David Fletcher Case Solution

1. Why did Fletcher's first attempt to build an effective research team not work out as intended?

David Fletcher was the portfolio manager of the Emerging Growth Fund at Jenkins, Fletcher Partners. He was a busy man with lots of tasks on his calendar and lots of people looking out to talk to him. Fletcher spent a significant amount of time on people management and was looking to hire a team who he could delegate his tasks to. However, his attempts at building an effective research team did not work out. This happened due to various reasons. 

Fletcher worked as an independent person for most of his career here. Due to the nature of his work, he had to always deal with loads of information. He used to get loads of information from the research side which he had to process himself. His typical day including speaking on the phone with various parties, such as brokers, money managers, companies, etc. He had to check his loads of emails and read the newspaper, so he stays updated with the latest information in the market. He also had to attend around two to eight meetings in a day which were in person. He also attended the remainder of his day attending conferences in New York or other cities, and he also met with the management of the companies across the country. He would visit around 500 companies throughout the company. Because of his tough schedule and workload, and since he was used to working independently, Fletcher found it difficult to gather a team so he could focus on training them and then could later assign all of them their individual shares in the portfolio. However, as Fletcher was a busy man, he hardly got time to hire staff or think about training them. Fletcher hired an assistant, Stephanie Whitney, who wanted to study and grow as a person. Fletcher encouraged her to join a school and study further, so she could develop her career. She then joined the fund as an analyst. However, whatever development she did was on her own. Fletcher did not have time to train her or guide her properly. Hence, when Fletcher could not successfully train one person, he of course found it difficult to hire and train an entire team. He obviously had the idea in mind for a team and felt the need to gather one. However, his tough routine and his habit of working independently hindered his efforts of gathering and training a team.