Sadly, the two teams did, in their different ways, miss the point.  And the candidate who did so most spectacularly, paid the price.

The task was to create an awareness-raising campaign to support the promotion of English Sparkling Wine.  The teams had to do this principally by creating a website and a short video, and then pitch their campaigns to a panel of industry experts.  To support them, they had access to a vineyard and a wine tasting opportunity, a web designer, and a video crew and editing suite.  All they needed were some creativity and some sensitivity to the brief.

The creativity part was, of course, going to be interesting to me, having argued for its importance in an earlier blog.  I was, frankly, pretty disappointed.

The Teams

Lord Sugar balanced the two teams by inviting Phoenix to select a fourth member from Sterling.  They quickly chose Nick Holzherr, whom I too see as a strong candidate.  We have not, to be fair, seen a huge amount of good performance from Nick, but neither does he place his feet wrongly too often.  He calmly contributes well: good choice.

Phoenix, thus bolstered, selected Tom Gearing, unsurprisingly (he is a director of a Fine Wine business) as Project Manager, to lead Tom, Jade Nash and Adam Corbally

Sterling, thus depleted all wanted to lead.  All voted except Stephen Brady and he cast the final vote in favour of Ricky Martin, who led Stephen, Jenna Whittingham and Gabrielle Omar

While Ricky sized up his opposition: “forget Tom knows wine, Nick knows websites and Jade knows marketing”, Stephen dived headfirst into the task of naming their product, coming up with “Cert”, “Grandeur” and “Chink”.  I am lost for words and, in the car with Stephen, so was Gabrielle.  So let’s track back to “Tom knows wine, Nick knows websites and Jade knows marketing”.  So, Ricky, what does Adam know?  Ah yes, fruit and veg.  Not sparkling wine, it appeared.  Once again out of his comfort zone, Tom had to explain what Champagne is, and how it relates to English sparkling wine.

I have to declare that this was the week that Stephen really got to me and I did feel for Gabrielle as she tried to focus on understanding the branding choices of existing sparkling wines at a large supermarket, while Stephen buzzed around looking for a wine expert to answer all his questions.  It seems that, despite this interference, Gabrielle did get.  Her design ideas and her brand image were spot on and both the panel and Lord Sugar were later to complement her Rose/Champagne glass logo idea.

If only she had confidently batted back Stephen’s stupid idea to label the wine “Grandeur”, thus choosing a French word to represent an English product that is trying to clearly distinguish itself from a better known French product.  D’ohhh.  This is not the first time that a foreign word has been implicated in a team’s failure.

Among the opposition, Tom and Adam were having rather too much fun at a wine tasting and showing pretty conclusively that, whilst good wine is good business, its influence can make you look and act like a fool.  Still, through the haze of light-headedness, Adam did retain one piece of information for the next day’s video shoot.  Hold the glass at the foot.  If only he’d been equally precise in his use of the word choreography as he was in his repeating of that instruction to the actors.  Is it just me, or was Jade not enjoying working with Adam on making the video?

Meanwhile, Ricky sent Stephen and Jenna off to make a video that would emphasise the word he had heard most clearly at his visit to the vineyard: “quality”.  Jenna, however, wanted to emphasise humour.  Taking on the mantel of John Cleese, she enjoined the actors to ham it up and go for laughs.  Would the resulting video demonstrate quality?  You could tell Ricky was getting concerned over the phone but was backing off confrontation.  His push for quality soon turned into a plaintive begging for “not too cheesy”.  Addressing camera after the call, it sounded more like hope than expectation when he told us he thought they had understood.  We knew – and he did too – that all was lost.  “Let’s hope it will win”said Jenna “or it’s on my head.”  Prophetic?

Preparing to Pitch

The faces of the two project managers when they viewed their teams’ videos – which neither had supervised directly – were a treat.  Neither should consider a career in professional poker!  That “oh no, we’ve lost” moment signalled in Tom, utter contempt and a feeling of abject fear, when he saw Adam’s dull, clichéd, uninformative video.  And Ricky, manfully, tried to look impressed at a video that clearly was “too cheesy”.  No, cheesy is the wrong word: tacky would hardly do it justice.  Pity the actors who will, doubtless, be conveniently forgetting the whole experience when updating their resumés.

Spoiler Alert

The judging was not based on objective measures, but on Lord Sugar’s assessment of the two campaigns, informed by the opinions of industry experts.

Phoenix had failed to create an informative website, focusing too much on sales, and they had produced a boring advert rather than an engaging informational video.

Sterling had produced a flippant and inappropriate advert, supported by a good branding – although with an inappropriate name.  I hardly think that the strongest argument of English sparkling wine producers for their product is that French Champagne is horrible: it isn’t.  Yet that was the key message Stephen’s and Jenna’s advert conveyed.

Both sides had missed the point of their brief.  Both had failed.

But who had failed the most?

