Raj Dhonota

Episode 4. Selling Beauty treatment in Birmingham. Zoe Beresford was the team leader for Venture. Felicity Jackson was team leader for Logic. Team Venture make a profit. Team Logic make a loss and lose. Ellie Reed, Natasha Scribbins and Felicity Jackson end up as the final three in the boardroom. Felicity Jackson is fired.

We start with Lord Sugar warning the candidates by referring to the previous big hitter, candidate name, for being fired for failing the task. The warning is that all firing decisions will be based solely on a candidate’s performance during a particular task. Personally, I thought that was the whole reason for the ‘gruelling’ 12 week interview so not sure why he had to re-state it? However, I do know from my own experience, that when it suited Lord Sugar, he would choose to ignore that particular requirement and find some other reason to fire someone if he was unable to fire them for a performance related issue. For example, a CV or experience not matching what he is looking for, or from what I have heard in the past, firing a lawyer candidate (apparently) because he ‘did not need a lawyer’. Not sure what she was doing on the show in the first place then? Perhaps one of the producers told him off for not following the rules? Then again, they’re a timid lot, so perhaps not!!

But it’s about the only aspect of this episode that raises a real issue that a lot of employed people find in the work place; that, in many cases people progress up the ranks, not because of their ability or performance, but because their face fits or because they spend more time schmoozing up to seniors, than doing the job they are paid for. Schmoozing is something that I cannot stand and probably one of the reasons I was fired by Lord Sugar, because I said it like it was. However, nobody can doubt it takes place in the workplace, and of course it is wrong. So can anything be done about it? Not much if it happens on The Apprentice. But in the real world, yes. Whilst the employee has some options, much of the power and responsibility lies with the employer. The employer has the greatest interest in ensuring that this type of thing does not go on within their workforce, because ultimately, the promotion of lesser able persons will affect the performance of the business at some stage.

As an employer myself, my businesses employ a whole host of measures to not only ensure that the risk to my businesses, of high performing individuals not being recognised, is minimised; but also to help empower those employees who, with some assistance, can become high performing individuals. These measures cover everything from independently audited 360 degree performance reviews and regular performance feedback to things like performance development, training and cross-training. All my employees can also chat to me directly– even anonymously. That can sometimes bring up an interesting conversation or two! Nothing ever works perfectly but I can guarantee one thing, if someone is promoted without merit, the business knows about it very quickly because it is in our interest to know. It all helps create an environment where everyone is allowed to excel and one where we ensure progress is based simply on one factor: performance.

One other thought whilst watching the boardroom. Lord Sugar had told the candidates that the beauty industry is an industry he would have loved to have penetrated, had he not been in the technology industry. Amstrad’s anti wrinkle machine called Integra, a product labelled as belonging to “Amstrad’s new Internet Based Health and Beauty division”, was clearly an attempt at entering the industry. It was the project that Tim Campbell, winner of the first series of The Apprentice, was made responsible for re-launching. I did not hear much about it afterwards, so I am not sure how successful the re-launch was, but it does show that the Beauty industry is clearly one that entices Lord Sugar.

As was saw on The Apprentice, it is an industry where the profit margins are exceptionally high and one that offers individuals a great opportunity to start a business with a low cost base and high return. So I would not be surprised if Lord Sugar makes another attempt, at some point, to re-enter the Beauty industry. Maybe not with the Integra, but perhaps with An Apprentice as a partner! And with the kind of profits a successful venture in this industry would create who could blame him for trying third time? So, what do you think it could be? AMSnail Bar? AMSairdressing? AMSTan?

Episode 3. 10 Items to buy on behalf of the Savoy Hotel. The team which buys all the items for the least cost wins. Financial penalties for any items not bought. Susan Ma leads Team Venture; Gavin Winstanley leads Team Logic. Team Venture wins by approximately £8. Vincent Disneur, Zoe Beresford and Gavin Winstanley end up as the final three in the boardroom. Gavin Winstanley is fired.

This task brought back memories from the first series when we had an identical task of having to buy 10 items for the lowest possible price and myself and Saira Khan (runner up of the first series) negotiated (some would rightly say begged!) for a free Freeview box worth £100. The rules appear to have been exactly the same for this task.

