The Apprentice 2: Why Stacy Lost

Stacy did, however, follow the ninth rule by thinking outside the box. She brought an idea for diversification to Wes. He blew it off. Why did the other team win? They diversified. Wes claimed the doggie outfits were too expensive. OK, so they were about $30. If they sold photos for $10 each, they only needed three to make up the cost of each outfit. And considering that people were paying the other team a dollar per minute for doggie massages, I don’t think ten bucks for a cute costume photo would have been too horribly out of line. At least with dressing them up in a funny costume, they dog owners would have gotten a photo out of it. Also, how much was the camera that they had already invested money in and weren’t really using? They could have at least tried to get some return on that investment.

But no. Wes wanted to stick with the doggie bath. He should have known that in order to win a challenge like this, thinking outside the box was a must. There is no such thing as a simple task on The Apprentice, but Wes was thinking small and Stacy could not convince him to think big.

Allow me to go off on a bit of a tangent here. Many people – Trump included – have blamed Stacy for failing to convince Wes that her ideas had merit. Maybe it was indeed the situation like I mentioned above, where she was just so annoying that nobody really wanted to listen to her. But I don’t think that can explain all of it. I think Wes was dead set on his idea and didn’t want to hear about anything else, even though it should have made sense to him. While it is true that some people do a poor job of selling their points, it is also true that some managers make up their minds and while they say they listen, they really don't. Just as we’ve all been in situations where we tune out annoying people, we have also all been in situations where our bosses have tuned us out or simply decided against us for reasons we cannot fathom. In this case, I suspect it was a little of both, but Stacy took all of the blame.

Getting back to our main points, the tenth rule is to use common sense. In general, I think Stacy did a pretty good job of this. Wes – not so much. Let’s go back on a tangent again to explain more of why I think Trump made the wrong decision this time around.

The team had been told that there was a “doggie rush hour” period that would provide them with the most traffic for business. Wes, the Project Manager, missed that time. Andy, who was also brought into the final decision Boardroom by Wes, lost the phone. Other team members made it seem like this was the biggest deal in the world. Yes, they had communication problems. But I think the team could still have split up and made arrangements to meet at a given time and place. We never saw Wes even consider the idea.

I'm not saying Stacy was great guns, and like I said earlier, she would not have won the Apprenticeship. But if we look specifically at this task, Stacy made suggestions that were shot down by Wes. She didn’t do much else, from what we saw, but then Wes apparently made a number of negative contributions. Zero might not be much, but it’s better than a negative.

If we look at past performance, remember that Trump was just last week wondering why Wes wasn't in the Boardroom, since he had been one of the pricing geniuses for the clothing line. Add that to his leading them right down the drain this time and he doesn’t look like a promising candidate either. I think Wes should have been given the boot.

But Wes managed to stick around while Stacy did not. And indeed there were plenty of reasons for firing her. Stacy failed to take leadership roles or assume any real responsibility. When she tried to contribute, she did so in a way that rubbed many of her compatriots the wrong way, thus causing her to be labeled as an annoyance and ignored. She showed some good qualities, but when it really mattered she didn’t step up. Stacy did a good job of arguing her points in the Boardroom, but her own actions – specifically her lack of working hard at the dog wash – worked against her. Meanwhile, she didn’t have any good leadership activities in the past challenges that she could really point to in order to support her cause. That is why Stacy lost.

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David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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