Business Lessons from Celebrity Apprentice (Ep 13)

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A two-hour live season finale of the Celebrity version of The Apprentice seems somewhat frivolous. It’s almost as if Trump is taking this seriously. Maybe this gives us a little more insight on how un-seriously Trump takes the regular seasons when someone will actually be working for him.

But the ratings must be good. On signing off Trump declared they’d be around for “many more years”. My hope is that they get back to what made the show great to begin with, that is being about the business tasks and not about the personalities.

I’ll admit that Celebrity Apprentice afforded some of the best episodes ever for the series. But I think that’s the nature of celebrities. Many of them don’t feel they have to get along and certainly don’t feel they need to succeed here. Regular candidates do, so when you try to make the show about the personalities, you’ll always come up short.

So instead, get back to making the show about achieving difficult tasks. Stress these people to the max. No antics like sleeping outside in a tent, but push them to their limits in the tasks. Give them time to do it well, but make it difficult to do any job well.

But enough of my ranting. I’m not sure I have many business lessons from the final episode. I could talk about putting aside old rivalries. Piers made a point about doing that with Stephen, but only to the point where Stephen disagreed with Piers on methodology. But instead, let’s talk about the decision Trump made in declaring Piers the winner.

The Last Business Lesson of the Season:

Despite all the silly firing decisions made over this season, the winner turned out to be totally correct. Yeah, we all wanted the cowboy to win. He’s a nicer guy. But face it, Trace didn’t win any tasks and Piers did. And in the final task Piers brought in a considerably larger chunk of money.

Most businesses don’t care how big of a jerk someone is as long as they are effective. I don’t say this as a negative. It is what it is. You can have the biggest jerk manager there is, but if they run an effective ship then they are gold, as far as the business is concerned.

I don’t think that is an excuse to be a crappy people manager. Those that are have a hard time finding and keeping good people. And an effective manager that is also effective with people, will likely be even more effective. But a nice guy that really isn’t as effective as the office jerk simply won’t last long.

But also remember this, the manager that can’t build a loyal team needs to always make up for it in performance. As soon as there is a chink in the armor it will be taken advantage of and that person can and will be taken down. Bottom line, effectiveness is key, but don’t make enemies along the way.

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Tags: ASK, Business Principles, Marketing, Search & Marketing
Posted in Business Principles, Search & Marketing