Having been through this same task, I can tell you that it was made clear to us that in addition to being penalised for any items we did not find, we would also be penalised for any items we bought at the full retail price. In other words, we had to negotiate a discount with the seller no matter how small it was. I can pretty much guarantee that the same requirement was present in this task. Therefore buying products at the full advertised price was simply not an option for the candidates. That’s why we saw them continually push for discounts even when it seemed they were bashing their heads against a brick wall. However, as viewers of the program we were not aware of this rule, I have no doubt that many were ridiculing the candidates for taking time to negotiate penny discounts. The ridicule appearing to be validated for us by the voiceover who remarked “8 minutes haggling 40 pence off the price”. Clearly nothing has changed with the misleading nature of the edit, but great entertainment all the same!

Now I could go on about various things that went on in the boardroom but there was not a great deal to comment on really. The candidates argued amongst each other over who should be fired, and I have already said that due to knowing how far the producers misrepresent what really happened, it would be unfair and hypocritical for me to comment on any of the candidates.

But what I do want to talk about is Lord Sugar’s supposed humorous one liner to Vincent. I was absolutely appalled and disgusted that someone of Lord Sugar’s position and experience found it acceptable to make a joke regarding someone’s origin by suggesting that Vincent ‘s ability to waffle was because of his Belgian origin. Whilst many people may have found it a humorous one liner, I could not believe my ears; and it has nothing to do with me not having a sense of humour. At a time when organisations have done so much to try to remove racial overtones from the workplace…here we have a peer of the House of Lords, someone who was once an Enterprise Tsar, making a joke at the expense of someone’s racial background? It is not a harmless joke and Vincent may have been too afraid to say anything, but let me say it for him. Lord Sugar should know better. Far better. Had that occurred in the workplace Vincent could have a right to make a claim under various race relation laws that prevent these kinds of comments. It clearly violated his dignity, was a joke made at the expense of his race/nationality, is not acceptable in the workplace and sure as hell is not acceptable on the TV in front of millions of viewers. And this was after last week’s episode where Lord Sugar spoke about the offensiveness of Slangatang! Hellooo!! You also have to wonder why the producers decided to broadcast it. Were they simply as impressed with it as Lord Sugar appeared to be or was it a complete lack of judgement on their part as well? May be they were doing it in the public interest to highlight that this type of incident can happen at all levels – even with a peer of the House of Lords? Can’t imagine it’s the latter because they would not have thought that far ahead.

When asked about the issue, unbelievably the BBC responded that they thought it was “a recognised and traditional part of British humour to make jokes about foreigners”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, so are they saying they think British people are traditionally racist?! If it’s a traditional part of being British, shall we teach this tradition to our children? And this is the BBC?!

Was it really just a harmless joke Lord Sugar? What do you think?

http://twitter.com/#!/Lord_Sugar/status/58579958112587776

Task 2. The teams are tasked with building a mobile application. The team that achieves the most downloads will win. Team Logic led by Leon Doyle chose to create Slangatang. Team Venture led by Edna Agbarha chose to create Ampi App. Team Venture won. Alex Britez Cabral, Glen Ward and Leon Doyle end up as the final three in the boardroom. Alex Britez Cabral is fired.

Lord Sugar arrives in the boardroom and reminds us of what he says is the most common question asked of him: whether it is possible to start a business today like he did years ago. And his answer to that question is an “absolute yes”. Lord Sugar goes on to justify his answer by giving the example of the task in this episode. ”You don’t need no big factories here, you don’t need to go to a bank to ask for millions of pounds in investment. You used your brains to develop a product which you could develop quite simply, put it up on the web and you can make some money.”

I don’t think anyone can doubt that putting together a mobile application can be a relatively simple task that anyone could do with a relatively small amount of money. There are many a company that offer to produce and develop mobile applications at extremely affordable rates, mine being one. But the gulf between having a mobile application produced and having one that is commercially viable, whether that means making money or just creating brand awareness, is huge and not so easily achieved. Most companies involved in developing and launching mobile applications will tell you the same.

