Posts Tagged ‘The Apprentice UK’

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