Marshall & Gordon
Paul Nasr is the president of Morgan Stanley (MG) who has nearly 20 years of experience in the capital markets business. He assumed the leadership of the newly created Capital Markets Services division. The Capital Markets division is an interdisciplinary entity created to serve as a link between the Investment Banking division and the sales and trading arms of the firm, Equity and Fixed Income.
The division is created to provide the clients with more focused attention and service. The employees in this division were also expected to generate business from organizations that were not previously clients of Morgan Stanley. Nasr hired Parson who is a successful, young banker and has a proven track record in the financial sector. He believed Parson is the right person in growing the capital market services arm of the firm. Parson had ten years of experience and possesses strong relationships in the banking and insurance industries.
He didn’t have the Ivy League background that other employees in Morgan Stanley had had but he has the required experience working in bank and investment houses. He quickly rose up the ranks to become the Managing Director of a small firm. He is assigned the title of Principal and is expected to give analytical solutions to complex problems, have good client relations, understand the clients’ objectives and constraints and identify and create business opportunities for MG. He should possess excellent negotiation skills and also be a team supervisor and leader of the Investment Banking Department. This process is a feedback solicited from superiors, peers, subordinates and internal clients as well as self-evaluation of an employee to gauge his/her performance. The inputs from this feedback helps in understanding and quantifying an employee’s strength, his/her deficiencies as well as gives cues for required developmental trainings and appraisal/promotion. This process minimizes the perceptional evaluation from a single source and gives a sense of ownership and fair judgment to one’s self perception.
During the performance evaluation before his supposed promotion to the managing director or partner of the firm, Parson is credited for his good marketing skills, knowledge of the market and product, aggressiveness in making the deals with clients, his ability to cross-sell products to the clients. But he also got some very negative comments for being judgmental, not being a team player, not being professional at times. Nasr, though, defended that Parson is still young in MG and needed time to align himself with the firm’s values. Problem Definition
Nasr is staring down the barrel on whether to promote Parson as a Managing Director/Partner of the firm or give him more time. He also did not want to lose Parson who might leave the firm if he did not get the promotion. Options Nasr has three ways of coming out of this quagmire: a. Promote Parson and assume that he will get better with time. b. Hold his promotion till the next evaluation and give him a chance to overcome his shortcomings. c. Terminate his employment because his work doesn’t align with the firm’s core values. Evaluation Criteria:
The following criteria should be used to evaluate the options available to make a fair decision: a. The employee should be result-oriented b. He should have good interpersonal skills c. He should bring new business to the firm d. He should be able to win the confidence of the clients e. He should possess both the market and product knowledge f. Understand the needs of the clients and utilize his market knowledge to work with the product specialists in providing a new product g. He should be a good team player h. He must possess good analytical skills to solve complex issues.
Rob Parson is an excellent employee who has turned around the Capital Markets Services division in Morgan Stanley in an unconventional way and brought in new business through his aggressive marketing skills. He is instrumental in improving the market share from 10th position to 3rd position, during which the market share rose from 2% to a substantial 12. 2%. Since the division is new, he had to adopt these methods to win the clients’ trust. He introduced clients to his colleagues and also is able to cross-sell products. He might not always be social given his responsibilities but he is not antagonistic towards anyone.
Moreover, Parson acknowledges that he is poor at self-promotion and is not in sync with the organization’s goals. b. ) Hold his promotion Nasr is in a position of responsibility and authority. If he chose to promote Robert Parson just on the basis of results, it would create a wrong precedent to other employees that they can bypass the Morgan Stanley culture and still get promoted. In addition, Rob Parson is personally recruited by Nasr and, giving a promotion to Parson despite the interpersonal issues indicates adaption of unfair practices in the performance evaluation.
Also, the newly implemented 360-degree feedback stresses on culture of the firm rather than goal orientation. In this case, Parson is more goal-oriented than organization-oriented. So, his promotion being put on hold could be a viable option at this juncture. c. ) Terminate his employment Parson came from a background where he ought to be more result-oriented than being a cultural-fit in pursuing his goals. By adapting this strategy, he had created an internal notion that employees can bypass the core values of an organization to achieve one’s goals.
This could undermine the very working culture of the firm and would lead to internal conflicts within the employees. So, his employment could be terminated to maintain the stability within the organization. Recommendation It can be concluded that he is a valuable asset to the firm given his contributions and should be promoted to the Managing Director position. He could undergo trainings on team building and interpersonal skills to further improve himself. The 360-degree performance evaluation can be used to give feedback to Parson on both his strengths and areas where improvement is needed.
