The candidates in these tasks are working under immense pressure, with inadequate amounts of sleep and to extremely tight time scales. You, on the other hand, have all the time in the world and as much help as you need to get these things right.

And yet last night you fouled up badly. Twice!

In the first place, you failed to correctly design the task so that its scoring matched your stated aim. Are you really so stupid that you can't see that even if you tell people that the task is about reinvesting but you then design the scoring in such a way that a team can get more money+goods by not reinvesting and the task is won of lost on the basis of that amount, then you have set up conflicting requirements that it is impossible for them to satisfy?

If reinvestment was so important to you you should have only counted profit from the goods the candidates bought with money they had earned.

That was your first mistake. Your second was that when a team, quite naturally, operated on the basis of trying to maximise the bottom line - the figure on which they would be judged, instead of realising that you had cocked up, you threw a tantrum and blamed the team. You then changed the rules after the game had been played and fined them.

Having done that you had the brass nerve to claim you were a 'man of his word' - despite having just demonstrated that you weren't.

For heaven's sake, use your brain and think about how the scoring will fit in with the stated task objective. You cannot reasonably expect people to ignore the stated basis on which they can win the task to try and comply with some other basis on which they will not (unless you unfairly change the rules after the event.)

And when you do get it wrong have the grace to not try and punish others for your own incompetence. You have plenty of time and plenty of backup. There was no excuse for your failing to design the task properly.

I don't think that Sugar actually designs the tasks, he just sets out the themes and the production team deal with detail. Having said that the responsibility lies with the PM.

Do you think he visits this forum? I don't. I also doubt HE makes up the tasks personally. It's a TV show and it's about entertainment - don't take it too seriously.

That's just a big cop out, I'm afraid.

Im pretty sure you're completely wrong, His Royal Highness Sugar told them at the start they would be judged on how much money they had at the end PLUS stock. The idea being it didnt matter if at the end they were stuck with 50 nodding dogs ....... their value would be counted toward the total. The idea being that they didnt have to think halfway through the second day 'Oooh, lets make sure we get rid of all our stock for a £1.'

I really dont get the point youre making, because I thought the set up was fair and the execution was fair.

Actually I`m pretty sure he has in the past been on DS

He is the one putting his name to it, though.

Even if you want to be lenient and absolve him from all blame for the conflicting objectives he should have seen that the task design was flawed (after all, he expects the candidates to see flaws instantly and act on them.) and not thrown his toys out of the pram and changed the rules after the event.


Absolutely.

Can you imagine what he would say to a PM who allowed another team member to come up with a completely flawed strategy, didn't check it or see the problem, and then ran with it. It would not be a pretty sight.

He's just a waster like the rest of us then?

Yeah I totally agree with this. Shugs didn't get the candidates to play the task as he would have - and worst of all, the 'wrong' team won - so he threw a tantrum.

A completely arbitrary fine - although I suspect that Sugar already knew it wouldn't change the result (he wouldn't be that unfair), he just wanted to make it less impressive.

And the loss of the treat! A cost-cutting measure on the part of the BBC surely?

[quote=aussie_dave_;51249666]Im pretty sure you're completely wrong, His Royal Highness Sugar told them at the start they would be judged on how much money they had at the end PLUS stock. The idea being it didnt matter if at the end they were stuck with 50 nodding dogs ....... their value would be counted toward the total. The idea being that they didnt have to think halfway through the second day 'Oooh, lets make sure we get rid of all our stock for a £1.'
[quote]

When I heard this I fully expected both teams to go and buy in bulk just before the task closed so that they were heavily overstocked for the boardroom.

If they were taking the RRP of the stock into account (and the cost price had been lower) then this would have knocked their final totals up.

So 1,000 nodding dogs at £2 cost, £5 sale price would have meant spending £2,000 to bring £5,000 to the boardroom (made the numbers nice and easy!)

All the tasks seem much more complicated when they're discussed on Digital Spy.

Natasha was blamed for being useless - I think Sugar described her as cowardly - and no treat was given, but she still won the task. So something was a bit strange about it all!

[quote=silkstone;51249843][quote=aussie_dave_;51249666]Im pretty sure you're completely wrong, His Royal Highness Sugar told them at the start they would be judged on how much money they had at the end PLUS stock. The idea being it didnt matter if at the end they were stuck with 50 nodding dogs ....... their value would be counted toward the total. The idea being that they didnt have to think halfway through the second day 'Oooh, lets make sure we get rid of all our stock for a £1.'

