I just finished watching The Apprentice Season 6: Los Angeles twelfth episode. Wow!
The task for this week was for each of the three teams to create and present a market campaign for Trump International Hotel & Towers Las Vegas. At the beginning of the show, Trump had the remaining members all reside in the palace and align themselves into three teams.
The first team to present James and Stefani created a strong presentation, one that Trump himself liked immediately. Unless the other two teams both had strong presentations, James and Stefani were safe. As I watched James and Stefani prepare their presentation, I thought they worked well together and were focused.
The next team was Kristine and Nicole. Their presentation floundered throughout. The only redeeming feature of their presentation was their brochure, which Trump liked. That said, the brochure had the wrong phone number, an unforgivable mistake in Trump's mind. As I watched this pair assemble their presentation, I was impressed by Kristine. She was focused on the task and performed almost all the work. Unfortunately for her, she was responsible for the incorrect phone number. Nicole performed badly throughout the entire task. She did not bother to understand fully the task, did not ask pertinent questions, and slept throughout a majority of the work. While physically she might have been present, she was definitely absent mentally.
The last team was Frank and Heidi. Their presentation was even worse than the prior group's. Not only was their presentation worse, but so was their brochure. It was simply a terrible performance through and through. While I am not sure that Frank is a potential well rounded executive, I appreciate his contribution more and more each week. In this assignment, he took his task of creating the video and performed to the best of his ability. His partner Heidi, like Nicole, was missing in action. She was unfocused and unable to deliver her part of creating the narrative for the presentation as well as the brochure.
The original plan was to fire the worst team. But in this episode, there were two teams that vied for the last place. Trump decided, correctly, to fire the weakest link from the two worst teams. Frank and Heidi duked it out with Frank giving a spirited defense of his position and Heidi contradicting herself several times. I am surprised that it took Trump as long as it did to see that Heidi did not perform. Once Heidi had been fired, Trump then turned to Kristine and summarily fired her.
I believe that Kristine's firing was wrong. As unforgivable as having the incorrect phone number, not being mentally there and participating is even worse. A potential customer might try calling information or something else after having reached the wrong number. A customer should not have to do that. But based upon Nicole's work, a customer would not even be interested in calling. At least with Kristine's work, there was a hint of a presentation along with a brochure. As far as the audience could tell, Nicole contributed nothing of value to the end result. Or put differently, at least with Kristine's effort, there was a chance. With that said, I believe Trump made the wrong decision to fire Kristine.
Not only was Kristine the wrong person to fire for this specific task, but also she was one of the stronger remaining candidates. While she can be a bit condescending toward her teammates at times, she delivers.
The remaining candidates are Stefani, Nicole, Frank, and James. If I were to rank them now, I would say Nicole is the weakest and James is the strongest. Any one of the four, however, still has the ability and potential to walk away with the prize of being the Next Apprentice.
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