Atlanta Home Loan

Atlanta Home Loan

Brief Summary

In April of 2002, Atanta Home Loan (AHL), a mortgage and financing company, was founded by Albert (Al) Fiorini with an initial investment of about $40,000. The company has since grown to be valued at around $600,000. AHL’s rapid growth can be attributed to Al’s vast experiences in the mortgage industry. He was also the former president of the Orange County Chapter of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers. This made it possible for AHL to grow rapidly under Al’s direction. However, all this was about to change when Al decided to attend the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, to pursue an executive MBA.

Issues and Recommendations

AHL lacked direction because they had no corporate goals or code of ethics to direct employees. This created motivation problems as well as they had no objectives to aim for. Recommendations: Al should have created a vision and mission statement. He should have also developed a strategy to achieve the goals and objectives of the company. This would have given all employees a sense of direction and perhaps even motivated them to achieve company goals and objectives. Employees should also be educated in corporate strategy, goals and objectives so that they better understand what to do and how to do it. An honest and ethical culture should also be developed to encourage employees to do the “right” thing at all times.

Al did not assign appropriate authority to the partners and employees. Much of the authority seems to have been given verbally. Also, Al did not give enough autonomy to employees and partners to perform some managerial function. This was a cause of tension between Al and Wilbur. Recommendations: Develop administrative constraints to restrict partner’s and employee’s ability to make decisions. For example, the in the partnership document, Al should have clearly stated what authority each partner had. In this document Al should have also stated that no...