Lessons from The Apprentice, Week 6 and a date for an after series party

What a cracking task. The teams headed to Chiswick Auctions in West London and were tasked with identifying the price of ten items ranging from bric a brac to antiques and collectables. The objective was to determine the price of each item and then sell for as big a profit as possible. Kate moved to Ignite led by Philip. Noorul joined Empire led by Philip. With encouragement from fellow Apprentice fans I’m thinking of getting the Twitter #apprentice gang and other fans together in a central London venue on 10 June to watch the last show and celebrate Kate’s expected win. Email me if you’d be interested in coming along. In the meantime here’s what we learnt from week 6. Business planning The Apprentice tasks all require good research and planning. It’s like real life really. Neither team excelled in this task because neither had a strategy. Sir Alan told the losing team exactly what the strategy should have been – identify the high value items, set a minimum price or reserve and then focus on selling the items as quickly as possible for as big a profit of possible. Research To be fair on the teams I don’t think the teams were given the tools to be able to quickly assess the value of the items. Access to the web would have helped. But perhaps that wasn’t the point and Sir Alan was looking for a back to basics approach. Desk research without the web is tough. It requires a military approach to hitting the phones to call round dealers. Sales Neither team had a sales strategy. Beyond the strategy that Sir Alan outlined in the boardroom. Noorul was shown the door because he failed to make sales while Ben survived because he was superb at closing sales. Delegation There were errors in management on both teams. Ben split the items between his two teams seven to three. Philip was dismissive of Lorraine’s insight. Again. Good leaders are prepared to get their hands dirty but delegate work equitably and they listen and gather opinion from their team before making decisions.