The hit television show “The Apprentice” has ended and having been an avid viewer, I’d like to share my observations and offer up some lessons learned.
The first is that a great formal education makes an excellent foundation, but education alone will not make you successful. While most of the participants had degrees, some of them advanced degrees; the winner did not have the same education as his final opponent. The second place finisher (he was neither hired nor fired) had an MBA from the Harvard School of Business. The winner had a college degree from a recognized university, but not nearly as prestigious as Harvard. The lesson: school helps.
The second is that having “street smarts” can help, but that alone will not make you successful. The participants who offered only the education they earned in the “school of hard knocks” were eliminated and discounted because of their lack of formal education fairly early on. The lesson: experience helps.
The third is that people in your organization can make or break you. The second place finisher was deliberately sabotaged by one of his subordinates, yet he refused to take corrective action. In the end, many people agree that this was the single biggest reason he finished in second place. The lesson: hire the best people you can.
The fourth is that it is important to plan. Each week in this series the participants were pitted against one another in teams with specific results to accomplish. Week in and week out, the winning team took the time necessary to develop a plan, and then executed it. One other thing: if the plan wasn’t working, they took corrective action quickly. The lesson: have a plan.
The fifth is that teamwork is critical to success. It became apparent that many of the participants were not team players, even though they had been assigned to a team. It soon surfaced that these individuals had their own agenda, and could care less if the team failed. While these individuals did not survive, they sure caused havoc along the way. The lesson: get team players on your team; the rest can play on someone else’s team.
The sixth is that strong leadership is a must. Many of the weekly contests were run in a collaborative style when a more direct and perhaps even dictatorial approach would have served the team better. To be sure, different people and different tasks require different leadership styles, and a good leader will vary the use of the style to fit the situation. The lesson: use the style of leadership appropriate to the task.
The seventh is that you have to have a mission. As the show started and the participants were assigned teams based on gender, it became apparent that the female team had a mission each week to beat the men’s team. That generated purpose, focused direction and provided energy. The men lost because they had no unifying sense of purpose. The lesson: Find a mission and articulate it.
The final lesson is that ethics matter. In one of the early episodes there was a serious discussion during the weekly contest within a team about behavior that was deemed unethical by one of the team members. The person that was performing the act didn’t think it mattered. The ultimate winner of “The Apprentice” called out the behavior to guess who? The person who came in second place. The lesson: Ethical behavior matters and can come back to hurt you in the end.
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