Series 5 of The Apprentice is with us at last - There's only one winner on The Apprentice and no second prizes.The 12-week competition sets the candidates through a gruelling series of tasks and the first prize is the job of Sir Alan Sugar's apprentice, with a six figure salary.
08/06/09 - The final - Yasmina you're hired!
Which meant Kate, still smiling, you're fired! A shame really, I thought that Kate had the edge in the final and delivered better results all round. Yes the Choc d'Amour were a bit pricey but that could have been adjusted in time and it was a neat idea (loved the bondage style advert).
But congratulations to Yasmina, Sir Alan's need to follow his instinct led him to pick her as his apprentice for 2009. But, in his words, the class of 2009 was the best he has had and he could have easily picked both girls as winners.
And from a project management aspect what had they learnt? Well when they all stopped competing they were so much easier to manage - I'm sure Yasmina and Kate would agree to that - no project manager can be successful if they have a team of people fighting to take control all the time. And the team members learnt when to contribute and when to accept decisions and get on with it, this left the PM's to focus on the job in hand.
And so as the last shot of the Gherkin faded out (53 in total in the series by my count) it all came to an end (oh yes, was it me or was Noorul completely invisible in the final?) and we now have to wait a whole year until it all starts again. My life has a void that can't be filled with Big Brother, X-Factor or I'm a Celebrity...
And the sadness is compounded by the news that Margaret will not be with us in 2010, gawd bless you ma'am, you will be missed.
I just may have to buy series 1-5 and just relive the magic all over again.
04/06/09 - Week eleven - Lorraine you're fired: James you're fired: Debra you're fired!
Sir Alan took three of 'em out this week and barely broke in to a sweat.
First to go was Lorraine, caught lying on her CV (what's a year between friends?) but mostly fired because she just rubbed people up the wrong way apparently. Shame her fabled intuition (not that she remembered that was the word for her special talent) let her down or she could have changed her style in time.
Then went James. James, James, James ... the show would have been the poorer without your magnificent use of the English language. God bless you for putting 'I bring ignorance to the table' on your CV. A magnificent would-be apprentice who just needed Sir Alan to fix a spoke or two to become perfect, not!
And finally Debra. A close battle between her and Yasmina (the Finance Director who did not know her own company's turnover or the difference between gross and net profit) but in the end Sir Alan decided Debra would be a success anyway and so it was farewell 'but stay in touch'. Nice.
So, nearly at an end. The final will be between robo-Kate and abacus-Yasmina. Two remain but there can be only one apprentice.
28/05/09 - Week ten - Howard you're fired!
Well a bit of a surprise this week, young blue eyes got the bullet for being 'steady eddy' when actually I thought he did a pretty good project management job, he certainly knew that he had to stay close to Lorraine to minimise the risk. Obviously Sir Alan is looking for a bit of a maverick - must favour Debra then!
Yasmina and team won the day with a good team performance - despite Debra's initial reaction to Yasmina being PM - and came home some £200 ahead.
This was despite the other team having the better products to sell; Kate did a good job in selection and resisted any cautious approach after last week's high-value/high-risk strategy went wrong. Maybe it was edited out but I didn't see either team actually ask the TV company representatives what sold best at that time slot and why?
Personally I thought Lorraine should have gone this week (Margaret agrees with me ...) firstly for the bad sales pitch and lack of preparation (did she not learn from the pushchair experience?) and secondly for the worst pun of the week 'when the chips are down ... I'm who you need' - was she still dreaming of those not-so deep fat fried chips she was so enamoured with?
Nearly at the end now - I predict only 8 more Gherkin shots to the 'You're hired!' declaration.
21/05/09 - Week nine - Ben you're fired!
They are off their rockers this week and 'almost military man' Ben has fallen, not on his own sword, but at the ninth fence.
On the winning team they (finally) successfully mastered the art of the simple to use pushchair and bizarre baby safety hats. Despite the lack of competitive research (the same pushchair being sold cheaper just behind their stand) Lorraine led them to success and they enjoyed the reward of Gerald Scarfe drawing caricatures of the team members. Strangely Lorraine's looked just like real life.
On the losing side they gambled high stakes and lost. It is interesting times now for being the project manager (team leader) as failure does not automatically lead to being fired, Sir Alan is being far more considered in his decisions. But from a project perspective they all should consider the big picture before leaping in to action, it is always 'go, go, go' with an almost complete lack of thinking and planning. They should complete a simple risk analysis of the task - and think about the consequences of their decisions, and also why Sir Alan has chosen the task, what is he looking for?
And finally, Ben, in case you need something to do here's the postcode for your satnav - GU15 4PQ - to finally guide you to the Sandhurst Military Academy!