Well, like Lord Sugar, I would say a boring advert must trump and offensive one – even if adverts were not in the brief.  Sterling lost.  I am loath to say that Phoenix won: their output was less bad.  Indeed, only one aspect of the whole two days showed real quality and that was Gabrielle’s design flair.  Ricky acknowledged that in the boardroom, wisely not selecting her to return with him, Stephen and Jenna.  That, however, was not until Stephen had tried hard to pin the team’s failings on her – as a poor contributor.  D’ohhh.

There were three strong candidates for a firing:

• Jenna took responsibility for the awful video
• Ricky should have been responsible for saying “no” to Jenna’s desire for humour in the video
• Stephen took responsibility for virtually nothing

Each had a strong line of defence too:

• Jenna gets stuck in, works hard and contributes
• Ricky is smart and understood the need for quality
• Stephen, sensing the chop, offered to bet Lord Sugar that he could lead the team and win the next task

Lord Sugar decided

• Jenna must go – she failed to get the point: this is a quality product
• Ricky gets to stay – not controlling the video was a big error, but he got another chance
• Stephen gets to play out his bet.  He will be Project Manager next week and, I am sure, if he loses, he’ll be in the back of the cab faster than you can say D’ohhh.

But a lot can happen to influence which team wins, so Stephen could yet stay.  That will be all the better entertainment, but let’s face it: Lord Sugar is not going to have Stephen as his business partner.  Who, then?

• Gabrielle: good chance – creative, personable and good judgement
• Nick: Good chance – we still have seen little of his exceptional strengths, but he is a constant calm, contributing presence
• Tom: Fair chance – though faded for me a little this eek, after two uninspiring PM performances
• Adam: Unlikely – the words “out of his comfort zone” come up too often
• Jade: Unlikely – we still have seen very little of her talent
• Ricky: Unlikely – a strong individual with good qualities, but little exceptional has emerged to balance his weaknesses
• Stephen: No

The teams’ task was to select two urban artists to represent and to mount a one night show and sell to maximise the commission on sales, including to a corporate buyer.

Whilst urban, or street, art is a familiar part of modern cityscapes, few of us understand the market, so this activity was designed to throw the contestants into an unfamiliar world and some – Adam Corbally in particular – were well out of their comfort zones.  Luckily, each team could field one plausible “expert” to act as Project Manager.

Sterling chose artistically-minded Gabrielle Omar
to lead Jenna Whittingham, Ricky Martin, Nick Holzherr and Stephen Brady.

Phoenix chose urban art enthusiast (or nerd?) Tom Gearing
to lead a depleted Adam Corbally, Jade Nash and Laura Hogg.

Sterling performance

Gabrielle started her team off with the most germane piece of advice for how to speak with the artists: “show enthusiasm”.  Since they could be in competition to represent their chosen artists, she was spot on that… wait for it… demeanour matters.  Didn’t that point come up last week, as well as being the topic of my week 1 analysis?  She also demonstrated good listening in hearing the Beefeater Gin team request art that reflected “their brand, London, contemporary themes and heritage.”  The pieces she chose were spot on.  Sadly, she committed one of the cardinal sins of a salesperson (and so-called “salesman Stephen” let her do it, nodding like the Churchill dog in the background).  Gabrielle failed to ask what their budget was.  For most of us, this question might hit pay dirt but probably won’t, but there is nothing lost if you try, and do so respectfully.  For art buyers, it is the crucial difference between a small £500 piece (which she soured) and a massive £5,000 piece (that they wanted).  Gabrielle chose to represent Nathan Bowen and Pure Evil.

Incidentally, Nathan Bowen’s images portrayed Union Jacks – a bit of a theme in this series, cropping up already in Episodes 1 (the tee-shirt designs) and Episode 4 (refurbished junk).

Since I can’t reasonably include images of the artists’ work – which I’d like to but respect for their copyright forbids me, I’ve made my own – an alternative candidate’s group shot at the foot.

… or, you can see an example of each artist’s work on my Apprentice Pin Board.

Phoenix Rising

Tom knows a lot about urban art and he can name drop with the best of the urban art pseuds.  Sadly, in talking with artists, he came across more as a nerd that an enthusiast.  But he could spot what a commercial client wanted and this French car firm wanted to portray innovation.  But could the art he selected for them deliver?  Tom selected artists Pure Evil and ©opy®ight.  Sadly, Tom’s need to show his knowledge was heavily trumped by Gabrielle’s raw enthusiasm and Pure Evil chose Sterling to represent him.  As a result, Tom needed a new strategy.  Just like the Chancellor (and just as wisely), Tom had no Plan B.  Just like the Chancellor, he chose to roll the dice and go for a high risk strategy: Tom went for the artist offering the highest value work, knowing that one sale would win it, but without that sale of his work, Phoenix would probably lose. Tom selected James Jessop.

A Night at the Gallery

We saw some examples of good selling, astonishing selling styles (Adam making street market style work for him to be the top salesperson in Phoenix) and Stephen showing how not to treat high worth buyers.  But which team sold the most?

