Archive for the ‘The Apprentice’ Category

In the week 6 of The Apprentice, the teams were given 10 items to sell.  They were required to do research, identify the gems and then sell.  As ever there were a few red herrings.

This week Sir Alan chose two of the more vocal and potentially more confident candiadates to lead the teams.  Philip led one team and Ben the other.

It seemed like Philip had learned from the past when he started off by trying to clear the air with Lorraine who there had been conflict in the past.  While this was a very positive step, sadly it did not last and throughout the task he did not listen effectively.  One thing that he failed to consider was the contribution that Lorraine was trying to make about a rug (which turned out to be one of the most valuable items) and as a result the team ended up making a net loss of £34.

Ben, as leader of Empire was totally confident in himself and was determined to lead from the front, taking 7 out of the 10 items for his sub-team and allocating 3 to the other sub-team.  The results were even worse than Philip’s team, a net loss of £169.

While it is easy to sit and watch and make observations when you were not the person doing the task, there were some real big learning points for leaders:

1. If you are going to be selling something, you need to make the time to do some proper research into what the items are worth.
2. The leader needs to take the time to determine the different roles that need to be performed and then assign these so that all of the key things are covered.
3. You need to have some plan of attack.  It seemed that neither of the teams had thought much about where they might find some buyers for the items they were selling.  This could have saved them time.
4. You always need to be willing to listen.  In reality, it would have taken very little time for Lorraine to determine whether the carpet was valuable or not.  Philip could have made the decision to let her have a set period of time to do the research.
5. The job of the leader is not to be macho superman or wonderwoman.  It is to lead the team.  Ben, by deciding that 7 of the items would be taken by his sub-team was trying to be superman rather than leading.
6. You need to be able to acknowledge what you don’t know.  Philip was speaking like he knew with certainty that the rug was worth nothing when he clearly did not know.   

The tasks are clearly becoming more challenging week by week and I am sure more insight about the leadership capabilities or otherwise is going to emerge in the coming weeks.

You can watch The Apprentice at 9pm every Wednesday on BBC One or check out the website by clicking here

Last night was week 5 of The Apprentice in the UK.  The task to create a brand identity for a new breakfast cereal.

Ignite were led by Marketing Consultant Kimberly with Empire being led by License Development Manager Kate.

Your immediate thought would be the team that won would be the team led by the expert Marketing Consultant.  Yet again we saw that being the expert is not always a guarantee of success.

So what did we learn from this week:

1. It is easier to be an expert than lead and manage a team
2. If you are leading a team you need to be willing to take decisions
3. When time is short, there is no room for procrastination
4. If you are the leader and are not convinced about an idea, you need to be willing to speak up and say so
5. If you let people who throw tantrums if they don’t get their way continue to behave in this way, you are giving a message, sub-consciously that it is okay
6. You need to sort out time utilsation and priorities and create a plan, otherwise you end up not having enough time to spend on things that really matter- the cereal box in the case of the losing team
7. How you say things makes a difference.  Kate, the project manager of the winning team made great use of supportive language

At the end of the day, the finished product from the winning team was streets ahead of the losing team and is often the case being an expert does not always result in effective leadership.

You can watch The Apprentice at 9pm on BBC1 or on the BBCiplayer

In week 4 of The Apprentice, the teams were tasked with developing, producing and selling two natural beauty products.

The teams were mixed up again, with Noorul leading what turned out to be the winning team and Paula leading the losing team.  The big learning point from this week was that it is often the most basic of mistakes that can be the most costly.

So let’s compare both of the teams.  As a team leader, Noorul was clearly not leading and any time where a decision needed to be made he looked like a rabbit in the headlights.  There was absolutely nothing in the way of creativity and the product, particularly the soap was awful.  When it came to selling he just could not do it, despite the fact that in one of the clips he would rate himself 10 out 10 when it came to selling.  Yet despite all of this he and his team delivered a profit of just under £500.

Paula by contrast was a great team leader.  She took decisions, made things happen, a good example being the sale of the remaining stock as a single batch.  She was creative and pretty dynamic on the whole.  So what was the big mistake that was made?  Choosing a hugely expensive fragrance and not considering the financial consequences.

So what in summary are the leadership lessons can we learn form this week’s show?

