When results aren't enough: Why boards are replacing CEOs who delivered

Imagine being terminated for leading a public company to its profitable projected targets. A few decades ago, this might have been extraordinary. But in 2025, CEO turnover hit record highs for the second consecutive year. The surprise isn't that underperformers are getting replaced; it's that high‐performing CEOs are being shown the door at nearly the same rate as those underperformers. In the S&P 500, turnover among top‐quartile companies by shareholder return nearly doubled in a single year, closing the gap with bottom‐quartile firms to just two percentage points, all while average tenure keeps falling. Boards are acting faster to remove executives who delivered the metrics on which they were hired to deliver, and the paradox permeates business sectors. CEOs at Nike, Disney, Intel, Norfolk Southern and Starbucks were all unceremoniously removed from their positions in the last few years, despite hitting metrics.