Posts Tagged ‘The Apprentice Series 5’

Well we reached the finale of The Apprentice Series 5 last night.  Going head to head were Yasmina and Kate to land the job as Sir Alan’s Apprentice.

This year the two finalists were asked to create a brand new box of chocolates and the supporting marketing campaign.  It was a tough task as you would expect. Some of the past contestants returned to help out the two finalists.

This year was always going to be a close run thing as we had two highly capable individuals.  In my view either of them would have been worthy winners based on the task and their performances over the course of the last two weeks.

So what were the key learning points from the final of The Apprentice 2009?

1. Research really matters when it comes to something like a product launch.  Yasmina chose to go to a small focus group and a specialist shop.  From what we saw, it looked like Kate relied on checking out the competition in a supermarket.

2. You need to be able and willing to change track if the market is telling you that they have doubts about what you are offering, which Yasmina did.

3. Margin will always be a key consideration.  Yasmina’s background running her own restaurant meant that she had more focus on cost and selling price.

4. Creativity, especially when it comes to packaging really matters.  It is not always the smartest or brightest of people who are the most creative.

5. Communicating your ideas to third parties like a designer is important.  Yasmina and her team really got the essence of what their product was about and this was reflected in a slightly more exciting box.

6. Preparation is the foundation of a good presentation and both candidates did well on this aspect.

7. Perseverance and self belief can carry you through.  Yasmina was clearly struggling in the presentation rehearsal but kept going and delivered a highly credible presentation when it mattered.

8. You need to anticipate the questions that will arise from any presentation.  It was not clear that either of the candidates had given this much thought based on the footage we saw.

Back in the boardroom it was clear that Sir Alan was finding it hard to make the call.  In the end he hired Yasmina.  From my own perspective, it was probably down to the fact that Yasmina just had that little edge in terms of commercial awareness and business sense.  She was just that little bit more rounded.

So what was your take on the choice of the winner of The Apprentice 2009?

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

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.