Mgmt 5150 – Personal Case Description

MGMT 5150 – Personal Case Description

Due: September 18, 2017

During my most recent role held at MCAP, I worked on a small team of 3 people which included the Senior VP, Senior Director (my direct report), and myself. They will be referred to as their titles throughout this case. It was the first time that I reported to someone who had bad management skills and where I had to deal with the consequences of that. The Senior Director was promoted hastily and held a position that was beyond their capabilities and in turn, led to employee dissatisfaction and discouragement.

Background

MCAP is one of Canada's largest independent mortgage financing companies, with over $63 billion in assets under administration. Comprised of 700 employees in 8 offices, MCAP originates, securitizes, trades and services residential and commercial mortgages and construction loans with some of Canada’s largest financial institutions.

The headquarters are located at the Toronto office and houses all the main functions of the business including Capital Markets, Funding, Treasury, Finance, Commercial, Construction, Investor Relations, Legal, Audit and Marketing. I began my career at MCAP in the Treasury department where I gained valuable knowledge of all aspects of the business. I also had a great mentor and manager on the team which really helped fuel the team’s success and my own personal development. I completed my Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and I was able to sharpen my financial analysis skills while working in Treasury. However, I realized that my passion for solely Finance was slowly dwindling and that my biggest strengths were my interpersonal and communication skills. I discussed this with my mentor and manager at the time and being a great leader, they only wanted what was best for me and offered to help place me in a new department that I would see as a better fit.

The Investor Marketing team, a subdivision of the Finance department, was fairly new and only comprised of the Senior VP and Senior Director and it peaked my interest when I had a brief conversation with the Senior Director regarding their responsibilities. They dealt with new and existing strategic initiatives, the development of the MCAP profile and marketing of new financial product offerings to investors and other external parties, and overall investor relationship management. This struck me as a perfect fit because a potential team member would require analytical skills when analyzing the return on the financial products, but it would also require a great communicator and someone who was personable when dealing with investors and other clients. I pitched my desire to the Senior Director to join their team in an analyst capacity seeing as there was only two of them at the time and they would need additional resources as MCAP continued to grow. From then on, I was the Investor Marketing Analyst and I would hold that role for a year and a half.

Key Players

The Senior VP of Investor Marketing has worked at MCAP for over 28 years, starting as a co-op student in the Funding department, then as the Manager of Commercial Loans, to the Senior Manager of Capital Markets and Securitization, and finally to their current role today. They are extremely knowledgeable in every aspect of the mortgage financing business and they have built great relationships within the company and with many other firms and investors of MCAP.

The Senior Director of Investor Marketing worked at MCAP for 2 years before being promoted to their current role. They previously worked at a large accounting firm and audited MCAP before they began a new role as Manager of Finance for MCAP. They are currently in their early thirties and have held their Senior Director title for two years now. They have only ever managed two people (including myself). The Senior Director reports to the Senior VP.

Key Events

In my first day as the Investor Marketing Analyst, the Senior Director asked me to update a monthly investor dashboard report for the previous three months. My training consisted of an email to a file path that contained the previous reports which I was told to use as my manual to complete the requested reports. At first, I thought they were testing my excel skills and ability to learn independently since there was no formal training or overview of the report (who it’s created for, why, what value the report adds, or any walk through). I later learned this wasn’t a test. I never sat down with my manager, the Senior Director, to learn any process going forward for the next year and a half. It was a self-taught job on the go.