I’ve been working at Tableau for around 18months -2 years and I and others really feel that things are as bad in EMEA as they have ever been.
Ultimately this falls to The Leadership Team who have demonstrated quite clearly over the past two years that they are unsuitable and unqualified to lead a business of this size.
For a business that preaches the importance of data driven decisions you would be extremely disappointed how opinion based the decision making is in EMEA.
Not only is it opinion based but truly subjective based on favouritism in many cases.
The level of inconsistency and hypocrisy undermines many of the good things about Tableau and serves as a small taster of what it has become working for an organisation who runs the business on perception based decision making which essentially breeds disillusionment and has affected the results of this business detrimentally.
Since the return to the US of a senior figure who was steering the EMEA ship which I believe was two years ago EMEA has failed to hit their number almost every quarter on quarter. This shows how the EMEA business is trending under the current leadership and it shows no sign of ending soon even with reduced targets.
The extended “Leadership team” contribute nothing, have no ideas, add no value, pore over spreadsheets and form filling have little or no experience nor do they try to get any or listen.
If you asked the senior leadership team Which C- Level execs are they meeting in the next two weeks or which have they met in the last 6 months the number would be close to zero.
If you stood in front of the leadership team they could not tell you who the top 15 customers are in EMEA and they haven’t met them or showed any real interest in their business.
This is one of the main reasons that the exec track at the EMEA conference is so appallingly attended each year – The Management Team at Tableau EMEA have no relationships with C-Level people at their customers.
How many Linked in groups do the Leadership Team in EMEA belong to? How often do they contribute? What dinners, breakfast meetings and events do they attend outside the standard ones of our own and Gartner. How much Networking do they do to help sales? The answer is very little if any at all.
Leadership ask for 2 lines on each deal each week – why? What will they do with this? This is just a tick box exercise for them to regurgitate upwards.
This is just another example of form filling especially when all the detail they require is in the CRM system.
Sadly, that is probably the full extent of their involvement and understanding of the deals. They do not ask the questions they do to help – they ask because it’s on the list.
The truth is, you could remove almost all the Management and you would not lose one bit of business and probably save a small fortune – that is how ineffective they are.
It is a shame that this company has got so bad over the past two years but shows that despite having the best software, a company growing like Tableau need the right management in place. The current crop just do not cut the mustard.