Spoiler Alert

Let’s look at the numbers…

* My rounding

So, Sterling won.  They got the better artist and, despite Gabrielle’s failure to ask the corporate buyer for a budget and Stephen’s failure to treat the corporate buyers as VIPs (or even, arguably, with real respect) at the gallery, they sold a lot of art that made up for that.

Phoenix lost because they did not sell enough.  Tom’s big bet did not come good, although, arguably, one more low value sale could have won it for them.

Lots to learn for both teams.

Fire one from three…

Tom brought Jade and Laura back into the boardroom for the showdown.  Clearly, Tom’s demeanour and his risky decision were both instrumental in his team’s losing.  Would Lord Sugar fire him for that?

The answer is “no”.  He fired Laura and, rightly so, in my opinion.  Her contributions have been spirited at times, weak at others, but she never looked like a leader, an innovator, or a star performer.  Tom, on the other hand, could go a lot further.

But why did Lord Sugar forgive two such blatant errors?

I think there are two important considerations that hold a valuable lesson for us.

First, Tom’s failing to impress Pure Evil with his enthusiasm, while showing off his knowledge showed immaturity.  In other ways, however, Tom (one of the youngest – possibly the youngest at 23) is very mature for his age.  In the boardroom we saw a calm, controlled and assured performance.  He looks and sounds like an experienced business person for most of the time – more so than most of his competition.

Second, I don’t think his big bet was a mistake, and I don’t think Lord Sugar did either. Tom never resiled from it and took full responsibility for making it and for its consequences.  His analysis was pretty sound: one sale and he’d have been the hero of the episode.  He did, however, own up to his failing in his meeting with Pure Evil.  There is nothing wrong with taking a risk, if the upside is big enough and you have calculated the odds.  Lord Sugar knows that and it is an important part of successful entrepreneurship.  I think that this event did Tom a lot of good.  It certainly raised him up my list.

Indeed, both project managers went up a notch today.

What makes a good decision?

If Tom’s decision was a good one, despite failing to deliver the right outcome, what are the criteria for describing a good decision?  Luckily, I answer just that question, in Brilliant Project Leader.  Here is an extract.

There are three conditions for a “sound decision”. None of them is that the decision has to be right, however. Projects are uncertain ventures and you will make mistakes; it is part of the process. But if you respect these three requirements, you will limit the number and scale of the mistakes you make.

1. Evidence based
Project decisions need to be based on the best available evidence.

2. Sound process
Put in place a robust process for making a decision, which must involve a thorough analysis of the evidence and an opportunity to challenge and critique both the evidence and the analysis.

3. The right people
Decisions must be made by people with the right level of authority, the right skills and knowledge, and sufficient time to consider their decision.

“The alternative to evidence-based decision-making is decision-based evidence-making.”

Adapted from an aphorism I first heard from Tony Quigley

It also provided a deja-vu moment as we flashed back to the theme of my commentary on Episode 1, at the start of this series.

This was the episode where the teams are given a small amount of seed-cash (£150) and told to buy some wholesale goods, sell them in a market place, re-stock with the cash they have raised and try to create the highest asset base of cash and stock over 24 hours.  An easy task to describe and, famously, Lord Sugar’s favourite, because that is how he started his career.

Lord Sugar swapped a couple of team members over and hinted for Jade to take a project manager (PM) role, and left the teams to choose pitches and select stock from a wholesale warehouse in Essex.

The Teams

Phoenix was led by Jade Nash
and consisted of Adam Corbally, Azhar Siddique, Laura Hogg, and Tom Gearing.

Sterling was led by Nick Holzherr,
who beat Ricky Martin in a consensual non-vote, with Gabrielle Omar, Jenna Whittingham and Stephen Brady.

The teams’ operating styles could not have been different.  Nick led well, quickly deciding on two sites (a street market and shopping centre pitch) that were very close together.  They also selected two product types – one for each site – and a small range of products in each group.  Jade immediately looked lost with the decision process of where to pitch and, having taken a long time to identify two widely dispersed sites, her team then had ten minutes to select goods to sell.  The scatter-gun approach prevailed and they bought a motley array of different items with no… strategy.

Right from the start, Azhar challenged this lack of strategic thinking, though without offering a suggestion.  Right from the start, Jade started rolling her eyes.

“Are you smelling what’s selling?”

This was the question that Lord Sugar had posed the candidates and Nick’s team clearly were.  Fake tan at £10 a bottle was shifting fast at the shopping centre and Nick wanted to bust the bank on buying more of that.  At a £2 cost price, he was winning a big margin on each easy sale, with beauty products expert Jenna selling well.  Stephen and Ricky had made a good fist of their street market stall but, ultimately, the Essex weather defeated them.

