i don't think the other money was well spent and didn't suggest it was

in that type of task however and taking account of the type of skills these guys are meant to have then hiring someone to do something they should have been able to comfortably do themselves would have been a big no-no for LS

the wine tasting was also supposedly Rebecca's idea which failed to meet the brief, failed to fit in with the theme of the task and wasn't even delivered very well on the day

I'm not blaming Jordan for the failure, I'm just comparing them all to see where culpability really lies, and that perhaps Rebecca was no more culpable than Jordan was.
I think that all of them played a part in bits which deviated away from the main focus of what they were supposed to achieve.

However I would blame Francesca more than anybody else because ultimately she orchestrated the entire shambles.
Francesca didn't grasp the point of what the task was supposed to be about in regards to linking the events strongly to a business context, where the other team did.
Francesca let them all go off doing all their things which had no bearing on the purpose of the task and what it was supposed to achieve, and instead served to deviate away from any strong central ethic or focus.

They all seemed to go off and spend money on 'nothing' things, and Francesca just let them.
However in the entire context of what the task was supposed to be about Rebecca suggesting a motivational speaker was the only thing which had strong substance and kept the task grounded in what it was supposed to deliver.
Christ knows how bad it would have been without the motivational speaker.

i repeat what i said earlier , the other team did the motivational speaker part of the day themselves and got good feedback on it which i think made it look even worse

don't spend money on something you can do yourself is a mantra i would think LS would hold dear

I think the problem I had with Jordan was that he elected himself to the job, then failed to follow through. He gave them a budget, and instead of raising the point in a small voice just to have his backside covered, he should've been "start putting things back".

I still blame Fran overall though, she got into a space where she never considered cutting costs on the irrelevant, and totally ignored the big things like team building activities. She wanted to splash 1k on chocolate making, ergh grrr.

BTW was it just me or did the chocolate lady look just like Gabrielle from last year?

In that case though you'd have to blame of all them for not possessing the required experience to deliver a motivational speech.
It would appear that a motivational speech was a required element of the task, and that if none of them could do it then they needed to bring in somebody else to do it.

If none of them could do it, then I think it's fair to say that they would have lost it anyway if Neil was as good as he was claimed to be.
Then how much of a discount would have been demanded by the clients?

I got the impression that Jordan realised that if he didn't do it, no one else was going to - that's me reading between the lines. I agree he could maybe have been a bit firmer, but ultimately if the PM decides they're going to spend too much, there's not much you can do to stop them. Certainly, the way Sugar implied that the overspending was down to poor financial control was ridiculous - it was down to a high-spending strategy (not in itself wrong) which spectacularly failed to deliver.

having said all that I was surprised Francesca wasn't fired tbh as for a task that was meant to be in an area she has professional experience of she made a lot of mistakes , I can see why Rebecca got fired instead tho

I'll have to watch it again, but £1000 on chocolate making?
How come the £600 on the speaker was seen as the failure but not the £1000 on chocolate making?
£600 < £1000.

The speaker was useful, but the chocolate making must have been as useful as a (insert very predictable idiom).

1. Well, she put forward the idea of spending money on motivational speaker
2. She could not talk herself out of trouble a la Natalie last week. Too laid back.

and the wine tasting farce as I mentioned above

I think that was a point where Francesca should have stepped in and made a strong decision either way, either go with the motivational speaker or tell Jordan that he's doing it.

Actually I'll agree with you. Fran was so far out of her depth that she didn't consider the basics, so Jordan piping up may have been because she hadn't assigned that role.

Yep the high spending would've been okay if they had put on a high quality event, even schools could've worked if they had gone for things like table quizzes or building robots where there had to be team interaction. I think the only subject Fran did at school and passed was home ec.

Without the motivational speaker it would have been (even more) awful, I suspect.

I'm not saying Jordan wasn't partly culpable, it's just that some people seem to automatically equate over-spending with it being the finance person's fault. If a real business fails, how often is it actually the finance person's fault? Not often. It's usually a collective failure of senior management. Woolworths didn't go bust because of poor spending control. Neither did HMV or Jessops.

Here it was obvious Francesca was to blame. When the entire delivery of the task goes wrong, who else's fault could it be?

Incidentally, I wouldn't even say Evolve overspent. Looking to deliver a high quality experience was a valid strategy. It's more that (a) they didn't necessarily spend on the right things (flamingos!) and (b) their execution was so shoddy. They could have spent £2600 or £5000 or £26, but they were still awful and missed the brief by miles.

(I'm not actually a finance person, by the way, before anyone accuses me of that. I'm marketing - I spend money!)

It was £700+ for 12 people and £70 per person after that. Luisa stepped in and vetoed the idea, choosing to use her cake making experience instead.

That was genius.

The actual choice of theme was probably the least important part of the task. All the themes could have worked fine - they just needed to be planned properly, delivered well and tailored to the client's needs.

I would assume the chocolate task had some sort of "Business Element" within it, hence why it was in their book of possible tasks.

I think it was just there as a set up to allow sir A to say 'you're as much use as a chocolate tea pot. You're fired.'

Shame he never got the opportunity

I can see how there might have been a team-working element to it, as opposed to individuals making their own cupcakes. It was a spectacular failure to grasp the objectives for the day.

All Rebecca had to do was stand up for herself...she could have said...

'Yes, I had made all the suggestions, I came up with the ideas...but did anyone else have any ideas?'

She had a couple of ideas, but legitimately, she was the only one coming up with any ideas (except Luisa's cake idea) and actually leading the team - if she had just said that...then LS may have reconsidered and fired Fran. It was just such a poor defense. I really thought she would have been better than that!

Well it would've been the most important part if they had gone St Trinian's.

I would've paid good money to see the look on the clients faces if they had done that.

having alex in drag as the st trinians headmistress would have been extremely creepy

Good point, well made

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I wouldn't any more blame Jordan for the complete failure for the task than I would Rebecca.
A lot of what we think now is based on hindsight knowing what the eventual result turned out to be. At the time I'm not sure how easy it would be to know whether you are spending too much or not. It's highly dependent on the final result which nobody would have a clue about until they look back on it in hindsight.

These tasks can be so arbitrary and down to luck that I don't think it's quite the same as doing something in real life.
So many variables are thrown at them, which are probably mostly fictional, that it must be a bloody hard task to plan for anything.
How many businesses with such a small workforce would sack somebody each week until there's only one left? It's ludicrous really. It's just not a realistic situation, it's a contrived game where only two teams are pitted against each other doing nonsense tasks. A small team would just pick themselves up, review the situation, and come up with a new strategy for next time and try again.

I agree with your points because in these tasks how would any of them know whether they're spending too much or not in something of this nature until they've found out the results at the end. In hindsight it's easy to look back and say oh they've spent too much, but at the time how would anyone know?