It’s Friday night and your exec / stakeholder / boss (tick all that applies) walks into your cubicle / desk / office brandishing what clearly is a Gartner report in his hand. Alas, it’s clear it does not mean kudos and a promotion -she’s clearly fuming, probably after being lambasted by the higher echelons. She’s getting closer and you’re guessing it’s about that magic quadrant. Yup, the dot moved down a little bit. The analyst won’t explain, you’ve tried his boss, send some emails and it feels you’re out of options.
Time to play the trump card.
You stop the vituperating middle-manager in her track and announce that you’ll call the om-bud-s-man.
That of course never happened to me personally, probably because Gartner indeed has a full time –and more– staff to mitigate such conflicts and ensure high ethical standards. Some say the job is to defend the analyst, which personally I find demeaning towards fully grown-up analysts. The truth of the matter is that with smaller firms, when you’re stuck with a quadrant of some kind –Wave, Green, Marketscoape or else-, there’s little you can do after you’ve brought the matter to the analyst’s boss’ boss.
That’s why I’m looking forward to co-host, together with Peggy O’Neill (LinkedIn, @pegoneil) the author of an IIAR Best Practice Paper on escalating research disagreements, Nancy Erskine (LinkedIn, @NErskine, official bio) on the 9/7/13 at 1600 BST (translation here if you like your month before and your time not the Queen’s).
During this call, we’ll cover the role of the ombudsman, how to engage, best AR practices. Please send me questions before (lleforestier.at/analyst relations:dot;org, @lludovic or @bearingpointar), during the TC or directly on the phone during the webinar.
For more information on the Gartner Ombudsman, I advise you to read this Gartner page and Peggy’s paper (link, IIAR membership required) as well as this Quora entry before the call. Not to forget my previous post: Kudos to the Gartner Ombudsman for asking tough questions.
Registration: This session is free for IIAR members, guests can join for $25 / £15 each. Please register using this link or email info.at/analystrelations:org. You can join the IIAR here.
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