Meanwhile at Pitsea street market, Adam “Gor-blimey” Corbally and Jade were doing well, thanks to Adam being absolutely in his element.  He is an excellent street trader.  Whether this alone will make him an excellent partner for Lord Sugar but today, he shone.  When it came to re-stocking though, Jade’s wheels came off her well-oiled trading machine and despite clear messages from Tom, Laura and Azhar at the shopping centre, she again deployed scatter-gun buying tactics at the cash-and-carry.  Jade, you entirely missed the point of Lord Sugar’s brief!

Again and again, Azhar tried to point Jade towards a coherent strategy (without offering a suggestion).  Again and again, Jade rolled her eyes and ignored him.

From 5pm, we saw another split in trading tactics.  Now both teams had decamped, in entirety, to separate pitches in the largest local shopping centre, the hell that is Thurrock.  Now, confident Nick held his nerve – and his prices.  He was still making an £8 mark-up on every £2 bottle of brown paint – sorry, fake tan.  And Jade lost what little nerve she had and discounted deeply.  She sold loads, but at paltry margins.

Spoiler Alert

Results, please…

Back in the boardroom, Lord Sugar called for the trading figures.

… so, unsurprisingly, Sterling won by a good margin.

Lord Sugar complimented both teams for making a good surplus on his £150 seed money: “No PowerPoint, no borrowing, just £150 and a van”.  To which I would add, “… and three pitch rents and five people’s time.”  It shows, however, that some nous and hard work can enable anyone to make some money and grow a business with limited start-up capital.

The Fault

Lord Sugar quickly dismissed Sterling to their treat and set out Phoenix’s multiple failings:

• Deep discounting and loss of margin
• Too little stock at Pitsea, where Adam and Jade quickly sold out
• Too much time discussing sites and too little time for product selection
• No buying strategy for replenishing stock: failing to smell what was selling

Jade struggled with who to bring back to the boardroom with her. Azhar was an easy choice but, as the failing was pretty much all hers (she admitted as much to the camera), who else?  She picked Tom, admitting she had no good reason, and Lord Sugar quickly sent him home again.  It was between Jade and Azhar.  Was a double firing on the cards?

It should have been. 

Let’s assess the facts:

Azhar was not listened to.  He saw the faults clearly but had
no remedies to offer and failed to make his colleagues pay attention to him.

Jade was out of control, with no plan and a series of poor decisions.

This highlights the two dimensions of team management: the task and the relationships.  Jade failed totally to grasp the task and control it.  Azhar showed no ability to manage his relationships with team members to build a base for influencing their choices.  A good leader needs both and each manifestly lacked one (and arguably, each is weak at the other).  On the manifest evidence, neither is a good enough business person to be a safe bet for Lord Sugar’s £quarter million.  I would have fired both.  But Lord Sugar chose one.

He fired Azhar because “no one wants to listen” to you.

In this decision, we see a return to the decision process of Episode 1: Demeanour = Demise.  Lord Sugar failed to find the right attitudes and influence in Azhar.  You cannot do business with someone who cannot win the respect of all of their colleagues, he implied and I agree.  On the evidence of the process so far. Azhar could not win.  I also doubt, however, on the evidence of this episode, that Jade can.  This, despite a strong pitch for the strength of her business plan.

Coming soon…

By the end of Wednesday’s episode, we’ll have six candidates or fewer.  It is soon time to study each one forensically.  This worries me.  By this stage in Series 7 last summer, I felt I knew a lot about most of the final six candidates.  This time I do not.  Is this due to the nature and personalities of the candidates, or to the style and approach of the series editing?

So, to tide you over, some humour…
 
 
 
 
 

This is an official BBC video made by Radio 1 presenter Matt Edmonson.
It is a nice skit on last week’s Episode 6.

Perhaps he should

But in a skit on the week’s political news for BBC2′s “This Week” programme on 20 April, Mary Ann Sieghart of The Times imagined herself as a cleaner at Number 10 Downing Street.  She covers all of the Prime Minister David Cameron’s political woes (except, for some reason, the Leveson enquiry and Murdoch scandal).

In the (fake) Number 10 flat was, prominently visible, a copy of Brilliant Stress Management.

Let’s take a closer look…

You can see the whole six minute piece here or by clicking on the image below.

You can read more about Brilliant Stress Management at its dedicated website,
and buy a copy of Brilliant Stress Management here.

First Naomi Campbell, then an imagined PM; who next?  

Who in public life needs a copy of Brilliant Stress Management?
Use the comments below to tell us.

Thank you to Andy Shakeshaft for spotting this feature, and letting me know.

But the realities of modern life include interruptions, multiple sources of information, and constantly growing demands.  Evidence also seems to suggest that younger generations, who are growing up with social networking technology as a norm of their lives are more comfortable with shared demands on their attention.  Only time will tell whether they can find ways to behave as polychrons at work, and keep their response times quick and their accuracy levels high.

For most of us, multi-tasking is a less efficient but necessary requirement.  So, the best we can do is to choose when to embrace it, and to do it as well as we can.

Say Yes to Polychronicity when . . .

