Those details give the industrial résumé some ordinary dimensions. The executive who discusses investment returns also has games to play and a family beyond the conference call.

In April 2026, Carlisle announced its fourth employee stock option grant since 2009, covering eligible employees. Koch connected it to shared ownership and the company’s longer-term ambitions: “When Carlisle succeeds, we succeed together.” Options make that proposition financial, although their eventual value still depends on how the business and its shares perform.

The July results supplied a mixed, useful test of execution. Second-quarter revenue rose 8% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings per share rose 12%. Operating margin fell from 23.1% to 22.4%. Higher sales and earnings can coexist with pressure on margins. For Koch, the report kept raw materials, freight costs and construction conditions in the picture alongside the strategy.

In August, Carlisle approved its fiftieth consecutive annual dividend increase. The quarterly payment rose from $1.10 to $1.25 per share. The streak reaches back to 1976, decades before Koch joined. His place in that history is stewardship of an existing commitment while changing the business that supports it. The inherited record and the redesigned portfolio now have to travel together.

The next test is what comes off the production line

Koch’s responsibilities widened again in August 2026 with an appointment to Xylem’s board. His industrial career now contributes to another company’s governance as Carlisle works through its own next phase. He also has board responsibilities at Toro, keeping his professional world connected to businesses beyond the building envelope.

At Carlisle, the future has a date: Vision 2030. The company targets $40 in adjusted earnings per share and return on invested capital above 25%. It also wants 25% of revenue to come from products introduced in the preceding five years. The last goal gives the financial ones a particularly concrete test. A meaningful portion of the future sales mix must come from things customers could not buy a few years earlier.

Those measures ask different questions of his leadership. Earnings per share concerns the profit attributable to each share; return on invested capital asks how productively the business uses the money committed to it. New-product revenue asks whether the offering is being renewed. Together, they make it possible to assess the direction from several sides. Koch has put numbers around an ambition that could otherwise remain comfortably vague. The eventual comparison will be between the plan and the company customers actually encounter.

For Koch, that shifts the story from selecting businesses to renewing what they make. The portfolio has a clearer boundary. Inside it, the work continues: materials that perform, products contractors can install efficiently, deliveries that arrive as promised. Letting go helped define Carlisle’s direction. What leaves its factories will help decide where that direction leads.