1. A great product, with good marketing and selling is not enough
2. Crunching the numbers might be dull but essential to running any successful organisation
3. Delegation need to be clear and unambiguous
4. It is important to be self aware
5. When in a situation of conflict, choose your tactics wisely
6. Not being an expert in something is not a defence.  If you are the leader, the buck stops with you.

You can watch The Apprentice in the UK every Wednesday evening at 9pm or on the BBCiplayer

So we reached week 3 of The Apprentice here in the UK last night.  The task was to design a new piece of gym equipment that could be retailed under £30.  It was quite a challenge for both teams to come up with something different from what was already out in the market.

The piece I wanted to focus on in this blog post was the leadership of the teams.  There were two very different styles of leadership demonstrated in this task.  James the team leader of Empire (the predominantly male team) adopted quite a light touch approach to leading and trusted his people.  Debra the team leader of Ignite (the predominantly female team) adopted much more of an autocratic style.

At the end of the day, Ignite were the team that won the task.  On one hand this might have been down to good leadership or it might have been down to the team members.  What was more interesting to observe was the behaviours.  On the winning team, the team leader because of the style adopted demonstrated a number of behaviours

Indecision

There was a huge amount of indecision and procrastination going on about what the product should be and it appeared that the team leader was procrastinating and avoiding decisions.

Ignoring non verbal communication

On more than one instance the team leader was completely oblivious to body language and expressions that gave clear clues of discontent in the team.

Control freak

It was crystal clear that as team leader, Debra needed to be in control of everything, micro managing others and appearing to completely ignore what others had to offer.  A great example of this was dictating to one of the team members how to take a photograph of the product.

Undermining others

A good example was the way that she continually put down the person making the pitch.  Rather than saying something constructive to improve the pitch, the focus seemed to be in undermining Lorraine.

On the losing team, Sir Alan Sugar told James that he came within a whisker of being fired.  Ultimately what appeared to save him was the comment from Margaret who was observing the teams that he was not reasonably okay as a manager.  While it would be easy to say that as team leader he should be fired, there were some things he did well.

Empowerment

In complete contrast to Debra, he did not try to micro managing people and gave them space to execute.

Judgement

There was good and bad on this point in my view.  The bad was that he did not get involved in the product design.  The good was that even though he was less than impressed by the product, he made the call to say nothing and avoid de-motivating the team.

At the end of the day, his passion, fighting spirit and emotion in the boardroom, along with the chink of light on his management capability were what probably saved him.

Each of the leadership styles had merit. From my own perspective I would question whether the style adopted by Debra on this task, whilst producing a winning result, would work long term if working in Sir Alan’s organisation.

What’s your take?

You can watch The Apprentice on BBC One at 9pm every Wednesday or on the BBCiplayer.

In the second week of The Apprentice, the teams were tasked with providing a catering service aimed at people in the City of London.

Unlike the first week, there were two obvious people to lead the teams.  Both had direct experience in the catering industry.

As always there were plenty of learning points.  So what were the key learning points:

1. Know the customer and understand that what you offer needs to equate to their expectations
2. If you fail to keep control of your costs you are destined for problems
3. Don’t promise one level of quality and then deliver something completely different
4. If you put yourself forward as being the person to lead because of your expertise, make sure you deliver
5. Sometimes it is easier to offer less choice but better quality
6. Dissatisfied customers will let you know.  In this task the boys team only received about half of the originally agreed fee for their evening reception and the girls also had a significant reduction in their fee

You can watch The Apprentice every Wednesday at 9pm on BBC One or on the BBCiplayer

In the first week of series 5 of The Apprentice in the UK, we were introduced to the teams.  As usual, many candidates made bold claims about what they could and would do.

The first week task was to set up a cleaning service.  We saw the teams go through the initial forming stage, pitch for contracts and then deliver the service.  So what were the learning points from the first week:

1. Planning is so vital, especially when a result has to be delivered quickly
2. Cost of delivering a service is a key component in any decision making process around service provision
3. An unwillingness for people to take responsibility in one team led to a leader by default rather than choice on one of the teams
4. It is all too easy to underestimate the time it will take to deliver a service
5. When people act in individual interests rather than those of the teams, people do not work together
6. A de-briefing is only effective if people are willing to listen

You can watch The Apprentice UK every Wednesday at 9pm on BBC One or on the BBC iPlayer