• You have a high level of experience and expertise
• The tasks are cognitively simple
• The work is low risk, low importance, low consequence for failure
• You have a personality style that handles complexity and uncertainty well
  (in MBTI terms, iNtuiting and Perceiving)
• You have strategies to manage the complexity and to track unfinished tasks
• You are in danger of over-focus on a task for its own sake

Say No to Polychronicity when . . .

• There are fine details that you must get right
• You find the tasks complex or unfamiliar
• You want to take pride in the quality of this piece of work
• There are severe penalties for errors and failure
• Your personality is poorly suited to coping with multiple and changing demands on your attention
  (in MBTI terms, Sensing and Judging)
• You have a habit of slipping up when you try to multi-task

Five Strategies for making Polychronicity Work for you

1. Have a tracking system for all of your tasks
   (use a notebook, To Do list, PDA, or software like Trello or Wunderkit)
2. Break tasks into smaller chunks, so your polychron-behaviour starts to look more like a serial-monchron approach
3. Use “bookmarking” to note where you leave off a task
   (use a day-book or sticky notes)
4. Stay constantly aware of milestones and deadlines
5. Keep your antennae tuned so you can spot tasks that demand your monochron attention.

You might also like “The Multi-tasking Fallacy”.

That’s two weeks in a row I think Lord Sugar fired a strong candidate.  Today’s show taught us the importance of what you have to say for yourself.

But before I get into my analysis of what I took away from the show, let’s look at how the task played out.

The Teams and the Task

1. The task was to create gourmet street food to sell on the streets of Edinburgh.
   Lord Sugar emphasised the gourmet element, saying “I don’t want any junk – it must be quality.”
2. Once again, Lord Sugar allocated team leaders – clearly he wanted to see what
   two of the less visible candidates were made of.

I have numbered those two sentences, because they will be central to my analysis of last night’s firing decision.

So, here are the teams:

Phoenix, led by Adam Corbally,
included Azhar Siddique, Stephen Brady, Tom Gearing, Jade Nash and Katie Wright

Sterling, led by Jenna Whittingham,
included Gabrielle Omar, Laura Hogg, Nick Holzherr and Ricky Martin

Early on, at a street food market, Katie, Jade and Stephen advised team leader Adam of the importance of high quality ingredients and the other team were not far behind.  But then the teams started selecting pitches and they had two different approaches.  While Laura and Nick pushed for a high tourist-traffic location, Katie went for the ultra-high footfall gambit of a football crowd at a Hearts home game (– not Harts if another Apprentice blogger is reading this!)

In the kitchens, the project managers and other members of the teams were getting cooking lessons from top chefs who were designing meals to match the teams’ specifications.  Surprise! Top chefs (one at a Michelin starred restaurant) were highlighting the importance of good ingredients.  Ever the street trader, Adam wanted to trade fresh rosemary for dried (really – call yourself a greengrocer?  Well no, he may be a fruit and veg man, but he calls himself a wholesaler).  Tom argued coherently for quality, but it looked from the start as though Adam’s cost-cost-cost mantra would prevail.

Jenna, however, got the quality bug and went for top quality beef (rather than the high fat pork mince Adam bought) and so spent over 3x as much per portion at cost price (£1.54 to £0.47).  Still, you get what you pay for and Phoenix’s meatballs and pasta did not look like it could rise again.  Sterling’s beef “Scot Pot” looked like a sterling product.

Well, Adam was not one to let a gourmet product be spoiled by the quality of its ingredients (value tinned tomatoes notwithstanding).  If you want to show how good it is, up the price – in his case to £5.99.  So, let’s get this straight: a 47p product that looked awful, pitched at £5.99 to a football crowd.

Spoiler Alert

I’ll cut to the chase

We had one team with an ultra-low cost base and huge footfall and one with an excellent product in a well-targeted spot. A recipe for a close call. And so it was…

I felt a great sense of relief when Sterling won.  It vindicated not only Jenna’s ability to listen to Lord Sugar’s injunction for quality, but her decision to put her faith in quality as a task-winner.  Well done Jenna.

Badly done Adam. 

The firestorm of blame for this failure encompassed nearly the whole team:

• Adam: for his focus on cheap (and therefore poor) ingredients
• Azhar: for his meagre contribution (again)
• Stephen: for a disastrous lack of judgement in falling for a sales opportunity that was truly vacuous
• Jade: for her failure to deliver on her claimed talent for marketing
• Katie: for her disastrously bad call to go for a football crowd with a gourmet product
  (and ahead of a 12:15 kick-off, before people were ready for lunch)

Only Tom escaped un-scathed from the experience – Tom, that is, who opposed Adam vehemently on the issue of quality, but whom Adam chose to ignore after he demonstrated that not only did he himself like Sushi, but so did the other candidates on the team – except for Adam “no one in their right mind would eat Japanese food” Corbally. As Dara O’Briain later said: “except for all the Japanese, who are quite fond of it.”  (Declaration of interest: as am I.)

