Every week it's I said that I wanted to do this but no one listened.

Perhaps the most important thing anybody going into management should be able to do is make themselves heard. It doesn't make a difference if you can predict the winning lottery numbers week in week out if you're just to wishy washy to get yourself noticed it is useless.

In the end it doesn't matter if your right or wrong what matters is leadership potential and she has less than zero.

I feel a bit sorry for Lorraine.

If she pushes her idea forward she's accused of being disruptive.

If she keeps quiet, she's accused of not promoting her ideas strongly enough.

She can't win!

I agree with SAS - she's too slow on the uptake and more often than not decides half way through a task that she's against the idea and it's too late then. Also, she's been very vocal on her disagreement with several task but we never see her justifying it - all she can manage is 'gut instinct' which went hideously wrong in the sales task in Manchester/Liverpool.

If she disagreed with something and came up with a sound business reason rather than her lame gut feeling people might actually listen to her and take some notice.

.. did she complain about not being heard this week? .. and during her win last week?

Yes she did, she was complaining because she wanted the dinosaur but was overruled, the usual from her I'm afraid.

Margaret brought up the overlooked dinosaur toy, not Lorraine. She had to respond and when she did she told the truth.

Yes and the truth was she wanted it and no one listened to her, it's exactly what this thread is about.
If you can't make yourself heard then there is no point in you being there.

Ever since they said she was difficult she has stopped pushing her ideas, but she is usually right, just not assertive, maybe in business where she has the authority she would.

The final decision lies with the PM and no matter how many times Lorraine explained that product was unusual and worth the risk, there was no way Howard was going to concede. It was his decision not to listen that cost them the task, not Lorraine being unable to push the product.

I also think both teams had those rocking horses from last week which failed to shift at the back of their minds and were making them even more reserved.

Actually I think she needs to be called Mrs. Cellphane, she is just so ignorable.

If we assume that they could have sold those dinosaurs, that is. Lorraine and Howard had two of the show's best-sellers, which I thought were going to fly off the shelves (shelves? remotes?) but failed to do so.

Those two blew the greatest chance their team had of success in failing to sell those star products.

And I wouldn't rely totally on SAS's assessment, and by that I mean the implication that the dinosaur was better and would have sold. He clearly thought Yasmina's strategy was wrong, yet her team won.

But they would have fared no worse by replacing the craft set with the dinosaur (even if it didn't sell). It was worth the gamble but Howard played it too safe.

And how many times did she explain that? Once. And it was something he already knew - in fact, he was the first person to remark on its uniqueness and say, "I've never seen anything like that." She also came out with a flat assertion that parents do spend a lot of money on children, but that didn't address Howard's point that if you are going to spend, you can get a Wii or some other product which will deliver much more entertainment.

She just didn't argue persuasively. She hadn't said all there was to say by a long shot. She could have said, "But the Wii has been out for years and they'll already have one; they won't have one of these" but she didn't. She just let it slide instead. I'm tempted to say she'd said enough to take a Cassandra position in the boardroom and that's all she needed.


No, their other products were good, too. It wasn't their product choice that lost it.

Like I said at the top of the thread, when Lorraine is adamant she's right, she gets grief. When she's not forthright enough, she's also criticised.

It's a Catch 22.

Sir Alan was spot on - Howard failed to take the risk even though Lorraine was nudging him to do so. And they paid the price.

When Lorraine's too strident and aggressive, she gets told off for it. When she doesn't present her ideas firmly enough, she's told off for it. It's not a Catch 22. If she found a happy middle ground between the two extremes she'd be golden.

Yeah, I like Lorraine quite a lot for her guts and lack of conformity, but I am a bit sick of her playing up to this Cassandra image now. She took it too much to heart and overplayed her hand a bit tonight, with the dinosaur toy - she prompted sirallen to question why she had not pushed it more and her being slow on the uptake. I think she thought she had come up with a really vivid and compelling description of her thought processes with the slow burner comment, but it has bitten her bad on her bumbly.

Everytime Lorraine makes herself heard she is shouted down and accused of being disruptive. Maybe the issue lies with her fellow candidates.

Exactly.

I totally agree - she is an easy target - being out of the work place you forget you have to stand you ground and not always be so nice - she must learn to smile more

To be fair, Howard didn't really "shout her down" on this one. She mentioned she liked the dinosaur, he was like, "Wii. Wii. Money" and that was that. She didn't come back with a reasonbed argument against Howard's point, and I'm not sure we can suggest she was too worried in case Howard went all Phillip on her, as he clearly has never behaved like that.

In general though. I think the problem with Lorraine is she is constantly trying to appease everyone. She probably thought if she persisted with the Dinosaur then she'd piss Howard off and that would backfire on her if they ended up losing.

I'm afraid I disagree. When she gets grief it's because her timing is wrong; because she's being adamant when the decision was made long ago and now the deadline is looming and there is no time to revisit it. When she was talking to Howard the decision hadn't yet been made, so that was the right time to be vocal.

She's only adamant when it's too late. That's why she gets grief. She's been the same on any number of past tasks.

Her problem is that she cannot influence and persuade, which is fatal for a leader. Others may have shouted, but have actually won people over by enthusiasm and persuasion. Once the decision is made, you must get on with it, but gives out a negative vibe. People ignore her for that reason - and her "accurate predictions" have done her no good. Actually, she was wrong about the dinosaur in the current climate - too expensive for an impulse buy, which is what most of that TV selling is about.

I can only recall this from the cereal task (there may have been more, I have a memory like a siv) and you're right, she brought it back up far too late for it to have made any difference - she was against the idea all along, of course, but she never made a real case for it when she should have done. She was spot on about the rug during the selling task though and got a load of grief from Philip for her troubles so I don't think it's fair that she's only adamant when she's late - she was very persistent with the rug IIRC.

I don't think she is. On the contrary, a big part of her problem is that she's not afraid to criticise the idea the team is committed to, even though it's now too late to do anything about it.

I think she lacks confidence in her ideas, and that's because she isn't very analytical and so can't find the arguments to back them up. Which also means she is sometimes wrong.