The Gartner Magic Quadrant has been a familiar reference point for most of my career, and if you are reading this, your career, too. It condenses months of evaluation into a neat two-axis diagram where vendors are split into sections labeled Leaders, Visionaries, Challengers, and Niche Players. It’s comforting in its simplicity, and funnily enough, complimentary wherever you find yourself on it. But as I’ve learned from working both inside companies and as a consultant, that neatness is part of the problem.

As we have seen, excluding some cultures, real buying decisions rarely happen in a vacuum. They’