In the boardroom, Adam fought hard to defend the indefensible: the quality of his appalling offering.  He brought Azhar and Katie into the boardroom – despite having fingered Katie and Jade in a talking head slot earlier.  Stephen had played his “Jedi Jim” card and talked Adam into bringing in Azhar.

Final Three Performances

The grilling of the final three was instructive.  Most of Lord Sugar’s fire was aimed at Adam.  He criticised the team leader for losing control and focusing on cheap, wondering if his “Market trader mentality” to keep costs down was an indicator that Adam is out of his depth at this level.  His swipe at Azhar was directed at his poor level of contribution – he asked “Why should you stay?”  Azhar actually gave a good answer – far better than Katie or Adam could muster.  Indeed, Adam’s answer was nothing more than platitude.

Katie, Lord Sugar thought, was instrumental in two of the team’s greatest weaknesses at this task: the location of the sales van and its branding.  Actually, Stephen should bear the lion’s share of the blame for the branding, from what we saw, but he also showed himself adroit at slipping out from under any blame.  Katie, on the other hand, showed herself well able to shoulder blame that she deserved and took the location criticism squarely on the chin.  I thought there was something to Katie.

So, why was Katie fired, when Lord Sugar said of Adam: “you made two or three big errors”?
He clearly had a very close call, as Lord Sugar commented.

I think this show was all about what different candidates had to say for themselves

Tom, for example, evaded all criticism, by speaking truth to power in telling Adam clearly that the quality of ingredients is critical.  And he should know: he is a fine wine broker.

But let’s look at the four key players today, and what they had to say for themselves.

Adam, I thought, made little more than empty statements.  He came across as shallow and grasping.  He had little or nothing to say for himself.  He also violated both of the two key points I highlighted at the top of this blog: he missed Lord Sugar’s point about quality and tried hard to argue that a 47p cost price represented quality – pretty close to lying, but I’ll call it extreme over-enthusiasm.  He also failed to control his team and assert his one strong instinct – to name the product after the chef who designed the meal (who, incidentally, must be glad they didn’t when he saw the ingredients that Adam bought).  Adam clearly deserved to go.  He showed no depth of substance and had nothing persuasive to say when Lord Sugar asked him why he deserved to be Lord Sugar’s business partner.

Stephen had plenty to say for himself, but most of it was by way of shedding responsibility and allocating blame.  I don’t like what I have seen to date of Stephen.  In week 3, I described him as all “sales mouth” and no “delivery trousers”. and I stick to that comment so far.  He seems incapable of taking responsibility for anything but his few successes and seems to me to be showing a distinct discomfort around frankness.

Azhar had little to say for himself during the task, but faced with a direct question from Lord Sugar, made a heart-felt and compelling pitch about his business strength.  He may just be someone to watch.

Katie is where I am most interested.  She has plenty to say for herself and that is both her strength and her weakness.

• Katie’s strength is her enthusiasm, her wealth of ideas and her commitment to getting involved.
  She also takes full responsibility for her ideas, which I like.
• Katie’s weakness is the quality of many of her ideas.  They are often lacking in acute perception.
  That, ultimately, is why Lord Sugar fired her

Having said that, was Lord Sugar right?

Yes and no.  Yes, because she does produce and advocate strongly for a string of bad ideas.  That is dangerous.

But no, because some of her ideas are good and what she really needs is a mechanism to evaluate her ideas.  That is learnable and, in a business partnership, can also be provided by the partner.  In the Apprentice format, however, many competitors are poor evaluators and there is also a pressure to go with a clearly articulated idea as a “win-win” strategy.

• If the idea is good: we win.
• If the idea is bad: you get fired and I win.

On this occasion, Katie was a victim of the format and it is not just I who think that: all three panelists on the “You’re Fired” show and the vast majority of the audience thought Lord Sugar got it wrong.

So that is two in a row of the candidates I liked for a long run through the series gone in a row.  I scarcely want to name Gabrielle, Nick and Tom as my current top performers.  We’ll see!

1. reducing the causes
2. reducing the deformation
   and, perhaps most important…
3. reducing the damage that the deformation does

Think of a supple young tree.  It can bend and move in the strongest winds, without damage.  It is resilient.

Building Resilience

In a workplace with more pressures to perform, shared among fewer staff, stress can only increase.  One strategy to deal with this is to build your personal resilience, and a powerful technique is to learn simple five-minute workplace meditation.

This is the simplest of routines that requires no training – just five minutes of your time and a little practice.  It will get easier the more you do it.  It is not designed to take you into a deep meditation, but simply to relax and calm you quickly; just enough to be more resourceful in the face of a demanding day.

Step 1: Choose an Action Word

Before you even start practicing your five-minute meditation, it helps to choose an anchor word that you can use when practicing.  Once you have used it often enough, just thinking of the word can trigger a start to relaxation. Good words to choose include: calm, warm, relax, soft, breathe, …

Step 2: Are you Sitting Comfortably

Find somewhere to sit comfortably for five minutes.  Sit upright, with your hands resting lightly in your lap, or on your thighs.  Softly close your eyes (if you wish.  This will help, but it is not essential.)

