Why Claude Littner called me incredibly thick!

On this weeks The Apprentice the team were charged with finding 9 items to celebrate Lord Sugar's birthday. As the team scurried off across London on one wild goose chase after the other, sometimes not even knowing what the items were that they were looking for (Rugelach), I'm sure I was just one of many people shouting at the TV - just google it! But of course that wouldn't have made for such entertaining viewing. So when I saw Claude Littner being questioned on Twitter I made the tongue and cheek remark that "Of course they don't (get access to the internet) - because in today's world if you want to teach someone to be an entrepreneur then you don't give them access to the internet".

Now this was meant as a joke, which I thought was obvious, but my tone was misconstrued and Claude replied with his response above! Whilst this shows the pitfalls of electronic communication (including email) this is not the subject of this blog post (although I have had some musings on this already). No, instead I want to focus on the lessons of The Apprentice and the missed opportunities to really teach Entrepreneurs about how to run a business.

Claude himself stated that the purpose of the task is to test the skills of buying, negotiating, researching, managing and organising - all key parts of running a business. I'm not going to disagree with him however, I believe you could still achieve this whilst providing them access to the internet. If someone doesn't know what Rugelach is then how is that testing their skills in buying? And it today's modern world we use the internet daily to carry out our research and source the best prices.

If the teams had access to the internet they would still need to plan their route around London, find the best priced supplier, negotiate with them to get the best deal and manage two teams. It might not be as entertaining but it would probably give Lord Sugar a better understanding of his candidates strengths and weaknesses.

The task itself this week felt incredibly flawed as Vitality decided to forsake some items in order to get back in time which resulted in them being penalised ￡150 (￡50 per item) plus the cost of the item (was this RRP or the wholesale price or the price the other team paid - who knows). On the other hand I don't think Graphene made it back until an hour and 45 minutes after the deadline and yet they only received a fine of ￡100.

Graphene made the (correct) decision to be late but ensure they had all the items as the penalties were less punitive, but it was never made clear if this was by luck or design. We as viewers didn't get a full rundown of the rules and this is where I think The Apprentice could add so much more to young entrepreneurs out there (especially with the ability to add complimentary content online). They could have analysts pick apart where the teams went right (or less wrong), give a breakdown of the costs incurred, show us the detail behind the results and explain how this relates to running a real business!

Yes the tasks are limited in scope (they have to be for the nature of the show) but the danger is that young entrepreneurs watching take these tasks as gospel without understanding the impact on their business. Often in tasks things like closing stock are completely ignored and the cash generated is the deciding factor. Of course "Cash is King" in business but in the short term this often results in the teams pricing strategy dropping like a brick as prices plummet and discounting takes over - here's why I don't think this is a good idea!

So here are just some of my thoughts as to what could be done to give us a better insight in to the tasks / running a business:

Week one - Burgers

This is a prime example of closing stock being totally overlooked (which is probably appropriate given the perishable nature of the items but it would be good to clarify this for viewers out there) and sales prices dropping as the day progresses. Also, surely no one is buying some burgers of a guy in the street for ￡1 if there aren't TV cameras there!

What really made me roll my eyes though was the fact that the teams were celebrating a profit of ￡236.76. That's ￡26.30 each. For about 10 hours work. Well done guys ￡2.63 / hour - nailed it!

Week two - Hotel Redesign

This entire task felt flawed to me as the decision as to who won was so subjective. At least ask guests for feedback on the rooms or ask how much they would be willing to pay for a night or how much the hotel would be willing to pay for their work.

Week 3 - Robots

Unfortunately there were two very different tasks at play here. One was researching, negotiating and winning over a supplier for the best product to sell (Vitality did very well here, got the product they wanted and sold out for approximately ￡6k of sales). The other was product design and branding (as the team developed their "own" robot). The margins on this product were far higher and with 150 unit sales Graphene's sales totalled ￡58k.

Now clearly if I had a business with two products and A had a GP margin of ￡40 and B had an GP margin of ￡400 then I would focus on B. However, both teams split theire team members 50:50 rather than having more people working on the product design, branding and the pitch to ensure that this was up to scratch. The development of their own robot was clearly where this task would be won and lost so why bother having the other part to this task at all,

Week 4 - Stadium sales

Again the rules appeared to be so restrictive that they couldn't negotiate sale or return on the alcohol and repeat business / the lifetime value of the customer wasn't taken in to consideration. I still can't believe Vitality's customers didn't request a refund!

Week 5 - Lord Sugar's Birthday

Maybe it's the accountant in me, but I would love to see a breakdown of the costs for each team to see which items won / lost the tasks.

Anyway, that's my rant over. I still thoroughly enjoy The Apprentice despite all it's shortfallings. But maybe that's because I'm incredibly thick.