Wall Street doesn't always like that in the short-term, but it's the only way to ensure a winning formula that keeps your service promise to customers and makes it possible to build stronger, more profitable relationships with your customers over the long term. While the 27 chief executives surveyed work for prosperous companies, they remain eager to further improve stock-price growth. The most popular strategies include better communications, more time-efficient investor relations, and a changed shareholder mix. We will ask the same questions next year of a CEO subgroup and compare their responses with those of this year's respondents. To be sure, the CEO 100 isn't the only investment approach that focuses on the role and performance of the chief executive.
Some pundits argue that certain underperforming or new CEOs are better bets.
If trends hold true, odds-on favorites to crack the top 100 next year are CEOs at the top and bottom of this year's list. Stephen Kaufman of Arrow Electronics and Gian Fulgoni of Information Resources, respectively, were at the top and bottom of the last two lists. No one has done so yet. But as CEOs learn more about what it takes to stay on top, perhaps we will see more continuity in our list from year to year. In turn, that would improve the value of the CEO Index as an investment and management tool.