Step 3: Relax

Start with your face, then your neck, then your shoulders.  Notice any tension, then gently relax the muscles.  Mentally repeat your anchor word as you do this.  Continue down your body to your chest, arms, tummy, thighs, legs, ankles and toes.

Step 4: Melt

Fell your muscles like warm butter, gently softening and melting.  Imagine your feet warming, melting and spreading out.  As you notice each part of your body melting, mentally repeat your anchor word.  Work your way up your body from your feet to your knees, your hips, tummy, chest, shoulders, neck and head.  If you notice a lot of tension: let it go.

Step 5: Breathe

Then open your eyes.  Yawn.  Take three deep breaths.  Blink a few times.  Then slowly get up and move around.  Notice how much sharper your senses seem.

That’s it.  Done.

That task was to:

• Come up with a new fitness programme that will start a trend
• Create a promotional video and branding, and
• Pitch it to three health and fitness chains to secure licensing deals

Both teams could claim an “expert” as team leader.

The Teams and their Ideas

Phoenix

Phoenix quickly chose Stephen Brady – Health and Fitness Sales Manager – to lead them.  The team members were as last week: Jade Nash, Katie Wright, Adam Corbally, Azhar Siddique and Tom Gearing.

Stephen told his team that centres were looking for unique (for which, I think we must infer “somewhat novel” and fun programmes.   After a few quick ideas (They really do need to read “Creativity in The Apprentice: Getting Creative Ideas”) the team rapidly alighted on the idea of a retro theme.  Almost as soon as a grotesque image of Space Hoppers entered my mind, they were mentioned – alongside perennial favourite, the Hula Hoop.  And so the cheesy seventies disco pastiche that is “Groove Train” was born.

Sterling

Sterling had a choice of experts, but in the vote, horse-rider Jenna (Dressagercise, anyone?) Whittingham lost out to wrestler-boy Ricky “the Fitness”Martin.  And yes, I think he does call himself “The Fitness”, as in his catch phrase: “Witness the Fitness”.  The rest of the team were Gabrielle Omar, Laura Hogg, Duane Bryan and Nick Holzherr.

Ricky’s brainstorm consisted of lots of ideas… from Ricky (please please please would future contestants read “Creativity in The Apprentice: Getting Creative Ideas”) followed by a suggestion of mixing martial arts with street dance in a combo that would become known as “Beat Battle”.  The idea of getting accurate martial arts moves into a dance strikes me as a good one – as long as you understand the martial art well enough to get the move right and teach it safely.  Ricky chose knee and elbow strikes and punches from MMA – Mixed Martial Arts.  I suspect, moves originating in Muay Thai.

The Videos

The Videos were at the core of this exercise and started to show us more about some of the candidates. Adam and Jade battled over control of Phoenix’s disco-styled video while Azhar got on with starring in it.  The resulting video was very good, which I would ascribe to Jade’s direction rather than Adam’s constant chafing.  It was in the Sterling dance studio production set that we saw evidence of Rule 4.

Rule 4

As a reminder, rule 4 is one of eight rules I listed earlier this week for evaluating creative ideas on The Apprentice.

Rule 4: Too Many Opinions Cloud Judgement

This is especially true when those opinions are different to yours.
It is best in these circumstances to terminate the conversation with the dissenters
and discuss “why you are right” with the people who agree with you.

In this week’s case, Duane had a clear idea of how he wanted to direct the video.  Laura and Nick had more ideas – some good.  As Nick said, presciently as it turned out:

“We are in danger of doing just a dance routine and not including the martial arts”

Duane, however, invoked rule 4 – although only partially.  In his case, there was no one who agreed with him to discuss why he was right.  So he continued instead to keep telling Laura and Nick why they were wrong – without listening.  We saw an intolerant and combative side of Duane that was unattractive and disappointing.  The final video was bland – but with a confident and crisp performance from Laura.  I will bet that she can present well.

Ultimately, Duane invoked Rule 8

Rule 8

This is the big one:

Rule 8: You are an Apprentice Candidate

You don’t need rules… any rules.  Just do it!  If you need to lie to your colleagues,
insult shop keepers, or argue with Nick Hewer when the camera has just caught the truth,
that is your prerogative.

Ask: “What would Nietzsche do?”  The will to power is all.

Pitch Day

And so it came to pitch day.  Both team leaders chose to deliver all three pitches and both did so competently – but no more.  Sterling offered licensing for £45 per month, per club and took a leaf out of car insurance companies offering two months free on a one year contract.  Phoenix went in at £35, with a package price for all of the clubs in the chain.  But then they had to confront the vexed issue of the equipment.  Firstly: the cost.  Stephen thought fast and invoked Rule 7.

