Lessons Learned

This terrific episode, full of conflict and high stakes, taught some great lessons about success.

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• It's not just about personality. The arrival or departure of a key colleague isn't just a morale question; it is a business problem you have to solve strategically by analyzing skills and deciding who will do what. When Randal was picked by the women to join them for this week's project, the women celebrated and the men lamented the loss of his keen mind. But as far as viewers could see, neither team analyzed his specific abilities and adjusted their game plans accordingly.
   

• Make your client's priority your priority. If you listen, people will tell you what they want you to do. Open your ears, get your brilliant mind out of the way and give them what they want. Everything else is secondary. When Sony Pictures executive Geoffrey Ammer and Zathura's director John Favreau explained what they wanted the parade float to achieve, it was a learning opportunity for both teams. The men's team listened better and understood that the win-or-lose factor was the float's ability to imprint the film's name in the minds of the people who would be watching the Hollywood Holiday Parade. The men created a float that displayed the name four times and boomed the name over loudspeakers. The women's float came in a distant second on this critical point and they lost.
   

• Stay on message! Keep focused when you present. If you run out of things to say, stop talking. Above all, pronounce the name of your prospect's product correctly. When Jennifer M. failed to do that, she showed that she was slovenly and unprofessional. The Sony executives were probably wondering about broader flaws too. Did she really care about them or their product? Was she smart? Did she have what it takes to make it in business? As for Brian's presentation, it was immature. People find that easier to ignore than ineptitude. Stay focused when you present. And in the name of simple courtesy, pronounce the name of your client's products correctly. When project managers Brian and Jennifer M. presented their floats to Sony for approval, they both made terrible, unfocused presentations. Brian wheezed out of steam fast and began to talk about films he saw when he was a kid – a yawner topic that did nothing to sell his team's float. Jennifer M., despite her greater poise, was worse – a lot worse. She mispronounced the name of the movie repeatedly, causing the Sony men to grimace in pain. This was a "firing offense" that she somehow survived. But the fact is, the men's float won on its own merit, not because of project manager Brian's bumbling presentation.
   

• Build coalitions. You can sometimes survive a serious blunder if team members support you – even one that ought to sink you for good. But Jennifer might not get that lucky again. The coming weeks will tell the tale. Going into the conference room for the final verdict, Jennifer M. was the obvious choice to be fired. She had mispronounced the name of her client's product right in front of them, supervised the creation of a parade float that Sony disliked, and botched the job of motivating her team. Then, in the conference room under threat of being fired, , she looked even worse as she tried frantically to save herself. First she refused to shoulder responsibility for her team's shoddy work and then she launched a desperate personal attack on Kristi. But she survived anyway, possibly because Marshawn tipped the balance in her favor by joining Jennifer M.'s attack on Kristi.
   

• Build the brand: The message delivered to the teams by Sony Pictures was simple - create awareness and recall of the movie's name. Excel's float had the name plastered on every side, and an audio recording played the name for all to hear. Capital Edge did not incorporate the name into its float nearly as effectively. In addition, Jennifer kept mispronouncing the name of the movie during the team's presentation, which was especially grating to the judges from Sony Pictures.
  
  The bottom line: Brand names go through various stages in the mind of the consumer: from non-recognition, to awareness, to preference, to insistence. For a movie with a limited run in theatres, the name has to be promoted quickly and emphatically because the recognition process has to evolve very rapidly. Excel understood the brand building instructions given by Sony Pictures. These instructions either didn't register with the Capital Edge team, or there was simply poor execution of the instructions.
  
   

• Being bold vs. being bossy: In last week's commentary, Kristi was the only one on the endangered species list, and she ended up getting fired this week. Kristi is someone who has absolutely no filter on the comments she makes. Even worse, her remarks to other people are often delivered with an intensity and an edge that is very difficult to take. From her comments, Kristi seems to believe that people are required to put up with her outbursts, but they aren't.
  
  The bottom line: There's a difference between expressing one's opinion forthrightly, and hitting someone between the eyes. Honesty is respected, when tempered with empathy. Expressing opinions, even honest ones, without a modicum of discretion can be interpreted as bossiness, which most people resent.

Endangered species list

The following people are on this week's endangered species list, based upon the likelihood that they will incur Trump's wrath in the near future:

• Markus (Excel): Just when it appeared that he was making a comeback, he was a non-factor in this week's task. Other people on his team viewed him as someone who was shirking his responsibility to pitch in and work.
   

• Jennifer (Capital Edge): She didn't do very well as project manager, but Jennifer did earn some points for confronting Kristi about her bossy behavior. Jennifer also came really close to tears in the boardroom. If she had started crying, it might have been all over for her.

Gold Stars:

There are no gold stars for this week's episode.