Lessons Learned

FIT

• Price flexibility. Both teams wisely dropped their prices to help boost sales. This is a simple one: If your price point is too high, drop it and get units out the door.
   

• Appropriate messages. Marcela wisely decided not to support Ryan's idea to use "Big Pussy" (from HBO's "The Sopranos") as the celebrity event draw. I shudder to think and can imagine Stewart shuddering as well. Get real. Know your market and your brand image!
   

• Outsource, but check: Dawna hired a public relations firm to help promote Primarius' store. That was a good idea, because Primarius had one less person than Matchstick. However, the PR firm's employees got off to a slow start and needed a push from Primarius to get rolling.  When Jim and Bethenny decided the Lime street team wasn't working hard enough, the two wasted no time re-organizing and re-directing them. Soon customers were on their doorstep, and machines were being bagged and sold. Meanwhile, Matchstick's gourmet pastries also attracted a crowd -- a crowd of freeloaders more interested in free food and coffee than expensive appliances.
  
  The bottom line? It would be nice if subcontractors could operate entirely without supervision, but it usually works out that some follow-up is needed. Managers who outsource should be prepared to check up on the subcontractor to make sure things are getting done.
   

UNFIT

• Team players. Savvy professionals know that being a good team player is critical to success. Both the Jim/Bethanny alliance (hoping that if Dawna's expensive PR plan failed, they could pin their loss on her) and the Ryan/Amanda alliance (with their apathy ensuring their leader's plan would fail) were unprofessional. When an "us vs. them" culture emerges, you can bet that team performance will suffer. Leaders need to be watchful for those kinds of internal wars and work proactively to effectively mediate and encourage collaboration and cooperation.

  Leaders need to encourage their teams to have difficult workplace conversations. If the unspoken elephant in the room is a team war, the team has to resolve their differences if they are to have any hope of performing effectively. Workplace leaders must have conflict-resolution skills to successfully lead teams. While addressing conflict directly makes many people uncomfortable, conflict avoidance is a losing strategy.
   

• Not treating your boss with respect. During a check-in from Charles (Stewart's cigar-chomping right-hand man), Ryan embarrassed his leader, Marcela, by asserting there was no way they could get a celebrity pastry chef by the next day. That kind of behavior is just plain dumb. You don't make your boss look bad in front of their superiors. Successful professionals don't do that. Ryan should know better. Marcela found a chef to appear the next day.
   

• Whining instead of finding solutions. Amanda was far more interested in complaining about her team's having "no marketing plan" than in providing good solutions. To Marcela's credit, she challenged Amanda with coming up with a better idea or solution. But Amanda simply responded with "Whatever" and walked away! No wonder she was sent home! I often coach leaders to challenge their teams with offering solutions when they offer complaints or problems.
   

• Lost leadership control. Jim lucked out (again!) in his leadership role with Primarius, which won despite his ineffectiveness. Instead of communicating clear roles and expectations with his team, he dubbed Dawna a "rogue" member and looked the other way when she took over the budget and the task. She independently hired a public relations firm with three-quarters of their budget despite Jim's objections! Instead of asserting any control, he decided to simply use her actions against her if they lost the task. Lucky for him, her strategy was effective and they won. However, a far superior strategy as a leader is to be clear about decisionmaking authority and expectations for your team. Not to mention -- as the leader, standing up and accepting responsibility for failures.
   

• Don't forget the reason behind a promotional event: Amanda and Ryan did not seem to do much selling at Matchstick's store, even though there were a lot of people who visited the location. At one point, there were so many people in the store that Ryan had to keep more of them from entering. Once the people were in the store, they ate pastries and were exposed to a lackluster sales effort for a product that was so overpriced that it had to be reduced twice.
  
  The bottom line? Effective promotion paves the way to sealing the deal with a customer. In this case, Matchstick's use of a celebrity pastry chef was very successful in getting people in the door. Once inside, it was up to the team to convert people to buyers. The team seemed to forget that the task was not about munching on pastries; it was about selling beverage machines.

Handicapping the Survivors: