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Fletcher Case Study Essay

Decent Essays

08 February 2014
EMBA 653: Fletcher Case Study

This study analyzes and discusses three shortcomings that prevented investment portfolio manager David Fletcher of Jenkins, Fletcher Partners (JFP) from realizing his team oriented operational expectations. His failures were attributed to poor personnel management, the inability to effectively select or establish team structure, and the failure to devise the appropriate incentives to motivate and reward employees. After careful review it is recommended that Fletcher must invest in personnel and team management training for himself, take a measured approach to create and sustain team structure and culture, and institute an incentive plan that fosters motivation and rewards the …show more content…

Instead a non-team member of the firm had to intervene, and Fletcher responded by isolating Whitney to obtain her perspective on the matter and ultimately making the decision to fire Doyle with no guidance or performance improvement plan.
In addition to poor people management, the lack of a formal team structure contributed to team performance issues. Fletcher falls prey to the team scaling fallacy, believing that growing the staff would immediately reduce the number of hours needed to perform research. Fletcher failed to set a vision or direction for the team and he never defined or communicated team roles and responsibilities. He did not consider the coordination necessary to share and leverage common industry knowledge or to make joint investment decisions despite the fact that team members could benefit from each other’s industry research. Whitney and Doyle’s interests and expertise were never aligned in this sense and they became competitive in a harmful manner as each strived to become a portfolio manager. Fletcher also failed to establish a formal feedback mechanism such as 360 degree reviews to track and monitor team member progress towards achieving goals. Another analyst, Rachel, eventually established her own review mechanism, but had to prompt Fletcher to provide necessary feedback which was not aligned with her own expectations.
Fletcher did not promote a team structure through the use of incentives that would

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