The Apprentice: Los Angeles, Episode 6 Performance Reviews

Again, Surya over-managed what is a simple project. Yes, it was smart of him to try and force this group of free-thinkers into smaller, more manageable and focused segments. But he needs to look around the room and see the people he’s working with. Except for Nicole, none of the others are business majors. His unwavering adherence to his strict methodology is falling on deaf and unappreciative ears.

Also, it’s counter-productive, time-wise, to force the ideas to be represented when not in his sacred format. For example, why is Surya stressing “strategy” over “execution?” If he’s that anal about it, he should have let Frank get his whole thought out, then fed it back to him in the structure he wants. This would indicate to Frank what his expectations are, while still meeting his own needs. Most importantly, it doesn’t stifle Frank’s creativity. But the real answer is, Surya needs to massively increase his flexibility on these one-day projects.

Despite his self-professed selling skills, Surya is no one-on-one salesman. He approached people who were obviously going about their own business and not welcoming his diversion. But the bigger point is that it was completely inappropriate of him to strike out on his own and attempt to gather customers when the rest of his team was unaware of his location. His place is at the kiosk – all day – and if there’s running around to do, that task needs to be assigned.

Normally there isn’t anything to comment about on the reward, yet here is a second item for this week. At the dinner, the banter between Frank and Surya was not the lighthearted Frank/Tim-in-the-honey-factory banter of last week. This was confrontational and personal. If Surya thinks he has gained any respect out of this win from his team, he’s quite mistaken. This is further confirmed by a cameo opinion from James, wherein he states that Surya was lucky to be on a team where the others stepped up.

In the Kinetic Boardroom, Surya was not shown as contributing much more insight than Aaron did. However, in the Yahoo clips, he shows slightly more presence. He asked Aimee what she would have done differently, had she been aware of the demographics of her audience, which gave Aimee the opportunity to show how she might have adapted.

However, Surya didn’t make much of an effort to deflect attention from Aimee after she helped him so greatly last week. In fact, when alone with The Donald and Don Junior, he said that the communication problems Aimee suffered “may have been indicative of her style that they didn’t feel comfortable telling her.” Ouch!

I still think it’s looking pretty gloomy for Surya’s long-term stay in the game, but Trump called this “a great win” and for Surya, that’s all he needed to hear. Mind you, the difference was only ten percent, but, whatever. Nonetheless, his rating only increases marginally, to NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.

Team Kinetic:

We’re led to believe that Kinetic lost because of a language barrier with the large Hispanic population in their mall. It certainly was a major factor, but I think Aimee was only marginally better than last week as a PM, and that’s not good enough.

There were other Kinetic people beside Aimee who didn’t seem to notice the ethnic makeup of the clientele either, or at least, not soon enough. For example, all the signs were in English. By the time Heidi and Angela figured the twist out, the task was well underway. Were Muna and Kristine as unobservant as Aimee, or merely as silent as Derek? Certainly not a soul among them suggested hiring interpreters to expedite the bottlenecked computer process. It’s too bad Aimee never brought these points out in the Boardroom to show she was indeed not getting the level of support she deserved. It seems safe to say that the blame needs to be shared, so no one on this team is getting great ratings this week.

I also thought it was a bad moment for all of Kinetic when, before having Don reveal the results, Trump asked for opinions of Aimee’s performance as a leader and no one responded. In fact, Trump prompted them again, and still there was no reply. Trump wants his people to have opinions and not to be afraid to express them.

Angela: In the Yahoo clips, Heidi tells us, “Angela was told she was working on marketing, but at some point that went away, and she was only working on signs.” Angela herself said she was “confused” by Aimee’s leadership. Certainly this was a matter to discuss with Aimee, not Heidi.

While walking the mall with Heidi trying to drum up business, she seemed to get the clue first that there was a language barrier. However, some of the people she approached were a waste of time, such as the only guy working at a grill. As if he was going to leave his job unmanned to submit a sweepstakes entry! Instead, they should have asked to post a flyer beside his register. Know your audience, that’s the primary message this week!

Despite getting a first-hand taste of the language barrier, Angela never had an idea about getting some Spanish signs posted. This is the kind of action I’m still waiting to see from Angela.

Angela spoke well in the Boardroom when she told Trump about Aimee’s problems delegating and then following up. In fact, Trump even commented positively on how Angela spoke in the final Boardroom when Angela wasn’t even present.

I still feel the need to give Angela a NEEDS IMPROVEMENT rating. She seems to be impressing Trump, but except for trading on her celebrity (once), she hasn’t yet shown a major business behavior that’s materially influenced results.

Derek: Derek is an enigma this week. He stepped up and used his ability to speak some amount of Spanish to help out those trying to enter the sweepstakes who didn’t speak English.