Melody Hossaini, a candidate in the last series of BBC TV’s The Apprentice, social entrepreneur and founder of InspirEngage International blogs about the second episode in the new season of Young Apprentice:
Week two task: Design a product for the parent and baby market and pitch it to leading retailers.
This week saw a classic products task! Lord Sugar is well known as a keen products-man so it is always an important task for candidates needing to prove themselves on.
Mismatched race baby and mother, boys spitting out their dummies and Lord Sugar admitting to sleeping with a piggy-bank all made it an interesting episode!
After considering a few different ideas, the girls quickly agreed on a baby support sling called ‘Comfy Curve’. I got a tweet straight away from @jazzcatstokesy saying: “I’ve owned something exactly what the girls came up with. It doesn’t really work in practice.”
The boys team went round and round displaying a less mature approach, but in the end came up with ‘Harris the Hippo’ – a bottle warmer with a twist!
I think both products were good, and not too far apart in terms of being innovative, so the thing that was going to swing it would be the quality of the pitches and how they could sell it to the leading retailers.
Glory-hunting
A core service of InspirEngage International is our Skills Bootcamps of which Communication Skills are a vital part so I was very interested to see how they got on. Having pitched a few times myself on The Apprentice, I know the pressure the young people must’ve been under (with the cameras, your team mates and lack of prep time).
Therefore with all things considered, I think they all did well. Having said that, it showed how tempting it can be as PM to put yourself forward as opposed to seek out the strengths of the people in your team.
There was a bit of glory hunting going on with project managers Lewis Roman and Gbemi Okunlola which caused problems for their teams. Haya Al-Dlame did the right thing (with Zara Brownless’ support) in putting herself forward for the third and most important pitch and did very well securing the large order.
In the boardroom, another win for the girls (they really are following in our footsteps!) with a sale of 7500 units. The boys sold 5200.
PM Lewis brought back Harry Maxwell and Ben Fowler. Lord Sugar summed it up as Lewis was glory hunting, Ben didn’t come up with any inspirational ideas and Harry M wasn’t liked by his team. The finger was pointed ‘with regret’ to Ben who had earlier admitted “dirty nappies and crying babies; not my style”.
@Sumit_Patel94 tweeted at me saying: “Ben was slightly unlucky for being fired!” Either way, well done and best wishes to you Ben!
Week two – lessons learned:
- Allow your team to play to their strengths.
- The PM should bring the team together not divide it. When you have issues with a team member, take an unbiased stance as opposed to creating a ‘them and us’ which is partly what Gbemi did when she laughed with her side of the team at Zara and the other girls.
- When pitching, remember to very clearly introduce what it is you’re presenting (failing that, try role-play!)
- Once you have your product, go with it! Support it 100%. Before the product is finalised, is when you discuss; the rest is energy-wasting!
Impressed by: Zara Brownless and Harry Hitchens. Zara is a strong woman, very capable and professional. Harry H is simply a man of integrity. He always speaks sense and oozes class.
@vn92 ended the live tweets by rightly saying: “All the candidates are v brave for making themselves open to public scrutiny- well done them! :)”
Join me for live tweets @Melody_Hossiaini and another blog post next week as the two teams try their hands at flower-arranging in mixed teams!