Not everyone will have the backing of The Apprentice program to be able to walk into the offices of some of the top techno-reviewers and pitch their mobile application. In most cases you will need to submit your review online like thousands of other mobile application creators. You will then have to wait and hope that the reviewer feels your product is worthwhile reviewing. Then you have to hope for a positive review! Imagine how many review requests these websites get and you can imagine the difficulty. But if done rightly (which is the real challenge) the impact of a positive review can be huge as The Apprentice showed.

If you are not able to get a favourable review from an established review website, the amount of work and time required the make your mobile application commercially viable increases dramatically. You will need to take steps to create an online buzz in other ways, to encourage word of mouth to spread online and make sure your product features in all the places where your target market are likely to be…and that can take a substantial amount of time…it will not happen overnight. Achievable yes but not necessarily as simple as Lord Sugar seems to suggest.

Ultimately, this is why Team Logic failed to win the task. It was not a matter of one application being better than the other, but simply the fact that being able to get a review on a major website gave Team Venture a critical advantage over Team Logic. Lord Sugar was adamant when he said “Jim you’re making an assumption that because they won that website they got their orders. How about considering that your product was not sought after and theirs was. I don’t care whether you got on that website or not. The point I am making is, if you got on that website you still would not have sold any. Your stuff was viewed by the world and the world said no thanks.”

I totally disagree. I don’t think that anyone can doubt the fact that Team Venture won, because they won the pitch to the largest review website. It was incredibly important. That review is what gave them the short term boost of downloads needed to win the task. We are talking about the number of downloads over a 24 hour period and to get that kind of an audience through the review website is what won them the task. It’s black and white. End of story. Whilst Slangatang did pose some sensitivity issues regarding stereotypes I think Lord Sugar saying they would have lost anyway was just a TV moment and was not backed up by any facts or figures. Both applications had a viable market, and it would have been a better measure of which was the better application had they both been allowed onto the same review sites. In the real world, both could have been rejected by the reviewer or both accepted. But here we needed good TV so someone had to lose each pitch.

What’s more, in today’s world where information is power, companies launching these types of applications will know the source of their website hits and downloads. They would have clear facts showing what the impact of being on a review site would be. From a business point of view you would expect to be given that kind of data so that you could analyse what the true position was. Yet we were not offered this information in the boardroom and you do wonder why.

What I did agree with, was Lord Sugar’s analysis of the marketing slogan for each application. In the online world a user’s patience is incredibly short, and their attention available only for one or two seconds. In order to attract the maximum number of potential customers you need to grab their attention within milliseconds. Team Venture’s introductory line “Screeching chalk and animal snorts are all part of the Ampi App” was short and to the point and, as Lord Sugar said, a user gets is immediately. Team Logic’s “Slangatang is the entertainment App the gives you the ‘app’-ortunity to listen to hilarious local vocal” required an extra effort to understand what the application was about, and with online users as they are, it is likely that they would have lost interest before the end of the first line. Now I say this taking just the introductory slogans in isolation.

However, there was an important factor missed by Lord Sugar and his expert advisors which may have made all the difference to Slangatang’s longer introduction. The goal is to grab an online user’s attention within milliseconds. With that in mind, Slangatang’s use of a colourful fun graphic with their fun looking icon would have been more likely to attract the initial interest of its target audience, than Ampi App’s rather simple and boring graphical representation of their name. And with the initial interest engaged, research has shown that potential users are likely to have spent a few more seconds understanding more about the application.

Clearly the best situation would have been to have had Slangatang’s visual identity with a punchy slogan like Ampi App’s. I wonder whether this had been overlooked because Team Venture had won. Had they lost I am sure that this would have faced greater scrutiny.

The final observation I have regarding the boardroom was that Team Logic took a slight risk with creating an application where the stereotypes could have caused offense. But they do not seem to have been the only one who were guilty of stereotyping. Before firing Alex, Lord Sugar mentioned to Glen that from his resume Glen appeared to be a technical person; and in Lord Sugar’s opinion it was very rare to find a technical person who is also a very good business person. I have got to disagree with him again. You only need to look at the various technology based businesses both in the UK and across the world to find technical people running and managing extremely successful businesses of all sizes. In fact it is probably just as common to find a technical person capable of running a business, as it is an accountant or lawyer. Perhaps Lord Sugar had reasons for concluding that, or perhaps it was just another TV moment giving an indication that, for whatever reason, Glen’s time is limited.