www.MarkTAW.com/reviews/TheApprenticeS2E6.html (printable version)
The Apprentice "Crimes of Fashion"
Job Interviews
"This job was lost in the first hour." Andy had it right. This was an area where neither team had much experience, so choosing someone who could guide them through all the pitfalls so choosing the right person was critically important. They needed someone who understood all aspects of the business, not just the design aspects, and that's where the women won.
In my experience interviewing people, it's usually pretty east to spot an inexperienced person. They tend to focus on a single idea or experience. "This year I'm all about shapes," or, "Color is really important to me, I think that it gives off an emotion," To me, this signals someone who doesn't have much more to offer than that. Ilsa's pitch was a little better (she said something about being edgy) but not much better.
Of the pitches I saw, Darren's was the strongest. "It's one thing to be lofty and creative, it's another to be in business for ten years." Neither team was crazy about his designs, but the Maria felt they could deal with that and steer him in a direction they liked more, while relying on his business sense to drive the task forward.
Andy also liked Darren. "Our job is to find the person who can sell the most product. I felt that Darren understood that. John picked Ilsa, and I think that choosing someone who didn't have much experience was a big mistake," but at the end, John made the decision to go for the "eccentric" person whose designs they liked the most.
On the task, the men were disorganized relative to the women. Darren worked with the women, and I think that with his personality, he would have worked well with the men too, even Raj. Ilsa, on the other hand, surrounded by a group of men who wanted to do nothing more than gawk at super models, and pester her about every detail, was probably at a disadvantage.
Darren pulled an all nighter and got the clothing pulled together by the morning. Ilsa, on the other hand, perhaps hampered by the men, didn't get things done until the very last minute. Darren understood pricing, and all the women understood the importance of pricing and discussed it together. It wasn't delegated, it was treated seriously, and Darren's background and personality helped feed the discussion. Ilsa didn't understand pricing, and the men's formula was to take her cost to produce an item, and "double it and add 30%."
Delegating
In this task, I think the strongest player was Darren. More than anyone else, he brought the women's team together, and it wasn't an isolated incident, he also brought the students from Parson's together to get the clothing completed by the next morning.
Operating without enough information, or without a clear focus is like driving in a fog and without a clear map. You have to stop to examine every road sign, and even then you're not sure of the decisions you're making. In Tim Cahill's book Road Fever, which describes his journey from the southern tip if South America to Alaska in a race to become the first team to go from the southern tip of the Western Hemisphere to the northern tip, he describes an incident where his lack of experience led him to make a bad decision.
They took 12 hour shifts driving, but neither really slept well. One day, he drove past a road sign, and had to tell his partner (who was a professional driver, Tim wasn't, he's a travel writer), that he thinks he made the wrong turn several hundred miles back. Even if he was on the right path, they had to turnaround and drive back and check the sign.
This is, I think, a great example of amateurish decision making in a high pressure situation. As a writer, he would have made great decisions, but as a driver, his decisions weren't that great.
John, from the moment he was selected PM and described his style of leadership (which, I guess the guys do after all, we're just now shown the winning team's speech), I had a bad feeling about. He didn't really seem to say anything beyond that he delegates tasks. From this moment I knew that he wasn't going to be focused, and wouldn't come to the front and get the respect of his team.
He didn't have a criteria for his decision making, at least not consciously. Nor did he know at any given point what needed to be done, or at least he didn't seem to. The men wandered around trying to figure out what to do (Hey, let's get the models over here), or, as Kelly pointed out, distract the most important person on the team - the designer.
If he were operating off of a list, any ideas, needed actions, etc. that came up, he would have been able to put them down and review the list at each juncture to see where their actions should have been focused. With such a list, he could have thought about pricing at any point, and addressed it during their down time, perhaps deciding that further meetings with the buyers would be necessary so they could set their price point.
From what Carolyn saw, John was hard working, but that was when the designer had a task they could help with. Once she was working with the students - beyond the expertise of the men - they had nothing to do. There were a lot of tasks left, and on the day of the fashion shoot, half the men were left to do them, while the other half went to look at the models. Things like pricing, coming up with the brochures, putting the brochures together, and even working on the clothing. Also, what Carolyn didn't see was that Kelly came foward and drove the task to completion.
