Ultimate success cannot be engineered, argues author Simon Sinek, it derives from a team collectively knowing why they get up and go to work every day. Distinguishing between “leaders” in a position of authority and “those that lead,” Sinek revealed people follow the latter not because they have to, but because they want to—for their own sake. Only then can a team be inspired to deliver maximum effort and achieve the impossible.
This ReturnOnLeadership® (ROL®) metric evaluates and quantifies key fundamentals previously not measured that are vital to mitigate risk and improve the chances for success when it matters most.
“We know how challenging it continues to be for leaders to navigate today’s turbulent world. Each year we hear from CEOs and other executives that value the external measure of their corporate leadership performance,” Seth Verry, Indiggo’s Chief Research Officer, tells Fortune.
To calculate the ROL100 Ranking, Indiggo draws on publicly available information to provide an industry agnostic “outside-in” view of Return On Leadership. Since some criteria is inherently qualitative in nature, it applies artificial intelligence to ensure consistency and objectivity when assessing its comprehensive data set.
Purpose-driven leadership is strongly linked to business success. Although the ROL100 ranking does not directly use financial metrics like stock performance to calculate the ranking, companies at the top of the list consistently outperform those ranked lower in key areas such as revenue, profit, and growth. We’re seeing this correlation year after year.
$180,000 … the median EBITDA per employee of companies in the top 25 of the ROL100. By comparison, the median EBITDA of companies in the bottom 25 of the ranking is $44,000.
+8.3% … the median three-year revenue growth of companies in the top 25 of the ROL100. The median three-year revenue growth of companies in the bottom 25 of the ranking is +5.1%, by comparison.
Microsoft edges out Nvidia—barely.
This year, Microsoft has reclaimed the No. 1 spot on the ROL100 from Nvidia, though both companies continue to lead the field when it comes to Corporate America’s best leaders.
Health care and tech sit at the top.
In the three previous ROL100 rankings, the health care industry consistently had the highest number of companies in the top 25.
Last year, however, the technology sector surged ahead to claim the top spot.
For the 2025 list, it was a tie: Both information technology and health care each represented 24% of the companies in the top 25.
Forward-thinking leadership delivers real results.
The correlation between financial success and a high ranking on ReturnOnLeadership is so strong that S&P Dow Jones Indices, a subsidiary of S&P Global, recently added a dedicated product for investors to track companies on Indiggo’s list.
Over the past five years, Indiggo’s ReturnOnLeadership Index (+109%) has outpaced both the S&P 500 (+91%) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+64%).
“This reinforces what we all know: how critical the leadership factor is to stock market performance,” Janeen Gelbart, CEO of Indiggo, tells Fortune.