14/05/09 - Week eight - Mona you're fired!
Who put the 'gay' in Mar'gay'te (sorry) - well not Debra's team that's for sure. They all had a lovely day the day they went to Margate for sure but despite the ice-creams and sandcastles the results were rather poor.
Shame James wasn't on the other team, he could have definitely helped in seeing Margate through children's eyes - did you notice the major stroppy when he realised that the winning team were heading off for the Lotus test track. Mind you, he hasn't been on the winning team much and therefore hasn't had many treats (apart from the '99' in Margate).
But back with Debra's team, good strong idea from Howard (how did he come up with that one?) but let down with awful execution. And the presentation, when is something finished and when is it unfinished? well according to Mona when it is 'as I like to call it, work in progress' - excellent! Did they not learn from the Pants Man cereal box fiasco, obviously not.
Personally I blame Debra for a complete lack of time management, a desired skill in any project manager really. If this had been an earlier week she would have been fired for sure but at this stage Sir Alan has certain people in his sights and so it was farewell Mona.
But on the plus side this week's episode was a 5 - that is there were 5 shots of the 'Gherkin' in London, is that a record?
07/05/09 - Week seven - Philip you're fired!
A week for selling and a week when each candidate was measured on what they delivered themselves. Meeting in a less than glamorous location, a car park at the start of the M1, with the ominous figures of Margaret and Nick waiting in the rain, like drug barons overseeing a major shipment, the team headed t'North.
Probably the least project like activity since it forced the candidates to act as individuals rather than as a team. That said Mona did well and led her motley crew to a win both as project manager and as top salesperson.
Back on the losing team now led by Lorraine (Cassandra has evolved in to Mystic Meg according to Philip) they select 'The Pod' and the 'Cat Playhouse' to flog around Manchester and Liverpool. Her team split in to two Lorraine and Yasmina get out and sell hard but back with the 'sub-team' (as she refers to them) life has just gone strange.
Ladies and Gentlemen - Philip, aka Pants Man, has left the building. No he hasn't climbed in the black cab just yet but he only has eyes for Kate. Ben plays the gooseberry well as Philip and Kate go all gooey eyed and giggly and, well basically, don't do anything at all. 'Let's go for a pint' is Philip's most decisive moment.
As a project manager, and knowing what she knows, Lorraine should have separated these two anticipating such behaviour but on the plus side she knows when to dish the dirt in the boardroom and we get the chance to enjoy the meltdown of Philip and the incredibly rapid way his one true love (Kate) distanced herself from him (go girl go!).
And the optimist of the week award goes to Ben 'I'm packing my swimming shorts, my flip flops and my sunglasses just in case...'
06/05/09 - Halfway - Nine remaining!
The competition has reached the half-way point. Nine candidates remain, fighting for the chance of the job.
James - Sir Alan might have referred to him as a 'village idiot,' but he showed no signs of weakness when tackling Ben on his return from the boardroom. 'You're totally spineless,' he snapped.
Yasmina - likes to close a deal, but hasn't shown much business insight since winning the second catering task.
Ben - the terrier was shaking like a rabbit this task as he flunked in the PM role. Subdued and lacking his normal fighting spirit, was Ben overwhelmed by the PM mantel? A 'defeated man' said Sir Alan.
Debra - ferocious, aggressive and unstoppable in the boardroom. Sir Alan sent her packing with the warning, 'you ever open your mouth like that again, don't even bother coming back in this boardroom.' But will she pipe down?
Kate - talked about the 'hunger in her eyes,' and then made a £3 sale.
Philip was out of his comfort zone as PM. There was a lot of face-rubbing throughout the day, but he managed to sneak into victory with a loss.
Lorraine - our Cassandra has a gut feeling that the shoes and carpet were worth more than a few bob. Will her team start listening to her now?
Mona - stuck with team mates Philip and Lorraine for the day, you could see the pain rippling across her face.
Howard - 'it's a little bit wobbly Phil.' Howard stated the obvious when Philip prodded the skeleton.
30/04/09 - Week six - Noorul you're fired!
So Mr 'Mostly Harmless' has finally gone, inevitable really, all Ben had to do was get him in the boardroom and it was a done deal. Firing him took less time that it did for Ben to make his mind up about who else he was going to bring in with him - James, no Debra ...
That said this was a week when neither team won, they both lost; it is just that Philip's team lost by less than Ben's team. This was also a week when Sir Alan pointed out (not in these exact words I know) that all the teams really had to do was take the 'productive lazy' approach to the task. They did not have to sell all the items, they should have focused their efforts on identifying the valuable 'gems' in the pack and then selling them hard and at a profit. The old '80/20' rule really. If they had done this victory was assured.
