That really depends on what the technician was doing.

Was he retraining Lucinda or was he sorting out a problem?

If it was the former, then, yes, Helene should have made sure that someone else was involved.

If it was just sorting out some bug then there would be no point getting anyone to watch as they would not be able to perform the underlying task.

Again, I'm afraid that there is simply not enough information to decide (I don't believe Nick is so technically adept that he could make a determination one way or another from the sidelines).

If you want to bash Helene, go ahead and believe that the actual circumstances were such that she had a clear good decision which she failed to take.

Personally, from what we saw, I don't believe that a technician spending a few minutes sorting out a problem would be sufficient time to train someone else in the task from scratch.


One other thing occurs:

If Lucinda was so useless that she could not do the job either before or after the technician assisted, and no one else could do the job, how the hell did that team make enough money to win the task?

That again says to me that the problem was an intermittent bug which prevented Lucinda working from time to time and thus switching people around would have in no way ameliorated the problem. In fact, it would probably have exacerbated it!

Again this leads us to the problem that Helene accused Lucinda of being incompetent in the boadroom rather than saying that they were unlucky and they had a bug!!! Helene used the fact that the technician came for the second time against Lucinda. At that point SAS asked her why she didn't help and she replied saying that her knowledgebase was far behind Lucinda. Again Nick interrupted saying what the technician told him about the job being simple and asked Helene why she didn't reshuffle the team. If you watch this boardroom again, you will kow where I am coming from.

Helene probably didn't know what the problem was but whose fault that was?!!!!!!!!!! It was clear that only Lucinda attended with the technician the second time and the least Helene could have done is understand what the problem was.

I would have given Lucinda sales. Helene already had the same number of sales people as the other team. Sales are critical to the overall results. However, all the techncal jobs were more critical than sales and this is not using hindsight: No-product = no sales.

Helene already had Lee, Jenny M, and Lindi and they were all great salespeople. Lucinda would have affected the sales but her incompetence in sales had less effect on the overall result because she was an extra player. If they lost on sales, then one of those who claim to be good at sales or Lucinda herself would have been fired and it happened many times in the 4 series. SAS doesn't forgive candidates for their inability to sell easily.

Alternatively, like Simon, she should have sent at least 3 people to actually do the training. I would have taken one of the sales team to the training to see the products he/she wa going to sell and take the training. There was certainly no need for Lee, Kevin, Jenny M, and Lindi to all go and choose the celebrity look alike.

There is also another point regarding the pricing/ costing Helene was apparently working on while the others were training. Like the other team did, I thought that those who actually took the training should determine the pricing. The product can be very difficult to produce, it can take so much time because her team members aren't experts. These are all important factors that actually contribute to the cost. I don't know why she missed this. She can't actually do her job affectively unless she see for herself the difficulty and the time involved in making the product. She can't even choose a product unless she makes sure that her team was able to produce it and this gives her enough time to be trained herself.

Where Linda, Jenny, Lee and Kevin stood around doing nothing for that long? That could have been selective editng- just like when Alex got a call in the car task "60 seconds before the end" in which he managed to run half way across London.

They might not have been stood around for ages, so it might not have been worth it to reshuffle the teams

They had to stop selling because of the technical problems not because of lack of customers and their inability to sell. One of the customers even asked them why they are taking more photos despite having technical difficulties (unseen footage in the BBC). This is when Lee decided to stop selling despite potentially having many customers.

Again, I'm afraid you're using 20-20 hindsight and, obviously, coming up with a better plan.

The simple facts are that the task that Lucinda was given was supposed to be so easy that failure was not even an issue.

Whether Lucy failed through pure incompetence or faulty equipment, we'll never know (although the fact that they produced enough articles to win the task when no one else was able to operate the equipment very clearly points to an intermittent fault).

There has to be a stage where you just assume an intelligent adult will be able to perform a task that is explained to them without considering backup plans.

The reason I say all these alternate management ideas rely on hindsight is that I do not believe for one single moment that if the problem had never arisen anyone would have said that the management was bad because there was no backup.

Once the problem occurs it's very easy for all the armchair management consultants to devise strategies that they would have followed.

No I am not using hindsight. As I explained there were many possibilities and I discussed all of them indepth before. We can't ignore that Helene didn't know if the technical job was easy or not because Helene took the decision to put Lucinda on the job regardless of the difficulty of the job. Taking this risk, she should have done at least attended the training especially that the difficulty and the time involved in making the products is an essential factor in her job of costing/pricing.

Is it a pure coincidence that Helene failed to adapt and move her team around when she managed the wedding task for the second time?!!

We are clearly not going to agree over this. All the arguments are there for the readers to make up their minds. However, we can agree that Helene behaved badly both during the task and in the boadroom.

Whhoooaaaaaa.

Hold on a second.

Are you now saying that you are privey to all the converstaions and briefings that the teams were given before starting the tasks?

I really fail to understand how you can otherwise have any knowledge of what Helene had been told about how simple the task she gave Lucind was.

You are using hindsight to 'know' that the task was going to cause problems.



Once again, I'm afraid, you are using hindsight to see that there was a risk. Evidently Helene, on the information she had been given (and without your benefit of perfect hindsight), didn't.


Well, it wasn't perfect but all the longer lasting candidates (except perhaps Raef) found the pressure got to them at some stage. I'm not really sure why you're dragging that up again now when we were discussing the training issue.

We saw Lucinda express her concerns before allocating the task, and at the training place after seeing the equipment and before doing the training. In both cases Helene didn't reply saying it is a simpe job. Why should Helene assume that the training was so simple that someone who declared clearly that she is technically useless would be the perfect one for the job?!!


