Why We’ve Stopped Ranking CEOs
STARTING IN 2014, HBR published an annual list called the Best-Performing CEOs in the World. The rankings, calculated by measuring financial returns during each CEO’s entire tenure and factoring in two assessments of each company’s environmental, social, and governance practices, helped drive discussion of how society should measure a business leader’s performance. The list was routinely one of the year’s most-read articles on HBR.org. But each year the CEOs on our list were overwhelmingly male and largely white, provoking criticism for a lack of diversity. And each year we explained why this was the case: Most of the S&P 1200 companies we analyzed were led by white male CEOs. Now, in the midst of a heightened global discourse on racial and gender equity, we have decided to break the cycle. Rather than…