Many corporate leaders struggle to increase long-term shareholder value. This comes as no surprise, given an increasingly competitive environment in which financial markets often evaluate a company and its CEO by the most recent quarterly results. But the cost of neglecting long-term performance can be high in today's rapidly changing business world, where most companies either do not survive or are acquired.1
Our research into companies listed on the S&P 500 from 1984 to 2004 shows that some do achieve strong results in both the short and the long term. We identified 266 companies and grouped them in four quadrants: companies that recorded strong short- and long-term performance, those that performed poorly in the short term but well over time, others that were strong in the former but lackluster in the latter, and companies that were mediocre in both (exhibit).
We then examined how the companies in each quadrant performed along four dimensions: long-term total returns to shareholders (TRS), survival rates, the tenure of current CEOs, and the volatility of share prices reflected in the beta deviation from the industry average.
Clearly, the ability to balance short- and...