I dont agree. "Luck" cant be catered for. If they went and repeated the task the same way tomorrow as they did on last nights show, would they get lucky once again and get a big order at the last minute to give them the "win"? "Luck" isnt a sound business plan, or a sound strategy, and I think how they went about planning and implementing their reactions to the task should be just as important as the amount of money they had made on the day in determining who was the better team.

You only need to get lucky once.



I agree but ultimately what makes a business successful is revenue, regardless of how you achieve it and often it is just a case of getting lucky.

You say Lucinda's team was better managed and had a better strategy and generally I would agree but they also made some very basic errors, none of them of Lucinda's doing. Trying to sell ice cream to ice cream makers, giving clients exclusivity when they were basically salespeople, not producers, to name just two.

In management, Lucinda's only error was not putting her foot down about mixing up the team and allowing the three self-obsessed idiots to change her mind.

Claire and Michael's behaviour and attitude were despicable. In Michael's case not for the first time. Did they really need 4 hours to test cider?

Anyway, I was glad to see Lucinda's team lose just because of Lindi and Jennifer's attitude in the car and back at the home. It was great seeing the smug smiles wiped off their faces.

Exactly. Up to the final 2 or 3 (which I'm sure he has an idea of early on) SAS seems to be firing partly on the basis of wanting to retain the characters who'll make good tv.

It won't matter to him if he keeps some candidates who he knows he'll never hire, but who keep the producers happy and the ratings high. It maintains the value of the programme which in turn makes his fee bigger. Good for business!

Agreed, and that would be business

I totally agree. As the saying goes "better to be born lucky than rich" and last night's result reminded me of that adage.

In real life sure, but in a task designed to test your business skills?

That's exactly how it works. He was never going to employ He was never going to employ any of the ones that have been fired so far and I doubt very much he intends to employ some of the ones he has unexpectedly saved but it's all about making a programme that is going to sustain its ratings.

How many successful business people, including extremely successful ones, do you think got where they are today because they struck lucky on just one deal? One deal. Enough to make the money to turn your business from one that plods along to one that makes a return, enough to be able to invest in your own business and enough to make a name.

I've always thought the tasks were too sales-oriented, giving salespeople an unfair advantage. Fair enough if he just wants a salesperson, but he claims he doesn't.

However people only tend to get fired for purely sales reasons if they were absolutely hopeless at it. In other words it's important to who wins the task, but less so to who gets fired.

Last night it was fairly clear that the one who'd probably sold the least was the least likely to get fired, so it probably does work.

And as another saying goes, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

Of course as it is a tv show we have to have an instant "winner" based on sales. In real life one days sales would not make a long term winner - it is all about delivering on promises, keeping a good relationship etc.

I agree it would be a good idea if Margaret and Nick awarded marks for various skills etc

When both teams do well then its hard to find a reason to sack someone and Siralan was struggling a bit this week.

Jennifer is supposed to be the best salesperson in Europe so should have known not to grant exclusivity though saying someone's an idiot but even so he going to give them a second chance is baffling...

I'd agree. In real business, especially selling products, if you were making a lot of profit and another competitor was making even more, it wouldn't make you a loser. Both teams could be utterly outstanding and still someone would have to go. I think Sir Alan acknowledged last night that both teams had done well, which was why Lucinda was relatively safe. (I've stopped expecting it to be fair since Miriam was fired for being excellent in series one.)

I think it was pretty even. I think that assuming you've won before it's over was the worst mistake anyone made last night. Claire took too long to find the products but her team managed, and they messed up the market research, but that didn't really matter. The opinions of 15 people in a church hall aren't going to tell you much more than the opinions of the 6 people in your team. On the selling, they kept going and tried even harder because they thought they were losing, and much as I can't like Claire, they deserved their win just as much as Lucinda would have if it had edged the other way.

I like that saying but, unfortunately I don't think it applied to the winning team. In comparison to the losing team the "winners" were running around like a bunch of headless chickens. I doubt very much if any business would succeed with that amount of lack of coordination and planning.

Oh well - another week of the lovely Clare.

I was aghast at how Sralan's henchfolk Margaret and Nick complimented how his 'little chat' with her last week transformed her!

Transformed her my @rse. She kept her head down, did p*ss all, and arrogantly hung up the phone every time someone had something to say that she didn't want to hear.

We see Nick and Margaret for all of a few minutes each episode, does the OP honestly think SAS doesn't listen to the two people he has trusted for 30 years? Do they have a meeting outside of camera shot? Do they discuss the candidates for more then the brief 2 seconds we see on screen, before they call them into the boardroom. Who knows, but I can guess that SAS, Margaret and Nick do talk about the task, the candidates and the results, before anyone is fired.

I think what is meant by being lucky here is, somebody who is able to take risks and make good decisions based solely on gut instinct.

Not somebody who relies on an act of god for sucess.

But isn't this a good reflection of the real world - you may be the best mannered well organised company in the world, but if you're not making money then that is all basically irrelevant. Like it or not, the money you make is literally "the bottom line".

Over a period of time- yes. ~Not 24 hours.

I recall reading recently (I forget where but probably one of the interview links you can find in the other threads) that N&M spend 4 hours or so discussing each candidate and the task in general with SAS so he does get a thorough debriefing on their performance (and probably a more accurate one than what we get filtered through the director's cut).

In general I agree with the OP but once you start picking holes in the show the whole thing starts to unravel and the best you can say is that everyone knows the score going in (or should do by now) and will be aware that they can be banjaxed as much by sheer bad luck or the tactics of their fellow team members as by their their own performance.

And not in a scenario where you can't pick your own team members, can't discipline/remove/replace/ them, and each of those team members is directly in competition with their team leader.

But then if it was a real world scenario the programme would be 50% mucking around with microsoft project and how much fun would that be (unless it was Lucinda at the keyboard)

I understand all the points made about "luck" being a natural element of business etc, but I think it would be fantastic if Sralan had the guts one day to announce t the winning team "Yes you lot won but your management and organisation was a balrdy larf. So I'm calling yo the losers and bringing you back in. "
Now- that would be a real coup de telly.

Yes and 45% entertaining clients in Balls Brothers Lime Street

Yes it was a generalisation on my behalf. But I don't think the production team of Renaissance could be faulted this week - and what won it for them was the fact that they kept going until the end; nothing to do with team leader Claire or the ineffectual Michael (just what did he do).

Good question: what does he EVER do?