Looking at the first 3 years seems almost doomed to failure. It seems to me that it's pretty likely that a new CEO is going to be taking a company in a direction at least slightly different.

That means cutting out some projects may have been just about to pay off, while at the same time embarking on new ventures that won't bear fruit for some time.

One might interpret these results to say, "the highest-paid CEOs are engaging in the most expensive change for their firms". It's only natural that significant change is both forgoing some income that would have been realized soon, and creating risks for what's in the short-to-medium term while they look to the horizon.

This is all to be expected, and doesn't necessarily say anything about the amount of value they create in the long term.