Watching this episode and seeing how unclear they were, and how stressed half the team was at the end of the task trying to get things to work really brought home to me the tag line for the book Getting Things Done. "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity." They didn't know what needed to be done, and because of it, half the team played while half the team scrambled to get everything finished in time.
Without knowing what the tasks are at all times, you can't effectively delegate them.
The Personalities
Kelly certainly surprised everyone. The hardcore military guy sat down and designed an outfit. This is a beautiful characterization moment that writers love. A contrast so far from what you'd expect from that character that it highlights all of their qualities. That is, you're reminded of his military experience and strong leadership style because he showed some talent and sensitivity when it came to fashion.
Additionally, Kelly tried to keep the team on task even when John was letting things get out of hand. My opinion certainly hasn't changed from last week - he's the strongest of the men.
Raj became comic relief during this episode. His open obsession with beautiful women makes me wonder what his childhood lacked besides toys, and what he may have enjoyed other than his imagination. In the additional footage you can see him telling the camera that he wanted to be backstage because there was a chance he'd glimpse one of the models naked, and he put on the smoking jacket telling the women it was his Hugh Heffner look.
Yet again, the women alienated someone, and I'm sure that if they were brought in to the boardroom, I'm sure Maria would have helped Elizabeth responsible for their loss. Unfortunately, giving her tasks that separated her from the team, and allowing her to successfully complete them would have made her the least responsible for a loss.
I sympathize with Elizabeth a bit because she's obviously intelligent, but her comments just seem slightly off center. She didn't want Darren because she was afraid they'd choose the cheaper product and price it too high again, but this task isn't really comparable to the previous in that regards, and there's no reason they wouldn't price it correctly. Coming in late to the fabric selection process, she said she felt the fabrics they chose weren't rich enough. There's a logical thread to her comments, but they were a little tangential to the task. She was focusing on some of the details too much, and missing the bigger picture.
The Boardroom
Another example of John's indistinct decision making was on who he chose to bring in to the boardroom. It was an emotional decision to bring in the two weakest arguers, rather than the people who were directly responsible for the loss on this particular task. Again, from Trump's point of view, more people means you're a smaller target, but again from the PM's point of view the potential for damage is greater if the rest of the team can gang up on him.
At this task, Andy was good. He wanted to choose Darren, and he pitched in and helped Ilsa, which is the real point. Make a good choice, and support your designer to do their job. The team would have been better off if they followed his example and pitched in rather than goofed off.
Kevin (and Wes) were responsible for pricing, but without strong direction from the designer and the whole team backing them, and with the rest of the task weighing on them (once you have the price, you have to put together the books), they made a snap decision that had no real grounding in reality.
Additional Notes on Last Week's Episode
QVC.com has the complete 12 minute segments that both teams did for QVC. The women's presentation was better. They had a greater variety of things to do, and repeated themselves less. The 12 minutes seemed short compared to the men's segment. I think credit here has to go to the script writing. The men seemed to go in to the task without as much to talk about, and the fewer talking points you have, the less interesting you'll be once you've said what you have to say.
The women's script was better. It went in cycles of banter, and a demonstration that went one step further each time. I think it was having a clear goal for each demonstration that helped them. The men just sort of looked around trying to figure out what they could demonstrate next. The women also took full advantage of the entire studio and started from the right and worked their way left as they demo'd the product on each new surface. The me, on the other hand, had everything centrally located and there was a bit of chaos as they were reaching around the table looking at for different things. Also, I have no idea what a Panini is, I think they really should have deemphasized that in their presentation.
I guess it should be little surprise that Jennifer is such a good public speaker - she's a lawyer and used to presenting herself to clients, judges, and perhaps juries. John and Wes did a good job, but it definately seemed like they were filling time more than Jen. Maria completed faded in to the background, and the show wouldn't have changed much if she wasn't there.
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page first created on Friday, October 15, 2004
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