Standing Tall in a Forest Fire

The Leadership Test Kitchen is a newsletter where I share the real ingredients behind leading and growing successful companies. Some editions feature practical frameworks from CEOs who’ve mastered challenges in strategy, culture, and growth. Others share the lessons I’ve learned firsthand as a CEO, or insights I’ve gained from my work with other executives.

Every few weeks, I’ll use this space to spotlight other accomplished leaders. Today, I’m featuring Christopher Poh, President and General Manager of Ecotech Solar, a leading installer of residential and commercial solar energy systems, known for putting customers first in everything they do.

Chris has a gift for finding growth where others see a ceiling. His track record at Ecotech Solar, several start-ups, and Starbucks backs that up. When I sat down with him recently to talk about how Ecotech Solar is holding its ground in a shrinking market, I was ready for a playbook on sales leadership or go-to-market. What I got instead was a culture answer.

I work with Chris in my Vistage Worldwide CEO cohort. He is in his second year leading Ecotech Solar, a 20-year-old, mission-driven company built to make communities stronger through sustainable energy. The timing was not exactly ideal when he joined the company. He took the job right when major shifts in federal policy, tariffs, and taxation occurred, all of which have driven buyers away from solar energy. With US residential solar declining 33% YoY, it is an absolute forest fire industry-wide. Yet Chris did not stumble into the fire. He spotted it early and chose to lean into it, like a smokejumper attacking a fire head-on. As a result, Ecotech Solar continues to stand tall in a rapidly shrinking competitive landscape.

So what is the answer? For Chris, it all comes back to culture, building trust, and tapping into the potential of every single employee. He pointed to several key philosophies that all growth-oriented CEOs can learn from:

Slow Down to Speed Up

New leaders face enormous pressure to move fast. Assess the talent. Evaluate the go-to-market. Dissect the sales engine. Chris felt all of that pressure; on top of it were the non-ideal market conditions. A furlough hit during his first few weeks on the job.

What he did next was fascinating.

Instead of accelerating into fix-it mode, he went deep into the root system of Ecotech Solar’s culture. Why do employees join? Why do they stay? How do they work together? What do they actually care about? Based on this understanding, he built a more holistic plan of attack, one that integrated purpose, individual accountability, and company performance rather than treating them as separate levers.

A Tree's Roots Are Dynamic

Most leaders treat culture as something you set once and put up on the wall. Define the purpose, articulate the values, cast the vision, then move on.

But that’s not how it actually works.

The way employees engage with a company is always evolving. In Ecotech Solar’s case, the broader political narrative around solar energy, rising unemployment, and even Chris’ own arrival all changed the way his employees showed up and got work done. 

He changed the story. He painted a clear picture of how a high-performing company advances the mission, and how each individual's contribution ladders up to something bigger than their job description. Then he relied on storytelling to make it stick. He modeled curiosity, encouraging his team to ask questions about the reasoning behind every action, so they felt genuinely connected to it.

Invest in People When It Hurts the Most

When times get tough, HR and people development budgets are usually the first to get cut. Chris went the other direction.

By turning on investment in learning and development during a downturn, he sent two clear signals to his team: the company believes in you, and the company is going to equip you for what’s coming. That goodwill became the foundation for integrating individual accountability with company performance in a way that felt earned rather than imposed. The internal logic was straightforward: accept the discomfort in 2025, maintain investment levels, and keep the pace high to earn a stronger 2026.

Trust Is the Rich Soil

Employee trust is the key differentiator in organizational performance and growth. Employees who feel seen, heard, and recognized show up differently. They contribute more, collaborate across functions, and hold steady when the external pressure mounts.

Many leaders talk about trust and model the behavior, yet still don’t achieve the results they expect. Chris built a system of trust. He made company data available so employees understood the context in which they were operating. He set clear expectations in meetings to lead with curiosity. He spent time at the front lines, working alongside his people. And he walked the talk when it came to empowering his employees.

The best leaders are not the ones who avoid the fire. They are the ones who realize the smoke before anyone else does, and still choose to move toward it. Chris saw the adversity coming and leaned into it, digging deep roots and investing in his people, even when it seemed counterintuitive. The culture he built early on was the reason Ecotech Solar could move into that fire with confidence. Early signs suggest this approach was the right call.

A Culinary Note

Chris loves Malaysian food, especially laksa. For those who have not tried it, laksa is a rich, aromatic noodle soup that draws from Malay, Chinese, and Indian culinary traditions. It’s delicious, deeply complex, deeply layered, and completely unlike anything a single tradition could produce on its own.

I have never attempted to make laksa at home. I have been eyeing a Chicken Curry Laksa recipe, and after this conversation, it earned a spot on my culinary checklist for this year. There is clearly something to learn from a dish that brings that many traditions together and still comes out as one coherent, extraordinary meal. The parallel to Ecotech Solar is hard to miss.

What Chris built was not a single strategy or a single cultural fix. It was the careful integration of individual talents, personas, and a shared North Star, layered and developed over time into something resilient enough to withstand a forest fire.

It is the perfect dish for Chris. What he built at Ecotech Solar is exactly that – a blend of many traditions, talents, and perspectives that still comes out as one coherent and extraordinary thing.

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