David Fletcher

David Fletcher David Fletcher was a successful portfolio manager of the Emerging Growth Fund at Jenkins, Fletcher Partners. When he joined the company, there were 12 employees in the firm. The environment was built so that everything was informal and the company had little structure. Each person concentrated on their own role, and this worked well for the company until the environment for portfolio management changed. Fletcher began to be overwhelmed with research, and sought to create a team of analysts that could help him with his work. However, he encountered several conflicts in his first attempt to build this team, due to a number of causes. Stephanie Whitney was a recent college graduate whom Fletcher hired just prior to joining JFP. She started off as an administrative assistant, and eventually became an analyst after attending Columbia University’s MBA program. According to Fletcher, he and Whitney had a mentorprotégé relationship. He didn’t spend too much time training her but she progressed naturally, and they were obviously very close. Of course she would take some time adjusting from the friendly administrative assistant to the potential portfolio manager, but she was finding her own way, and Fletcher didn’t seem to interfere or manage her path. When Fletcher first put a team together, he decided that hiring a team of industry specialists together was most appropriate. This would allow them to do their job right away. However, he didn’t take into account that there is great difficulty in managing people who are already established, since they already have their way of doing things. If he took this into account and thought about whether or not he would be capable of managing experienced professionals, his whole experience would have been a lot smoother. The most important aspect of a team is compatibility. When Fletcher hired his new analyst, Brian Doyle, he did it without consulting Whitney. This showed up very quickly when tension grew between the two....