The Apprentice: Los Angeles, Episode 6 Performance Reviews

But let’s get to the big one. Derek asked a direct question of their mall rep about the demographics, yet did not share this key information with his PM or the rest of team. Unforgivable. No matter how obvious it was to him, I don’t buy it that Aimee should have picked up on the nature of their audience by wandering around the mall. Her place is at the kiosk. More on this later.

In the Boardroom he tried a little too vigorously to push Aimee under the bus by trying to give opinion on a conversation between Aimee and Jenn that occurred when he was not present. What’s worse, he got called out for it.

The Priceline execs gave a rave review of Derek to Trump, which is good. However, in the Boardroom, Don seized upon Derek’s not sharing key demographic information. In fact, he called it, “really dumb.” Derek has to take his full share of the blame for this loss and he receives a NEEDS IMPROVEMENT rating as a result.

Heidi: I saw Heidi was active but rarely successful in getting people to participate in the sweepstakes.

Heidi said that it wasn’t necessary to post the contest rules, just to have them lying about on the table. I’m no lawyer, but I would suggest that posting the sweepstake rules is the proper thing to do. Mind you, I’m guessing the rules were only available in English!

Her best moments came in the Boardroom. She gave an intelligent breakdown of Aimee’s faults as a PM, mentioning that she’s not good at the big picture and this may have led to problems with communications between groups.

It got even better for Heidi when a couple of teammates said she was the better PM. “Better than Aimee,” not so hard… but all Trump heard was “better,” and we know how important his preconceived notions are in this process.

Weighing these pluses and minuses, I’ll serve up a SATISFACTORY rating for Heidi.

Jenn: Jenn had the task of designing the booth and was also responsible for the outfits they all wore. She did very well here with the tropical theme, even if there was a plastic pink octopus hiding in the rafters.

However, Jenn’s defining moment this week is that she was along with Derek and also heard the indicator that there may be a language barrier. Not speaking Spanish herself, she should have more readily seen that as a potential problem.

At this point, I’m about ready to say that Jenn has to take some of the blame for this loss as well and it’s a NEEDS IMPROVEMENT for her as well.

But here’s when it all gets fuzzy. An “uncut” scene on Yahoo of the final Boardroom shows Jenn suddenly remembering that she DID pass the information about the demographic onto the marketing team. Now, apparently that meant those doing the signage (Angela?), but I can’t put names to the rest of the members of the marketing group. Myself, I was amazed that this statement went unexplored by the Trumps in the Boardroom!

Since this information was not proffered earlier in front of those who could confirm or refute it, I think I need to take this with a grain of salt. Had it had come out earlier it may well have changed Aimee’s decision about who to bring back with her, perhaps even sparing Jenn the danger of the final boardroom.

I’m not sure if I’m buying Jenn’s memory burst. It’s certainly incredibly important information to have gotten lost to everyone until the eleventh hour. If she’s wrong, I’d be I’m tempted to lower her rating to UNSATISFACTORY (or probably, UNACCEPTABLE) for blatantly losing contact with the truth. But if she’s right, I’d rate her a little higher, probably SATISFACTORY and lower ratings for those marketing folk who apparently sat on the information themselves. I suspect we’ll never know.

Kristine: When tasks were being assigned in the bus as they first drove to the mall, Kristine raised the points that some people were being misallocated, either double-booked like Muna or underutilized like herself. This is good for Kristine and I’m glad she spoke up. I think the above scene was included to show Aimee as a confused PM, misallocating her resources yet again. However, so soon after the project has begun it is unreasonable to expect Aimee to accurately plot every task. I mean, they hadn’t even seen the mall yet!

But Kristine couldn’t let it go, and she reiterated her concerns in a later cameo. I think she has a nasty surprise coming when it’s her turn to lead. Other than that, I don’t have much for Kristine this week, so her rating is ALMOST SATISFACTORY.

Muna: Muna was assigned two tasks, initially – monitoring of timelines, and assisting with the marketing. My first thought was, shouldn’t the PM be developing the timelines? However, Muna complained that these tasks couldn’t co-exist. I put forward that timelines is not a full-time job in this project, so what time she had left was to be diverted to helping Angela. But it became a moot point, as she ended up using her language skills full-time.

Muna knew that she was most effective helping the Spanish-speaking clients work the computers. I give her credit for showing the initiative to dissuade Aimee from shifting her to a less critical task. Alas, I fear some of the sandbaggers on this team might have just done what Aimee asked, then held it against her in the Boardroom.

Muna’s rating is GOOD for using her language skills to try and save a bad situation, and for knowing how best she ought to be deployed.

Aimee: Aimee got off to a good start this week, going directly to the mall to scout out the location. Further, on the way she began assigning areas of responsibility to her team. Excellent!

Obviously, before they even arrive at the mall she can’t have every detail set in her mind and I think the criticism she received from her team was unwarranted. In the limited, non-real-world timeframes available to the applicants in this series, assigning general areas of responsibility and then adjusting as the project develops is the best a PM can do.