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Pose and Smile – You Are On The Apprentice

Written by: Andrew Rondeau

Article Overview: Be warned – this posting reveals who has been ‘fired’ from the forth episode and the rest of the post is only my observation and opinion based upon 60 minutes of edited TV, nothing more.

Pose and Smile – You Are On The Apprentice

This week Sir Alan Sugar came up with a great task. To succeed the team will need to show creativity, teamwork, organisation, budgeting, relationship building and customer service skills and behaviours.

Who Does He Think He Is, David Bailey?

Am I alone? I thought this week’s task was easy.

Set up a stall, take photos of people and sell them the photos in one of the UK’s busiest shopping centres, Bluewater.

Both the Team Leaders volunteered and that was the biggest mistake Simon made.

Immediately he volunteered and said how good he was at photography and knew the jargon and techniques and said, “I’m the best at this”, he was a goner.

No-one likes a smart-arse or a big head and immediately Simon opened his mouth, the rest of the team had it in for him. Which I think is a shame because I do believe Simon was a genuine nice bloke and had much more to give.

Simon asked his team “Is everyone OK if I am the Team Leader?”

There was silence, total silence.

I would have said “Maybe not then. Any other volunteers?”

No matter what Simon did, Claire had it in for him big time.

She was out to get him and allow the whole team to fail. She thinks she is better than everyone else on the show.

One of the biggest issues I always see on The Apprentice is the lack of teamwork. Very often, if they are not the Team Leader they are out to ensure the team fails. The team members become uncooperative, they bitch, they fight and they disagree.

The teams do not seem to be able to leave their egos behind, pull together and work as a team, all with the same drive, which is to win.

Both teams split their task into two separate areas. The ‘front-office’ (i.e. the selling and taking of the photos) and the ‘back-office’ (i.e. the printing of the photos and other merchandise).

The selling and photo taking in both teams went extremely well.

“Come And Get Ya Photo With David Beckham”

In fact, Helene’s team had a great idea and decided upon having a David Beckham look-alike. It was a fantastic crowd puller. Women and children wanted their photo with ‘David Beckham’.

However, both teams could not get the ‘back office’ to work.

What Can Lucinda Do?

It was funny to watch when Lucinda was saying, “I can’t even get a mobile phone to work – I can’t do technical things”.

But guess what? She was in charge of the PC and the printing. And then guess what? Yep, everything went wrong. She didn’t know how to print the photos. It was a farce.

Helene should have move Lucinda out of that role for the sake of the team winning. It was Helena’s decision to make.

She didn’t, she allowed Lucinda to carry on and fail.

I am beginning to wonder what Lucinda can do.

May be next week we shall see her manage a team.

“What Colour Hair Do They Have?”

The back office in Simon’s team was just as bad. They did not know what order went with what photo. Simon was taking the photos, passing over the memory stick to the back office and no one knew which photo to print or which size.

They should have made it simple. Have different priced packages, £10, £20, £30. Each package to consist of a different number of photos and merchandise. Make it simple. You are still giving the customer choice.

Once the customer had chosen their photo, delete the others.

Simon should have pulled his team together, spent 15 minutes discussing the problem and coming up with a resolution. Those 15 minutes would have been a great investment as they lost so many sales because the wrong photos were printed.

When I face a problem, that’s what I do. A quick 15-minute chat, allowing all to talk. I listen, take it all in and facilitate how we resolve the issue.

“I’ll Destroy Him If He Takes Me In”

Those were Alex’s words aimed at Simon.

My wife and I at exactly the same time said aloud “not convinced”.

I know Simon was fired but Alex didn’t destroy him. In fact, Alex was nervous, quiet and had it in for Claire.

I think SAS saw Simon as a great doer, a number 2 but not someone who could lead one of his companies.

Alex won’t last much longer.

And I did expect Claire to go.

Claire might go all the way, if she can learn to keep her mouth shut.

Who Impresses You?

Now we have seen four shows, who impresses you?

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Article Tags: apprentice, behaviours, big time, creativity, customer service skills, david bailey, david beckham, egos, goner, helene, jargon, nice bloke, shame, shopping centres, sir alan sugar, smart arse, team leader, team leaders, team members, teamwork



Related Forum Posts
The "Young" Apprentice - I think a cool new idea for "The Apprentice" would be to have all young contestants, rather than just selling sex (e.g. Season 6 in Los Angeles) or using celebrities for ratings. Maybe every applicant for the show would have to be between the ages of 15 to 18 or 18 to 22, since there've been seasons where younger contestants have been stereotyped and discriminated against for their age and limited business inexperience (e.g. Lee Bienstock in Season 5). So why not make the stomping ground fair? Why not have an Apprentice Season where only talented youngsters fight over a job with Trump? I mean, it gets kind of boring hearing the contestants say "I'm older and have more business experience than so and so.... and that's the reason you should hire me Mr. Trump." That's a ridiculous argument because many youths are smarter and more successful than people even twice their age.
Re: The Celebrity Apprentice - Episode 10 - [quote="litekepr":3ax40azh]I don't agree with Piers just calling his friends to buy things, but in sales you use what you have and he has a contact list. Its a shame they did so many of that sort of projects this season -- I don't think it added to the show in any real way. Maybe one or two weeks that would've been fun to watch - but not this often.[/quote:3ax40azh] Hi Shri, I agree with you that we can't fault Piers for using his connections to win, but I think this week's episode would've been so much better had they not been allowed to invite their contacts to purchase art. The Celebrity Apprentice contestants should've been restricted to only sell to people who randomly visited the gallery on that night (just like in the 1st season of "The Apprentice").
Re: The Celebrity Apprentice - Episode 5 - [quote="Tami Szabo":214vsguq]Vinny really shot himself in the foot by resigning and then saying something about Piers being a stronger leader. Really, this is about finding the best leader and Vinny just confessed he didn't think he was. He didn't really leave Donald Trump much room to fire Piers after that statement. On the bright side, I was very impressed with Carol as a leader. She is someone I would definitely want to work with. She was respectful of her team and seemed to really utilize the talents of each. I have to say she shone! I haven't watch The Apprentice in the past so it's great to see some "nice girl" do well after some of the previous episodes where nice girls got sent home without necessarily showing their true talents.[/quote:214vsguq] I think the major difference between this season of "The Apprentice" and the previous ones is the fact that Trump isn't looking for the best leader or person to hire. Being the winner of "The Celebrity Apprentice" is simply about doing whatever it takes to win the most amount of money for your respective charity (i.e. the last person standing has the honor of delivering a $250,000 bonus check to his/her designated charity). It's all about following the show, "Survivor's" tagline of "outwit, outplay and outlast" and that's why Piers is a strong contender.
Re: New Apprentice - will it be a bust? - [quote="Evan":12gjs7wz]Being a fan of the Apprentice I admit that the quality has decreased since the first season but I was sad to see that they canceled the show. I was excited to hear that the show would be making a comeback but it seems to be less and less focused on business tasks and more about bringing in celebrity guests. [/quote:12gjs7wz] I really enjoyed the first season of the apprentice and it has gone down each year since then. The commercialization hasn't helped his ratings -- maybe that should be an indicator to go back to the original premise. I'd like to see the left and right hand people in the board room not just be yes men and woman. If he had celebrities who actually had business experience, that would be one thing. But, haven't we seen enough reality shows flop even though they had past and present "celebrities"? I haven't missed an Apprentice episode yet, but that might change this year. Shri
Re: English TV Programme - I really like the Apprentice when it was running on SABC3 here in South Africa. It is the kind of programme that should be on our TV


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