In the 1990s, the market research firm Gartner was a Wall Street darling. Founded in 1979, the company had expanded during the 1980s, and by 1998 its top line was growing by close to 30 percent a year. Then from 2000 to 2004, top-line growth slowed, the core research business was down to 0 to 3 percent a year, and investors lost interest in Gartner’s stock.

They returned after a new strategy was put in place in 2004 and a new CEO took over. With leading indicators returning to double-digit growth, the company attracted many investors, who quickly drove up its share price. But in the third quarter of 2007, the company announced that a single unit would report full-year results at the low end of the forecast range. Suddenly, many investors who claimed to have a long-term commitment to Gartner and who had taken up a good deal of its senior executives’ time ditched the stock.

In a recent interview with McKinsey’s Timothy Koller and Werner Rehm, Gartner CFO Christopher Lafond explained the company’s current approach to investor relations: it now shapes its base of investors, carefully identifying those whom executives should meet, and does a better job of...