Rule 7

No one has exceeded last years bid by Jim Eastwood to create Hollywood blockbuster tie-ins to support his product, but Stephen made a token effort at Rule 7.

Rule 7: When it Gets to the Pitch, it’s not too Late

If your standard approach of patronising your audience of experienced professionals
is really failing and they tell you they don’t like your product, take it on the chin and
offer to change your product instantly and give them exactly what they want by
dipping into the magic budget bucket.

Stephen offered the first club free equipment, the second a set of made-up-on-the-spot charges (£2 for a Space Hopper) and then reverted to no charge for the third.  None of this, however, fully dealt with the problem of storing Space Hoppers.

Spoiler Alert

The Boardroom

So, to numbers…

 
So, a lucky win, I felt, for Stephen and his team and almost certainly a narrow escape for Adam.  back to the Boardroom for Ricky and Co.

So, let’s get this straight…

Nick contributed pretty much nothing other than one sage remark – and even sat back and disengaged from the process of editing the video.  Gabrielle and Jenna looked like empty dresses for most of the task – although we learned in the You’re Fired follow-up show that Gabrielle came up with the name Beat Battle.

So, who did Ricky take back for the last round of tonight’s mixed martial arts beat battle? Duane and Laura, of course.

Laura looked pretty safe to me – even Duane jumped to her defence.  This left Duane and Ricky blaming each other – with Laura siding with Duane.

Ricky committed the sin of bringing in the wrong people, but Duane picked up most of the flack for shooting and editing a video with too little emphasis on Sterling’s key differentiator: the martial arts.  For that reason, Lord Sugar fired him.

I was sad to see Duane go

… not just because I tipped him highly a few weeks ago, as being creative, energetic and engaging.

I also think he is a nice and talented guy.  He will do well.

So why did he have to go?

Duane made two mistakes and, I suspect, either alone could have allowed him to get a second chance:

1. He lost sight of the vision; the key thing that made his team’s product special.  And the buyers said as much: they wanted more martial arts content.

 

2. He lost sight of the fact that colleagues may have different ideas, but to lead (as he tried to lead the video production effort) you must respect and listen to them.  His cardinal sin was to become intolerant and almost aggressive with two people who could have helped him look good and the team win.  I rate Nick very highly and Laura showed some real commitment and competence – up to the point she gave up, exhausted, arguing with Duane.

I did not want to see Duane go but I have to admit that, in the context, he did deserve it.

- Why it is important and how the 2012 candidates appear to stack up in
their current business activities

- How a project manager can get creative ideas from their team

Now it is time for the last installment:

once you have some ideas, how can you best evaluate them to give your team the
best chance of working with a good one?

Rule 1: The Show gives you a Focus Group for a Reason

Clearly, that reason is to provide entertainment for the viewers.  This happens best when your team members:

• are rude to the focus group members
• fail to listen to them
• tell them they are wrong
• ignore what they say and do exactly the opposite

Rule 2: As Project Manager, you are in Charge, so just go with Your Favourite Idea

Your team selected you to take the blame when they fail.  So you may as well give it your best shot and subvert their intent, by picking the best option.  Of course, what your team did not realise when they picked you is that the transition to team leader magically gives you insights nobody else has, so ignore all advice – from candidates, focus groups, experts or common sense – and go with your favourite idea.

Rule 3: A Good Idea is Immune to Normal Financial Constraints

This is good news.  It means you don’t have to waste time considering the costs, margins and potential volumes of the different options before making your decision.  Just go for your favourite, and the cash will take care of itself.  And, should you not achieve the better profit figures, don’t worry: Lord Sugar has a consistent record of awarding a win to the team with the best idea, despite appalling sales.

Rule 4: Too Many Opinions Cloud Judgement

This is especially true when those opinions are different to yours.  It is best in these circumstances to terminate the conversation with the dissenters and discuss “why you are right” with the people who agree with you.

Rule 5: ‘U’ Turns are Dangerous.  If in doubt Dig your Heels in

We all know that stopping and turning around wastes time.  If you are heading in the wrong direction, your best strategy is therefore to make sure you get there first.

Rule 6: Customers are the Poorest Judge of What is Good for Them

Why would elders take offence at Hip Replacement as a lifestyle magazine?  Don’t they get it that Apprentice Candidates know best?  If you waste time worrying about how your potential customers will feel about your products, the only result will be to produce what they want.  Did that work for Steve Jobs? No: he created things we didn’t know we needed – and you can too.

Rule 7: When it Gets to the Pitch, it’s not too Late

If your standard approach of patronising your audience of experienced professionals is really failing and they tell you they don’t like your product, take it on the chin and offer to change your product instantly and give them exactly what they want by dipping into the magic budget bucket.

Rule 8: You are an Apprentice Candidate

You don’t need rules… any rules.  Just do it!  If you need to lie to your colleagues, insult shop keepers, or argue with Nick Hewer when the camera has just caught the truth, that is your prerogative.  Ask: “What would Nietzsche do?”  The will to power is all.