If you think that delegating the computer job to Lucinda who said that her history indicates that she would be incompetent doing it is wrong only in hindsight then you're right. Lucinda raised her concerns in the training place. Don't you think that Helene should have taken the training as well given that Lucinda wasn't entirely comfortable doing it and raised her concerns again even after seeing the equipment?!!!


I don't recall anyone lying about others in the boadroom except Alex, Jenny C, Michael, and apparently Helene.

I keep coming back to this point because we have to establish if Helene was under pressure or not. If we agree that she was under such pressure in an early task, then it is most likely that she didn't know how to deal with the situation correctly and reshuffling the team didn't occur to her. The pressure has clearly affected her behaviour.

We know that she lied regarding Lucinda not telling her about her incompetence in the job. But we still have to establish that if Helene lied regarding the technical failure being Lucinda's responsibility (Lucinda's incompetence as Helene said).

As I said before, if the job was so simple then reshuffling the team from SAS's and Nick's point of view was the solution. If the job was complicated, then Lucinda should not have been allocated the job in the first place. If the training was simple but the problem occured was not Lucinda's fault, then Helene should have said that in the boadroom instead of blaming Lucinda.

I think that Helene didn't even understand the nature of the problem because she didn't attend with Lucinda when the technician came despite doing nothing at the time (In fact most of the team was doing nothing at the time because the production failed). Lucinda wasn't able to assess the problem either because she is technically useless. Therefore, Lucinda didn't defend herself in the boadroom saying that the problem was not her fault and her only defence was that she told Helene beforehand about her incapability of doing the job.

You forgot Ian....

Thanks Muttley .

However, Ian insisted in his subsequent interviews that Kevin wasn't the one who gathered the team. Ian said in the boardroom "Kevin didn't gather the team no" and he was about to say something but he wasn't given the chance.

I think he was just misunderstood at that point.

well, I have to say, having watched the episode back the other week it very much seemed as though Kevin did...he even was shown calling people to gather around him, so unless Ian was the victim of very unfortunate editing I tend to think he was (and still is) telling pork pies on that one.....

At no point we see kevin gathering the team. The voiceover said "As the pub fills up, the team goes out for a pep talk", No mention of Kevin calling the team.

Here is Ian's interview and I think he told the truth.

Ian said in the boadroom "kevin didn't get the team together no. The team all agreed .." and he wasn't given the chance to complete his sentence. Kevin did give the talk but he didn't gather the team together. There was a misunderstanding.

Fair enough, although I'm sure some footage exists somewhere that shows Kevin calling them together...

All I can see from the show is that Ian was clearly completely opposed to the meeting as he interrupts Kevin every two seconds throughout his peep talk. I'm sorry but in the absence of more substantial evidence I think I'm more liable to go along with Kevin on this one. Either way they are both a couple of tools and probably not worth spending our time on....

I don't like Ian AT ALL but I thought labelling him a liar over this minor incident was a bit harsh. I listened carefully to what he said in the boadroom. Ian never denied that kevin gave the pep talk but he denied that Kevin gathered the team together which was true. To be fair to Ian, no one else looked very impressed with Kevin's pep talk. It was particularly uncomfortable for Ian because Kevin was deliberately taking over. Seeing Kevin's performance in the final, he likes to take over whether it is necessary or not.

Simply because this equipment is something that is designed for the non-technical to handle.

In the same way that a video recorder is.

She was supposed to be doing something that anyone should be able to do, and she is a very intelligent, very highly paid business woman.

There is no reason in the world why Helene should assume that 'non-technica'l equates to 'utterly useless if a computer is involved'.

Indeed, I don't think Lucy was that useless. I suspect it was an equipment/software glich - otherwise, how did they make any money since no one else could operate the machinery (a point you continually ignore).



Is that what she said?

She actually said she would be incompetant?

Was that before or after she had seen the equipment demonstrated?


Again, with perfect hindsight, yes.

Without I would need to know just how the ease of use of the equipment was represented to her.

Without knowing that we have hindsight and hindsight alone to rely upon.

(For example, I do not notice you suggesting that she should have doubled up Raef's training and yet, without hindsight how do we know that he would be competant to do it. He could have just been very overconfident.)


STRAW MAN ALERT

I didn't say they'd all lied in the boardroom.

I said they found the pressure got to them at some stage.




Yes, you do, and I don't know why.

We were discussing the computer training, not general stress levels which I brought up en passant, not with the intent to stir up that particular hornet's nest again.

That's certainly true....I hear his still waiting by his phone for SAS to realize that he is, in fact, the true winner of the show...

Well I think I will leave it there. As usual you returned to your old ways - resorting to personal insults and accusing every one who puts an argument against Helene's decisions and behaviour of trying to twist facts and using hindsight. I put a good argument and the readers of this thread can make up their minds.

If Lucinda was so useless, and given that no one else could operate the equipment, how did they make enough money to win the task?

You seem to be working on the assumption that for the whole of the time they should have been operating they were stalled.

This is evidently not the case.

Lucinda must have got quite a bit out of the equipment.

Given she was the only one who had had the necessary initial training there wasn't much point in trying to get others involved in a task for which they were no qualified. Too many cooks spoil the broth!

See my last post.

1) I didn't insult you

2) In the post you are replying to I did not accuse anyone of twisting the truth.

3) Yes, you put up an argument - it's a pity you had to spoil it by attempting a straw man diversion.

I'm sure people will make up their own minds.

OK, I realise that your argument has now run out of steam and you are using one of the many exit strategies that exist for internet debaters in that situation.

I think the readers can also make up their minds about your posts.

I simply don't want to waste my time further.

Don't do youself down.

I'm sure they'll make up their minds about yours as well.