The Apprentice 2: Why Chris Lost

What about playing well with others, the seventh rule? Well, Chris had always been something of an annoyance, to players and viewers alike. But he never seemed to rise to the level that people were gunning for him due to that specific reason.

Eighth is the admonition to focus on the long-term. Let me state for the record that I think Chris could have made it through this firing. If he had focused on the long-term point of this competition, Chris would have assigned tasks and busted his butt to get things moving. Then, even if his team had still lost, he could have had a strategy to stick around – perhaps by blaming those in charge of advertising, for example. Instead, he became so overwhelmed with the short-term goal of winning this particular challenge that he didn’t focus on the game overall.

The ninth rule says to think outside the box. The immediate thought of turning the storefront into a consignment space was a good one – after all, you don’t want to have to buy and sell and create an inventory for a single day. But beyond that, I’m not sure there was any thought in this team. Handing out flyers at train stations? Dumb idea, as evidenced by the couple scenes of trashed flyers. There was absolutely no bang for their buck. Even if Chris didn’t know about theknot.com in particular, he should have known there had to be a better way to reach a specific audience. (For example, if you wanted to reach an audience of reality TV viewers, you would advertise with RealityNewsOnline.) But Chris apparently never even thought of that, nor did he encourage the rest of his team to think about ways to get people in, because he never assigned anybody to that specific task.

Finally, we get to a rule that Chris particularly blew – using common sense. Let’s see how many different ways Chris messed up here.

Chris complained in the Boardroom that the other team had Sandy. Carolyn correctly pointed out that Chris simply had to get a consultant of their own to even the score – which, in fact, they ended up doing! That consultant ended up helping them almost out of chance, though; Chris did not initially make the effort to actually get somebody knowledgeable to help. He doubled his lack of common sense by complaining about it in the Boardroom.

Chris needed to spark his team into action. Instead, he snuffed any fire they might have had. Common sense would dictate that giving up is not the way to lead a team to a win.

Chris cold-called bridal stores and expected them to agree with his idea for a salon showing the next day when he had no plan on what to tell them. It’s no wonder he faced hang-up after hang-up. Small business owners have better things to do than entertain bizarre ideas without any plan behind them.

Flyers at Penn Station and Union Station? ‘Nuff said.

We could go on, but we’ve made the point – Chris failed to use even a shred of common sense here.

Chris failed in so many different ways, it’s something of a wonder that Trump didn’t once again forego the final choice before firing, the way he did with Elizabeth. But really, all of them point back to one issue, or in our case, Issue #1. Trump said it when he fired Chris and I think it’s rather obvious. Chris didn’t lose because he had to create a bridal salon while up against an opponent who does that for a living, because Chris barely made the effort. Chris was simply an incredibly poor leader. That is why Chris lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other Apprentice 2 Episode 10 articles:

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

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