Philip showed no real leadership skills and continued to override his team, despite a positive start with Lorraine (Cassandra as Margaret now calls her), and Ben was worse. He looked completely shellshocked this week and was a sure fire candidate for the taxi home if Noorul hadn't have still been there (being Mostly Harmless).
High points: Sir Alan's eyes when Margaret started on about Cassandra (he had no idea who she was) and Sir Alan's quote of the week 'I hope you're bringing in people for the right reasons. I hope you're not thinking about James, that there might be a village missing an idiot somewhere...'
Oh and one last idea for Sir Alan. I picked up on Noorul's comment about why Ben was really on The Apprentice - to win or to get famous - why not add in a special task one week where the candidates are secretly and individually offered deals to quit the series, book deals, modelling deals, TV deals, whatever. Then let's see who is in it for the long game, who really wants to be The Apprentice.
23/04/09 - Week five - Kimberly you're fired!
It was the closest thing to a real project this week; no selling, just the delivery of an idea within a time period, to a budget (we presume but this was not mentioned specifically), and to the highest quality level. Well done to Kate and her happy productive team - even Ben said she was a good leam leader, high praise indeed!
Meanwhile back in the land of the 'rough tough cream puff from NY' life was less than happy. Noorul was 'awol' again, sitting in the garage in his pants, Howard was ... somewhere ... so was Mona apparently, and that left Lorraine and Philip at each other's throats. Kimberly tried to keep everyone happy (well Philip anyway) and as a result failed to keep anyone happy (even Philip).
The winning team logically moved from cereal to treasure to treasure flakes to adventure to pirates to Captain Squawk the pirate parrot. The other team started at 'pants' and worked back to 'Pants Man' - now Philip is from the north so he knows that is not a good thing!
It culminated in a presentation - well done Debra for the Treasure Flake pitch - but Mona just threw in the towel with her 'Wear pants but don't wear pants, superheroes and people not awake can wear pants but not other people unless they have't had their breakfast...'. And in a box, a lurid green half finished box (my 6 year old son could have done better with MS Paint given 30 minutes or so) that Sir Alan felt was better suited to the gardening section.
So this week I am with Sir Alan; Kimberly should have been fired for a) not managing her team and task and b) for not bringing Noorul back in to the boardroom. How many more hints can Sir Alan make that he wants to fire the timewaster?
And me, well I am looking forward to 19th September - Talk like a Pirate Day - when I will be eatin' a hearty breakfast of Treasure Flakes for sure. Yarr!
16/04/09 - Week four - Paula you're fired!
Well yes, Paula was fired but please there was only one person who should have gone last night and that was Noorul. Probably the worst project manager I have ever seen on The Apprentice. He did nothing! He didn't plan, manage, lead, inspire, organise - in the words of the great Margaret 'If it was left to him they'd have done nothing'. He didn't sell and he took the amazing decision to move his team to a bad selling location just because he wasn't selling anything himself (and yet the others were).
But the rules are the rules and his team won. Paula, admitting she was 'rubbish at costings' delegated costings to Yasmina and Ben. She then made the error of getting herself back involved in the costings, and excluding Ben (apart for the 'what are three sevens?' question), and creating sufficient confusion in the process to ensure Sir Alan pointed his finger at her in the boardroom.
Personally I think Yasmina should have gone and, despite Ben (I got a scholarship to Sandhurst but didn't go) being a complete annoyance, Paula should have focused all the blame on her. The result was a good product, a good marketing look, a great selling process but the old 'triple constraint' of project management came in to play: Time, Cost and Quality are required. They failed on cost, big time!
09/04/09 - Week three - Majid you're fired!
An interesting decision from Sir Alan this week. Debra led her team to victory but with a high risk strategy of micro-managing every little detail of the project. Success means she survives, but she has probably upset everyone on her team by achieving that success, and failure would have meant the only one who would have been fired would have been her! Her quote of 'I'm not really bothered if you're successful or fail. You're failure is my success ... not to be nasty.' sets her tone - one to watch.
Meanwhile on James' losing team this meant two things. His team mates would turn on him and he would get all emotional in the board room again. He survived by an absolute whisker. As Sir Alan pointed out, it was all about the product and where was the project manager at that critical stage in the project - the design stage - nowhere important. For that alone I would have fired him. Sure Ben had passion and enthusiasm and led the design but he failed to follow the maxim of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) or in the product design world (Keep It Simple and Sexy). The winning team managed this, the losing team made it too complex for the design guys to mock up anything nice looking at all. A box that looked like a home experiment gone wrong.
