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Read Bio
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PM Wins: 3
PM Losses: 0
Corporate Wins: 7
Corporate Losses: 4
Boardroom Appearances: 2
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Read Bio
> |
PM Wins: 1
PM Losses: 2
Corporate Wins: 4
Corporate Losses: 7
Boardroom Appearances: 3
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This week's assignment:
This week set up the final task for the two remaining
candidates, Randal and Rebecca. Their first challenge was to select
their "employees." Rebecca chose Chris, James and Toral, while Randal
picked Josh, Mark and Marshawn. Rebecca's team would be known as Capital
Edge, while Randal's would be named Excel.
As in past seasons of the show, the final task for both teams involved
putting on a charity event. For Excel, the event was a celebrity
softball game, with Outback Steakhouse as the main sponsor, to raise
money for Autism Speaks. Capital Edge had to conduct an all-star comedy
event with Yahoo! as a sponsor that would benefit the Elizabeth Glaser
Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
This week's episode featured the two teams preparing to put on their
special events. By the end of the show, each team had been confronted
with a major challenge. Capital Edge took a call from the prospective
host for its comedy classic, Joe Piscopo, who is most famous for his
role on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. Piscopo informed the team that
he would not be able to participate due to problems with his union.
Excel, on the other hand, faced a different problem - a forecast for
rain on the day of their planned celebrity softball game. How Rebecca
and Randal deal with these difficulties will go a long way toward
determining who Donald Trump will choose as his fourth
apprentice.
Commentary
The final duel between Randal and Rebecca is shaping up to be
very similar to the Fall 2004 finale between Kelly and Jennifer. Like Kelly
in Fall 2004, Randal is 3-0 as a project manager and has been the person to
beat for several weeks. Like Jennifer in Fall 2004, Rebecca's main strengths
are her toughness and her ability to win arguments in the boardroom.
Over the three previous seasons of the show, the finalists have tended to
perform reasonably well in the last task, in the sense that the tasks have
been completed and have been successful overall. In a way, that should be
expected; after all, the two candidates at the end should be the best of the
bunch.
There have been some glitches here and there in the final tasks, but if
history is a guide, Trump's selection should come down to how the candidates
have performed overall throughout the season. That's why Randal should
prevail.
However, Kelly almost lost out to Jennifer one year ago because he was
almost too passive in the concluding boardroom and let Jennifer dominate the
discussion. In the final boardroom session, Randal had better be prepared to
go on the offensive, because Rebecca will have a "take no prisoners"
approach.
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Lessons Learned
This episode offered great lessons about project
planning.
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Anticipate the worst.
The ability to prepare for everything that can go wrong often
separates those who survive from those who don't. Why court disaster? Whenever an event, such as
Excel's softball game, is dependent on weather, there is always
uncertainty. It's important to have a "Plan B," in case the weather
doesn't cooperate.
When Randal refused to rent extra tents to protect all
his event's attendees if it rained, he
invited disaster. As this episode was ending, the forecast changed and
heavy rains were predicted for event day, yet Randal was still
waffling about renting the extra tents that could prevent a
catastrophe. At
least Rebecca has an indoor activity, so she doesn't have to worry
about weather.
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Make strategic team
assignments. Meeting with one of the
game commentators was more critical than buying megaphones. You have
to make the right choices about what people will do, especially when
time is short. Randal may not be using his resources as effectively as
he could. He
insisted on having the entire team go to Party City to shop for
supplies. As a result, Mark had to cancel a planned meeting with the
softball game's color commentator. It's doubtful that everyone needed
to make that trip to Party City. Later on, Randal and Marshawn watched
as Mark worked feverishly on the softball field to set up signage,
seats and other equipment. Mark maintained a positive attitude about
it, but he needed some help and Randal and Marshawn seemed to be in no
hurry to give it to him.
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Give people the big picture.
When they have a clear context for what they are doing, they won't
wander off course. When Randal
segmented his event into three distinct phases - tailgating,
the softball game, and a party - he established a clear structure to
orient his team's operations.
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Hire experts.
Sure, you' re smart. But when time is short you need expert advice
based on real-world experience to make things come together.
When Capital Edge hired an event
marketing company to help plan the details, they took steps
to make sure they were not missing any of the basics of event hosting.
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Go ahead and panic.
Rebecca and her teammates should have been calling everybody they knew
who could have helped them secure a replacement for Piscopo.
Overreacting is sometimes the smartest thing to do.
Joe Piscopo called Capital Edge on the eve of the event to say that
due to union regulations, he would be unable to host it. When
they got that news, Rebecca and her team moped around instead of
snapping into action. They seemed to be adrift.
The Handicapping the
Survivors
Unlike the situations in
previous seasons of the show, there seems to be more uncertainty
heading into this season's finale. Randal still has the better record
going into the task, but he has made a couple of blunders regarding
personnel deployment. He has also raised some doubts in the minds of
his key contact person at Outback Steakhouse, the event's main
sponsor. Randal has already told the representative from Outback that
it wasn't going to rain, so he did not need to deploy more tents to
cover the event participants and spectators. For Randal's sake, it had
better not rain.
Rebecca has had the edge in the final task to this point. She
outflanked Randal by giving advance thought to the people she wanted
on her team. So, when Carolyn Kepcher and George Ross asked
unexpectedly for the composition of their teams for the last task,
Rebecca was ready and Randal was not. Things also seemed to be running
more smoothly for Rebecca and her team - at least until Joe Piscopo
told them about the problem with his union. And, let's not forget,
Rebecca is doubly tough when she enters the boardroom session.
So, the potential exists for there to be a clear winner in the final
task. If that's the case, it may overshadow everything that has taken
place during the season to this point. Rebecca still has a shot at
winning it all if she can deal with adversity better than Randal.
Gold Stars:
There are no gold star recipients this week. |
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