The Apprentice 2: Why Ivana Lost

The sixth rule emerges somewhat from what I just mentioned. By agreeing with Kevin ahead of time that they would not go after one another, she showed her hand. He had to know at that point that he was pretty safe, since Ivana was the one who took off her skirt! Since she had promised not to attack him, that left him sitting in a good position where he could afford to agree with her. Sure, Trump has done some unpredictable things, but it’s a good bet that he didn’t want a stripper running one of his companies. Ivana showed Kevin all her cards and he was able to sit back and let the dealer take care of the rest.

The seventh rule is to play well with others, but stay professional. In this case, the “stay professional” part refers to how a player should act with others, so we won’t address the skirt thing again here (though we will hit it a couple more times, below).

But we will address how Ivana dealt with the other players. The most obvious problem came with Jen. Several times, Ivana talked about Jen being a “fembot” or having nothing behind the boobs. Honestly, I agree with Ivana on these things, but it became an obsession for her.

She could not believe that Ivana kept on slipping out of the noose. She could not believe that Jen was given credit for Ivana’s idea on the Levi’s challenge. She could not believe that she was about to get fired while Jen would make it into the Final Four. All of these things would be fine, if she hadn’t shown them. It came across as jealousy, and it wasn’t pretty.

You know how I said we’d get back to the skirt issue? Here we are, at the eighth rule: focus on the long-term. Largely because of Ivana’s obsession with Jen, she lost sight of the goal – to get a job with Donald Trump. Instead, her goal became to beat Jen, no matter what the cost.

Quoting from the rule, “Short-term thinking may win you individual challenges. But winning the challenges may not mean you win the show.” In Ivana’s case, she didn’t even win the challenge! But she tried a desperate measure to make more money than Jen (and, sort of incidentally, Sandy), not paying any attention to the fact that it would certainly hurt her in the long run. Indeed, Kevin even said (as we saw in the Yahoo Extras) that there could be “long-term implications” for the skirt incident. I’m glad somebody thought of that!

The ninth rule is to think outside the box, but not too far. Sandy and Jen thought outside the box by getting additional help from the M&M van, by dressing alike to attract attention, and by selling the bar at an exorbitant price to make up for having fewer sales people and likely fewer bars to sell (which they were right about). Ivana thought strictly inside the box at first, simply trying to sell bars to people on the streets. Then, however, she took the “too far” route with the whole skirt incident.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the tenth rule says to use common sense. Yes, you already know where I’m going with this – the skirt. ‘Nuff said on that. Of course, it also defied common sense that Ivana would try to get people who weren’t even in the Boardroom fired.

Overall, Ivana did a lot more wrong than she did right. She had a few good ideas and sometimes was a solid performer. But other times, she was out in left field, even as a worker. Plus, Ivana was a poor leader, as evidenced by both her behavior and her record. This alone might have caused her to lose when going up against two players with proven winning records. But beyond that, Ivana failed to keep her eye on the prize – instead being too worried about keeping her eye on Jen. This led her to make the horrible decision of taking off her skirt for $20.

Trump probably wasn’t going to keep a player with a record like Ivana’s anyway. But she made sure of it by her behavior both in the task and in the Boardroom. That is why Ivana lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the other Apprentice 2 Episode 13 articles:

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

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