Actually if Majid had to be fired I would have fired him for being a scope creep rather than doing nothing. Sir Alan was wrong here (dare I say that?) Majid did do one thing and that was get carried away with ideas and convince Ben to complicate his original idea. That said and considering everything I would still have fired the project manager on this occasion - sorry James. Besides it would have been entertaining to watch Majid lead a project.
02/04/09 - Week two - Rocky you're fired!
So Yasmina's team won - a real 'cheap' victory perhaps but she learnt from last week's lesson about costs. Not a great start from her though with the declaration that a project manager 'needs to cut through the crap' - probably wise but a little confrontational at this stage, but she recovered well with her Gordon Ramsay 'call me Chef' show in the kitchen.
Rocky meanwhile is our first project manager to be fired. A nice enough chap but he made the fatal mistake, supported wholeheartedly by his team mates, of becoming project manager because he knew the most about catering. Never try and combine these two roles in a project. The expert, the specialist, the 'solution architect' should be free to comment and advise on the strategy and the decisions and the project manager should be free to drive the project to a successful conclusion. A great partnership of expert and project manager is always a winner!
All this aside then Sir Alan should have also fired Philip, for the most appalling and yet hilarious piece of negotiation and Kate for the most appalling and embarrassing sales pitch.
All together now 'Toga, toga, toga' - quality!
30/03/09 - The aquarium is worth keeping an eye on. I heard a mischievous rumour that the production team were going to remove one fish each week to see how long it would take for the candidates to make the connection.
27/03/09 - Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear - seems like I have managed to upset some of my (proper) Project Management colleagues over my views over the benefits to our profession of The Apprentice.
Look it is entertainment for sure and yes it doesn't show Project Management in a good light but, profession or not, I love what I do and I wish more people understood what Project Management is all about.
So to have something like this on prime time TV, with all the media coverage, exposing even the term Project Management to millions (instead of only the thousands in our world) has to be a good thing.
I would rather have the discussion with the general public over what is and what isn't good Project Management that have that blank vacant stare when I say 'I'm a Project Manager'.
So I'm still a fan of The Apprentice!
So to have something like this on prime time TV, with all the media coverage, exposing even the term Project Management to millions (instead of only the thousands in our world) has to be a good thing.
I would rather have the discussion with the general public over what is and what isn't good Project Management that have that blank vacant stare when I say 'I'm a Project Manager'.
So I'm still a fan of The Apprentice!
26/03/09 - Week one - Anita, you're fired!
A typical start, lots of loud voices right up until the Project Manager has to be chosen and then, in the boys camp, two volunteers - one, Howard succeeds and one, Philip fails and promptly does what he can to undermine Howard. Good job the boys won or Philip would have been in the firing line.
In the girls camp Mona risks it all by cautiously taking the Project Management role. What follows is a great example of collective irresponsibility and Mona loses control more or less straight away. You could say the girls lost because they, well Debra's team, didn't sell enough and lost a follow on order; you could say they lost due to their disorganisation in carrying out the (simple) task of cleaning cars; or you could agree they lost because of the costs they incurred at the start - this included money for a pressure washer none of them could even use. If they hadn't of selected that they would have won.
And the Project Management lesson to be learnt this week? Well there were many, and I have been challenged by some that to use the term 'Project Manager' in relation to this game is an insult, but hey ho, the one I would select is that to succeed you need to know what your Sponsor wants. In this case Sir Alan, and what he wanted was profit. So at the start the team hoped they would make money but they should have known they could have controlled costs - especially in these current times. Considering this is series 5 you would think that the candidates would have researched and known a little more about what make the great man 'tick' but no, they make the mistakes each time.
Know your sponsor and adapt to their expectations.
So Anita went because of her inappropriate comment about being 'in budget' but it was for sure a case of collective irresponsibility.
Do I really have to wait a week for the next episode...
25/03/09 - Bring on the new series of The Apprentice.
I love it because it is the one thing that gets people talking about my profession - Project Management; even my kids, and wife, learnt to understand a little more of what 'Dad' does every day at work from Sir Alan and his team of hopefuls. Actually I hope what I do is a little more effective but you know what I mean.
I love it because it is the one thing that gets people talking about my profession - Project Management; even my kids, and wife, learnt to understand a little more of what 'Dad' does every day at work from Sir Alan and his team of hopefuls. Actually I hope what I do is a little more effective but you know what I mean.
But the would be recruits should be very wary of the role of Project Manager at the start of the series; managing a bunch of people you don't know, who are all on a huge ego trip and who are all after the 'one thing' is not something that offers much hope for any project manager and has proven to be high risk in previous series.
By the way, why do they always show the London skyline when Sir Alan's offices are in Essex?