David Fletcher Essay

David Fletcher, a heavily overworked portfolio manager of the Emerging Growth Fund at a New York investment management firm, plans to ramp-up a police squad up of look for-analysts. He managees to delegate a part of his workload to this team. The case explores the problems that David faces at non-homogeneous stages of introducing new members in his team. It also touches upon the challenges faced by a typically task oriented person while engaging in a team expression exercise. Is David Fletcher achievementful? As an about whizz, David Fletcher is extremely advantageful at his line of products.An economics major and a Harward business school graduate, he started his c beer as a securities analyst in a New York found brokerage firm. He cut through the ranks in relatively cursorily sequence and very soon he was handled the responsibility of two of the close to aggressive mutual money of his while. David continued his stellar instruction executions in these bloodlin es withal as he took them to 10 times their original/ commencement value. In the words of his colleagues and close cronies, David was non only a incident and decision oriented person but was also a person who was extremely familiar with the art and the science of portfolio management.In the latter half(prenominal) of his described career, David joined Paul Jenkins to form the Jenkins Fletcher partners where he managed a portfolio of cl+ million US$ single handedly. Davids performances in the various roles he assumed during his career amply justify his credibility as an individual and as a professional (portfolio manager). As a team player, colleagues hold Davids acumen in the field of portfolio management. In a way, David commanded maintain from his colleagues and superiors alike which is testament to the fact that David was an internal cog in the teams that he worked in. As a team manager, Davids success is questionable.I heed to analyze his stint at building and thereafter leading and managing a team at Fletcher Jenkins partners to substantiate my aforementioned stance. This brings me to address a more pertinent question first, What was Davids motivation to build a team? As mentioned previously, David is a highly overworked portfolio manager. Being the best at what he does, in a way, acts as a detriment to his position as he has to juggle with multiple tasks at a time. As one of the main portfolio managers of Jenkins Fletchers partners, David manages a huge pile of investors money (to the furrow of 150 million US$) from a total fund coat of 400 million US$.If managing a fund wasnt enough, David also has to do the research of the industries/markets from which he builds his portfolio him ego. He is often faced with an selective information overload which prompts him to look for individuals who bottom of the inning assist him in doing justice to his task. As I delved deeper into the case, I realized that Davids intention behind building a team, in a manner, was to ensure the success of his portfolio irrespective of how the success was achieved. David was so clinical in his seeking of focal point on his funds performance that he became oblivious to the imbalance in his team.In consequence, this approach had David lose two of his deprecative team members. In the hobby section, I wish to analyze the core factors that contributed towards Davids relative inadequacy of success as a team manager. wherefore did Davids pursuit of building an effective team non achieve the desired success? There were multiple mistakes that Fletcher made while ramping up his team of research analysts. Some of his shortcomings are blaringly evident in his interactions with his subordinates and colleagues. Take the case of Stephanie Whitley, with whom he shared a very close relationship.In his haste to conjure up Doyle, Fletcher completely overlooked the act of taking Stephanie into confidence. The lack of consent and judgement for how he would fi t into the companys culture and moreover how he would gel with Stephanie Whitley became evident when tension grew between Doyle and Whitley. At a time when both Whitley and Doyle should open provided inputs to each other in their work, most of their time was spent and therefore rendered unproductive in ego-trips rather than on focusing on their work. To make matters worse, Fletcher failed to steadiness the conflict by taking a passive approach.In fact, Fletcher admitted that he did not actively try to resolve the conflicts which culminated in it being stretched all the way till one of the affect parties Doyle left the firm. In his methodology of approaching people problems, David Fletcher has exudes severeness. At some plane, it just seems as though Fletcher does not aim at forge relationships with his team members but just tries to leverage their skills and synergies to achieve his final result performance of his portfolio. Fletchers callousness is evident in the way he hypot hesizes Whitleys problem as being one of requiring more attention.Fletchers attitude caused him to lose credibility with Whitley to such an extent that she did not even confide in him about her decision to quit the job at Fletcher Jenkins partners. Also, in his handling of Doyle, the new associate, Fletcher exudes a certain degree of inflexibility. Doyle, agree to the case is excellent in his job at managing portfolios of large advanced product companies. correct as he joined, Doyle started to research upon stocks of emerging stocks in the same market. Obviously, Doyle was unsuccessful at the beginning because of a probable extended unlearning curve.It is evident that Fletcher allows Doyle to move on in a cutter to retain Whitley, however the situation could have been better handled by for the first time resolving the personal differences and thereafter by infusing some confidence in Doyle In that way Fletcher could have retained both his critical employees. locoweed we see any positives from Fletchers behavior thereafter? Yes. In a bid to learn from his past mistakes, Fletcher does try and make a certified attempt to get new employees acquainted with his existing team before recruiting them.As is evident during the discussions on recruiting Mary Robinson, Fletcher actually has Rachel Kindred butt against Mary Robinson in person at Boston. This, he presumes, shall allow them to happen upon to an understanding of each other as persons before establishing their compatibility as colleagues. Even in this case, however, he does not use the same procedure of enlisting with Robert Fiske. The case is left open-ended at this point, so it might not be an argument one can convincingly hold against Fletcher.What can we learn from this case, Is this practically feasible? This case, in itself is an excellent example of how callousness towards understanding peoples problems can end up disrupting the performance of a team. I hail from a successful Sales team in th e IT sector. From personal experience, I can attest that it is usually not feasible to take the entire team into confidence before the enlisting of a new team member. However, broad level interaction issues such as the one witnessed in the case can definitely be addressed at the outset.Secondly, I believe that the efforts taken to recruit a team member or to build a team are repointly proportional to the criticality of the task carried out by the team. I have witnessed this factor at my workplace and this was evident in the case as well. In my experience, I have witnessed that during the recruitment of a prognosis for the role of a business development manager, prospective candidates were actually flown drop to the UK at my companys expense. This role was obviously highly critical for our companys prospects and the efforts taken by the company were commensurate to the same.In the context of the case, it is interesting to note the background of David Fletcher. He happens to be a Portfolio manager. As a part of his core job itself, he is trustworthy to pick multiple stocks by looking at their behavior. In totality, his job is to pick up such stocks that would be completely synergistic and thereby build a winning/high performing portfolio. If a direct analogy is drawn to the way Fletcher picks his team, this is the base principle on which he should have picked his team as well. It is only on recruiting perfect complements in his team that Fletcher could have ensured a synergistic performance in his team.Why is this case relevant to me as a person? I wish to embark on a career in financial work wherein I might be assuming a role sympathetic to that assumed by David. It is said that If you wish to go quickly, go solely but if you wish to go far, go together. To go together effectively, it would be imperative for me to contribute towards building a strong team. For this, I would not only have to trust my own instincts but would also have to trust my team mem bers and enable them to realize their self worth. Effectively, it is only when the self interests of team members are aligned with the team interest, that a team is successful.