I believe that the task, or rather, the result of the task, last night highlighted a basic flaw in The Apprentice. Lucinda's team was better managed, more decisive, had more of a strategy, was a more cohesive team, yet Claire's lot got lucky and won.
I reckon that winning the most money in a task should only be part of being the winning team. I reckon Nick and Margaret should also mark the teams on their professionalism, managerial skills, support skill etc etc (a bit like house points at school) and the final tally should be a combination of result and endeavour.
Glad to get that off my chest.

Yes, I agree. Nick and Margaret are underused as mere human calculators in the final act. They should at least give their own praisee of the teams they've been assigned.

G

I think Nick and Margaret play a more important role in the final hired part as well as influencing Sugar's final fired decision, and I think that is right. Business is about results and sometimes someone can be lucky rather than skilful and the combination of an objective element which decides which team is selected and the subjective element of Sugar's fired decision, which can be influenced by all sorts of relevant factors, is a good combination.

Yes- but this isn't about business-it's about an interview...and luck shouldn't play a part.

To be fair, it's rare for a situation like last night to occur where the winning team did not truly perform that well.

I agree with above

Also we only see 40 minutes of 14 hours footage. How do we know that we were only shown the good bits of one team and the less good bits of another. To be honest the production team can sway our openion of a team by the bits they actually air

But luck is important, Napoleon asked one of his aides for an opinion about someone he was evaluating for possible promotion in the army. "Is he lucky?"

Usually one makes one's own luck.

You know what I mean, so stop being pedantic
If it's the job interview from hell (to quote Sralan) and it consists on 12 or so tasks, then luck should not play a part, otherwise they might as well draw cards on day one.

Yes, but what would be the point of them showing us more bad bits of the team that won? the only thing that would achieve is frustrating the viewers and criticism of the format. Surely this cannot be the aim of the producers?

Even if Lucinda's team had won on money Sir Alan would have failed them on the exclusive thing.

No he wouldn't. That was just an excuse to find a reason for the best team losing...

And yet that wasn't flagged up in the programme either.

No shots of an aghast or tutting Margaret in the background.

G

We were stitched up all the way through by the editing... being shown
- lucinders team, good morale, good work, all good, pleased for them
- 'the bad team' - consistently bad working practices
but then at the board room nick/margaret said how good clare had been

which made me wonder about how the editing was done!

from the way it was shown to us, there was a good team, and a lucky team, but i suspect that it was not as clearcut as all that

To keep us guessing maybe and not make it clearcut who won until they are actually in the boardroom

I would hestitate to say that Claire's lot getting lucky was the reason for the win.

Yes in terms of the porject management and control Lucinda's team were very well organised, whereas the other were in headless chicken mode.

However complacency then set in the sales team, who believing they had already won decided that rather than selling they would prefer to spend time falling in love with themselves.

So I'd say complacency rather than luck was a significant factor here.

I guess exclusivity would probably have been acceptable if their had been a significant order behind it. However it ws just given away to make the sale at all cost with a further downside that they then had to cancel other sales activities.

Actually, you can see Margaret's eyebrows raise sky high in the cinema when Jennifer promises exclusivity. As a lawyer, she clearly immediately appreciated the potential legal consequences of the deal - ie being sued for breach of agency - as well as the poor business practice. Not quite as horrifying as Tre's suggestion of defrauding C&E last year but almost!

I think the same happened in Task 2 with Renaissance - they were just lucky to negoatiate a deal with a hotel that would give them several hundred dirty bed linen to be washed.

No, they got that deal because the girls were so inept. The boys got that deal through merit.

Since when have job interviews been entirely about an objective assessment of a candidate's suitablity for a job role? People lie, or at least bend the truth, to get job roles, and even promotion. I would say that not getting found out is a form of luck, as is being liked by the interviewers, which also happens.

In any case, although the winning team was disorganised, they did push very hard at the end of their selling day to find somewhere to sell to. In addition, none of them knew in advance how many litres of ice cream any business was likely to buy when they fixed the appointments up, or how many litres they would need to secure, if they were to offer an exclusive deal.

I think the flaw in the Apprentice is that losing by relatively small margins constitutes a big failure.

It's all about toying with the viewers' emotions and expectations. Keeps us guessing.

I can see where the OP is coming from - but...Renaissance kept going till the last minute, Alpha's sales team thought they had it won and sat back on their laurels.

As any half decent football knows - you keep going until the final whistle.

Well I'm sure SAS knows fairly early one which two or three contestants he wants to see make the final and really have a chance to show their potential. Everyone else is just fodder to his pointy finger - he doesn't really care who wins or loses.

It's not bladdy fair but whoever said life was bladdy fair? Not SAS that's for sure.

I agree with the OPs solution. It shouldn't be all about the money and this week was a classic example where the losing team actually was better overall.