NO!!!

If they bought 1000 * £2 nodding dogs in ....... it would have counted as £2000 of stock, not £5000 of stock ...... they would have only counted the stock at wholesale prices, not retail.
Otherwise they could have claimed they were going to sell the dogs at £100 each, so in fact had £100,000 worth of stock.

Actually Im thinking you made the same mistake as Jepson here ....... now I get why you lot were all in a tizz, its cause you misunderstood how things would be calculated.

Let me try and explain it more simply:

The basis for winning as told to the teams was that their stock and earnings would be added up and the team with the highest number would win.

On that basis, at any point, the PM has to make a decision: "Will I maximise my bottom line by utilising my resources to sell what I have or will I do so by diverting some of my selling assets to replenish stock?"

That is the only logical basis on which to base the decision using the rules by which they were told the task would be judged.


Well, if you believe that giving the teams one set of rules and them throwing a tantrum because they played the task by that set of rule rather than by some criterion that was never included in the rules, and changing those rules after the even, then I suppose you would see it as fair.

[quote=aussie_dave_;51249919][quote=silkstone;51249843]
Perhaps, but if they had already sold 100 items at a stable sale price then it could be taken as a marker, I take your point though, if they were judging purely on cost then it wouldn't work. But if they bought in bulk it would bring their actual cost price lower than the advertised.

oops, how did I miss this? When I heard fine, I had visions of the police chasing after Jim and Co. as they'd set up a stall on an illegal pitch in Covent Garden! Now that would have been entertaining.

I did not make that mistake about the calculations.

You do not need to do calculations. You can see that on principle the technique needed to win the task could easily be at odds with one of Sugar's stated aims.

Any reasonable person can see that you should not change the rules after the game has been played. That is the action of a dishonourable person.

[quote=silkstone;51250087][quote=aussie_dave_;51249919]
But this is completely irrelevant to the subject of the thread.

I think Lord Sugars outburst was because they actually didnt sell stock they could have because they effectively ran out.

But yes, youre right that there was no point doing an extra run at the end of the 2nd day to replenish stock when they could have used that time to sell.

But I think to take the case of Jim, he was running out of stock, and had pretty much ran out and was twiddling his thumbs for a while before making a late dash, by which time it was all over.

So he criticized Natasha for not making sure stock levels were kept up through the day as they missed sales.

[quote=Jepson;51250133][quote=silkstone;51250087]
As is this.

A very rich one though

I think Sugar was peeved that he had to get rid of one of his favourites. He wanted Natasha or Susan out (and who can blame him)

I disagree.

The task was well defined and the teams judged accordingingly. It wasn't about how much cash the team had at the end, it was the total of cash and profits - with the underlying principle of speculate to accumulate. A team with just cash at the end would be playing a risk averse strategy - whereas a team with stock would be operating "at risk". Alan Sugar wanted the teams to speculate at risk, but educated risk based upon what they bought and sold. At least by buying more stock, they open up the potential for more sales. Sit on your cash, you may as well stick it in the bank and not go into business. I admired Jim in this task, still with an eye to adding more sales at the end of the day - and he lost nothing as a consequence. However, it could be argued he still gained, for although the umbrellas had a trade value equal to his cash outlay, they had a re-sale value far in excess of that. That's business.

Perhaps the decision to fire Melody was when Karen said, if LS hired her, their board meetings would be lengthy

Well defined? Yes - except that the definition meant that to get the best score you might need to disregard one of the stated aims of the task.

Judged accordingly? Yes - except that they weren't. Sugar introduced a completely new rule out of nowhere when he threw a tantrum because the scoring system utilised didn't make the result reflect what he wanted it to reflect.


Except that it wasn't.

It was scored on the basis of the cash in hand and the value of the goods remaining.


That does not follow at all. A team with goods left over could just be useless at selling.


Then he should have designed the scoring system to reflect this. Not used a duff scoring system and then thrown his toys out of the pram when it didn't yield the result he wanted.


You are entirely missing the point.

On the basis of the scoring system employed, a PM has to decide whether they will make more money utilising their assets selling or replenishing stock.

If it turns out to be selling, then that is what they need to do to win the task - assuming Sugar does not invent new rules to apply retrospectively.

I meant total cash and stock remaining...my mistake. The rest of my comments stand..