Well, in comes mid 2022. Rather than continue with what was clearly working, Forrester leadership decides to sunset old products (that were tried and true and worked) and release two new product lines, both essentially "Upgraded versions of old" but really very similar to the previous solutions. The only difference is they were much more expensive. Which caused disruption in the market, but not in a good way.
You can look online to see my point, from mid 2022 until now it has been a downward spiral. But the primary issue is leadership does not want to listen to any feedback, instead they are doubling and tripling down on their "vision" (or lack of one for any employee who has been here for a while, we can all see right through it).
The consistent scapegoat for Forrester is sales. If revenue targets arent being met is is automatically sales' fault. However, when we have a good year and smash targets its "good job everyone! We did it together!"
You cant truly understand how demotivating and wrong this is unless you have worked in sales before, because thats a similar situation to most poorly run companies, just look at sales and no one else.
Sales has been rather restricted these past few years. Tons of rules in place that only harm our ability to sell, and not only that, but consistent pricing increases have made it very tough to navigate sales cycles in this economy. Especially when competitors that are larger than us or right on our tails, do it for much less.
Getting off sales now and just generally for all of Forrester, morale is at an all time low. And this really has to do with the leadership team primarily, Its gotten to the point where the fall of Forrester feels like an inside job. Gross disconnects from leadership to the on the ground employees. They dont understand (or seem to care) what is happening on the front lines at all.
It seems as though they are more worried about saving their skin rather then saving the company. Whether its seeing in the news that execs are offloading 100's of thousands worth of stocks, or they are forcing RTO for the company (when keep in mind our record year in 2021 was all with remote work) it just seems as though these are all short term band-aid fixes so they dont have to take responsibility for their failures.
Above all, good people are leaving. 10 year tenure, 15 year tenure, 20 year tenure, it doesnt matter. So many colleagues have left and thats experience and wisdom you will never recover from. Employee retention is a second thought. You are a number on a spreadsheet here. It wasnt like that before, but it certainly is now.
Promotions and merit increases have been frozen for some time (years at this point). While senior leadership members are magically promoted (publicly) in blast emails to all employees. A complete and total lack of social + corporate awareness, which feeds into my point about upper management being disconnected from employees, and from the economical situation.
The Forrester way these days, is, put simply, a train is moving forward at rapid speeds. And we know we are headed straight off the bridge. The employees all can see it, and so surely leadership can too. But they will tell you to "trust the plan" and look the other way as if nothing is wrong. Your morale and trust continues to dwindle, as you know whats coming, but nothing can be done, because those in charge have their blinders on as they act as if all is good.
My first few years here at Forrester were great. This is not the same Forrester I joined 7 years ago. Forrester isnt the same anymore. Due to this, if you're still reading this I cannot recommend Forrester as a place to work. It will suck you dry and either spit you out once they are done or lead you to a dead end while saying you'll get somewhere the entire time.
