I was just scrolling through the various threads and have noticed that if a team gets on well and performs to a high standard in the task as the following did:

Lee - Morroco
Lucinda - ice cream
Raef - laundry
Sara - restaurant

then there are comments about it being an easy task, a task not requiring good management or the strength being in the team rather than the manager.

So I thought I'd start a thread about it and see what people think is the reason for the success, is it the leader, the team or luck?

She lost this task. That was when Lindy got fired. Which wasn't too lucky...

I know I included it because during this episode everyone was talking about what a good leader she was (sorry perhpas should have made that clear)

IMO, the reason Lee was a success had little to do with Lee, but was down to the team he was given, which was incredibly one-sided compared to the other team (and after watching SAS on Johnathan Ross the cynic in me wanders if that was the intention). The other three are all good team managers IMO.

They were also good team players, which is what made Lee's team so good in Morocco. Compared to Jenny's team, which was full of prima donna's (Jenny M/Claire/Alex) and puffed up ego's (Michael/Jenny C); which was just detrimental to the whole team.

Claire was PM twice, once in the ice cream task and I don't remember the first one.

Selling fish. She won both.

and in my opinion her team was lucky to get that late £800 Deal to win the Ice Cream task.

What about Helene? I personally cannot stand her but didn't her team win when she was PM?

Her team won the on the photography task, when they hired the David Beckham lookalike.

Which one is Helene, I forget who she is. It seems from the edits, she is never seen as doing anything in any of the tasks. Of all the ones left, I would say the Leaders are -

Raef (Definitely)
Sara (Definitely)

Claire (Possibly, she can be dictorial and aggressive at times)
Lee (Possibly, as he has moments of stupidity)

All the rest are what I would class as followers, as I feel they aren't able to get a team to work for them.

And in one case (and we all know who) isn't prepared to work for whoever is his team leader unless she gives him a severe kicking beforehand.

Helene is the other Wakefield girl along with Claire - tall with long hair who bullied Lucinda about not being able to use a computer during the photography task, and the one who went and bought the cheap carpet with Raef last week.

By far the best team leaders in my opinion have been Raef and Lucinda. There was no fault in their project management.

With Claire and the ice cream task, there wasn't enough preparation. They didn't test their product as well as they should have done and not enough appointments were made with potential buyers. This could have cost SAS a lot of money in his company. It wasn't a deserving win I thought.

Lee sent his team in the right direction, but the team members he had were less mouthy than the other team which led to less disruption = better work!

Michael was good in my opinion, but he is a bit too open to suggestion as a manager and as a team member (e.g. listening to Jenny about environmental cards and also about bribing the staff at the sport shop.)

Alex wasn't that great as a project manager. He could have prevented a lot of problems if he had communicated a little better with his sub-teams in the fish task (esp. pricing).

Helene would upset a lot of people and also would spend masses of time and money on training individuals to get them competely comfortable with technology. She can't delegate.

Michael wasn't on Jenny's team when they did the environmental cards. He was team leader for the other side - the team who did the singles' card. It was Kevin (Matt Lucas) who listened to Jenny.

Yes, you're right, I retract my statement about environmental cards. But spending 4 hours trying to figure out where an apostrophe goes is also a crime against humanity!

LOL. I had to think before putting it in my reply.

How many of the tasks were really "won" by good leadership - rather than not "lost" as the other team/leader were more hopeless.

Here are my views as to whether the tasks were won or lost.

Task 1 - Fish - not sure - probably lost due to lack of preparation
Task 2 - Laundry - lost due to bad pricing for the hotel
Task 3 - Pub food - lost due to lack of planning/pricing
Task 4 - Photography - not sure - probably won due to better concept
Task 5 - Ice Cream - won from last minute sale - lucky as there had been little or no leadership earlier
Task 6 - Greeting cards - lost due to rubbish idea
Task 7 - Morocco - lost due to lack of planning

I reckon that makes 5 teams the winner by default rather then by skill.

Love to hear the view of others (nearly put others' views and then had a panic over the apostrophe).

Task 1 - The boys wasted a lot of time and didn't get to the market until lunch time so agreed lack of preparation and planning.

Task 2 lost to the better more organised and realistic team

Task 3 was anyones guess both poor but gals team probaly a tad more organised in the end and luckier

Task 4 - true better concept won the day but also Somon had to deal with a stroppy Claire and a lazy Alex

Task 5 - was anyones game, neither deserved to win really

Task 6 - JennyC and her mad enviromental was a loser straight off, the other team at least had a concept that might take off in the singles day

Task 7 - No planning lost it for Jennifer and also a egomanic Claire in the team with a laid back Alex!

I think Lucinda is clearly an excellent team leader, she seems to be the only one that has managed to get Claire acting like a team member rather than a saboteur.

Claire may be difficult but clearly when she's working for and with people she respects she just gets on with it.

Claire just realised that she had tried to ruin one task too many (for the PM) and Sir alun had sussed it, now she has to get on with it. She done well last night but overall I'm not that impressed.

They are all valid points...but surely the reasons those teams that lost did so because the other teams didn't suffer from poor planning, poor pricing, rubbish ideas etc - which is a sign of good management. If, for example, Raef had priced his laundry costs as poorly as the opposing PM (forgotten who) did on week two, perhaps Raef's team wouldn't have won - which suggests to me that, as well as the losing PM making poor decisions, Raef made the right ones.

That is a very good point, and that's why Lucinda didn't get fired when she was team leader in the ice cream task, she managed well but didn't have the sales team to deliver.

Claire's & Michael have been the only poorly managed wins so far I think.

Also really want to see Raef as team leader again, be interesting to see how he gets on without such a solid "second in command"

Tasks are lost by bad management more often than they are won by good management.

Photography (4) and Cards (6) were lost by the leader taking on too much. In Simon's case the leadership suffered because he was too busy taking photos to sort out the production problems. In Kevin's case he was too busy to prepare the pitch.

Morocco (7) was lost by Jennifer's lack of planning and attention to detail, in particular holding onto the list and not checking it.

Laundry (2) and Pub food (3) were lost by the team as a whole. Nobody on Jenny's team was able to come up with a good strategy for pricing or tracking the clothing (Shazia kinda did the latter but walked away from it without finishing). Everyone on Ian's team was spending so they over-spent on both food and marketing. A good leader could have controlled them and forced them in the right direction, but they were weak teams to need such control.

I think Lucinda is an indifferent manager. She lost the Ice Cream task (5) because she just let her team do what they wanted, they became complacent and didn't get enough sales. A similar approach won on the Wedding task (8) because she had a stronger team, with some good ideas from Claire and Raef, and Claire's tenacity for last-minute sales that beat her on Ice Cream won for her on Weddings.

A manager needs to keep an eye on things, spot when they are going wrong, and fix them. An example is Claire in the Fish task (1) counting up the takings mid-day, realising they weren't doing well enough and changing her approach. Another example was Michael in the Cards task (6) realising that 13th Feb was the wrong day for Singles and switching. These were tasks you could say were won by the leader doing something special, but it's rare.

I've just given both as examples of good management. For me Helene's is the best example of a poor manager who wins anyway. She should not have given Lucinda a computer job, and having done so should have reassigned her when it was clearly not working out. She won because Simon imploded.

I do agree that Claire was good in the fish task, but maintain that she was very badly organised in the ice cream task and won because she by being a tenacious sales person rather than being a good manager.

I'd totally forgotten about Helene winning the photo task despite being totally rubbish, I will add her to the list of crap ones that won.

I know that I should perhaps concede on Michael having some redeeming management feature, but I find him such an odious little twerp that I can't