The environment has drastically changed. The employees are witnessing the same tragedy that happened at Wells Fargo with the metrics and the client impact. A few years ago this company used to be employee and client focused and the term "Integrity," that they haphazardly throw around, wasn’t just a word to them. It used to mean something to the company and the employees and clients could feel it. It is now clear that Integrity can be interpreted to a corporate corporation any way they see fit.
Much like most metric heavy corporations, pressure is being added to get clients to click on research, engage in calls with analysts, or use any other quantifiable deliverable that they can measure and monitor. I am not here to say that metrics are not important, that's how for-profit companies measure their success. However, when you continuously increase metrics, that are inflated to begin with, you will get people who do the wrong thing. Don’t get me wrong, that's on the employee for making a poor choice. In this situation, Gartner has recognized that many of their client managers operate in the "grey," as they have been told to do. Now this allows for Gartner to open the door of blame on the CM and deflect upon their shortcomings.
There is nothing written, nothing stated in black and white that yes do this, or no don't. Gartner knows this. The HR department knows this, the managers know this, the VP's, the AE's, the Executive Partners, I'm sure Gene Hall knows this. The irony behind the word that they hold themselves accountable to, Integrity, is the last behavior they are engaging in. Gartner has recently been terminating CM's for compliance issues that were not stated or defined in their handbook/onboarding. During these times, they have terminated many long standing, hardworking, honorable employees due to not including people on outlook invites. Outlook invites. No questioning and then a slap on the wrist. No conversation about the process. NOTHING written stating this needs to happen. Honesty and transparency don't account for anything. Just straight to termination. When asked if they could produce anything stating that we were doing something wrong or any training provided that showed us the process, they admittingly don’t have anything. Yet they terminate you.
They refuse to do the right things as an organization and recognize that their poor training, lack of policies, LACK OF LEADERSHIP- not management- that's different, has caused people to follow an incorrect process. Most of the people hired, don't know what they don't know. We are hired as customer service SME's and quickly are held accountable for jumping in head first. They pair you with someone that, you, as a new employee, believes is the source of all your answers. Your manager is nowhere to be found, yet they are bombarding you with alerts introducing you to accounts you know nothing about. No official checks and balances occur by management. They place the responsibility on you to ask questions (ok fair, but you don't know what you don't know), to "social contract" with your team, and do the "right" thing for your client, aka drive your client to a revenue driven deliverable whether its relevant to what they're working on or not.
Integrity is defined as firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY; an unimpaired condition; SOUNDNESS; the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMLETEDNESS. The lack of ownership and accountability that Gartner takes in failing their people shows their corruption, their lack of soundness as an organization teaching people how to do their jobs, and no completeness or there wouldn’t be a huge mark mixed between the CM's and the unwritten, unverified "process" they uphold.
To be fair, its like any job. Your leadership (or lack thereof) differs from person to person and experience to experience. What shouldn’t differ is the policies they have in place, the checks and balances they have to inspect what they expect, the push of metrics over mission (<- you guys just need to be real with yourselves) and most importantly the way you treat the clients shouldn’t differ.
This company could be a great company to work for again in a few years. Hopefully they are able to really get out of the grey or the "ish" and establish something concrete that their people can follow and believe in.
