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David Fletcher Case Study Essay

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Why did Fletcher’s first attempt to build a team fail?

When the environment for portfolio management changed and as Fletcher began being overwhelmed with research, he sought to create a team of analysts that could assist him with his work. Fletcher failed to build this team on his first attempt as a result of several causes. There were multiple mistakes that Fletcher made that can be seen in his interactions with people. The first was his assistant Whitley which he had a close relationship with. Before Fletcher hired Doyle, he did it hastily without consulting Whitley. The lack of consent and thought for how he would fit into the company’s culture showed when tension grew between Doyle and Whitley. This led to unproductive work as …show more content…

Even though this might have taken Fletcher more time to build his team, it could have been more effective in the long run if he hired analysts with less experience but more open thinking. An example of how this worked was with Whitley, who Fletcher molded into a portfolio manager. From a broader approach, issues can be seen in Fletcher’s management style. Not only was it disorganized, but he spent most of his time focusing on his work, not his team. This however was of course his nature. From The Five Minds of a Manager Fletcher did not display all of the managerial mindsets required to be successful. The most important was that he lacked the collaborative mindset. Fletcher not only lacked an engaging personality towards his team’s problems, but he didn’t consider the relationships among people. He thought that as long as a person could perform their job, then that was all that mattered. Getting along to him was not crucial. Of course, this is the exact opposite thinking of the collaborative mindset which fosters teamwork and strong relationships. There were some things that Fletcher did do well. For one, he began to have the reflective mindset at the end by pondering as to how to create an effective team. This shows that not only is he thinking about what has happened, but he may be starting to step

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