Reviewing the FPost Magazine CEO of the Year Rankings I was struck by the high rankings of energy, mining and minerals and the paucity of customer service oriented CEOs?

The reason? Because the rankings are an index of performance based on shareholder ROI. How futile is such a ranking in the face of a complete meltdown in the financial markets? This time next year all the Asset-based Securities CEOs will have vanished, even ManuLife, based on recent revelations.

How would the CEO Rankings look if they were indexed to a measurable Customer ROI? A quick scan of the FPost index indicates that RIM is the highest rank for a business that provides services to end-users - Way To Go RIM! Very service-oriented. Rogers is 20 places further down. I wouldn't expect to see Rogers on the list if the rankings were by "Customer ROI", if you have been following my blog.

I started to wonder how FPost's measure of corporate achievement would translate into “Share the Wealth”. Under Obamanomics, would the wealth of industry be returned back to the customer through increased taxation on top-performing corporations offset by a reduction in personal taxation? The increased disposable income to be reinvested into greater consumption of products and services funneled back to the top performers. Yes, poor performers would pay less tax relative to income, and remain poor performers. In all of this who would get hurt? Shareholders.

My interpretation of Obamanomics suggests that ownership may not the key to economic wealth. Participation is the key. Is this socialist dogma or could it actually be consistent with my customer-centric values? I think it is.

I know of no such initiative, by the way. And customer-centric marketing remains a low-flying priority to most captains of industry at 40,000 feet, because “Ownership” is still foremost the priority of CEOs, and the Financial Post and the dismally performing capital markets.