The Apprentice 3: Why Todd Lost

The fifth rule says to play well with others, but stay professional. Todd mostly followed this one, though mostly that’s because he didn’t seem to actually interact too much with the others on his team (see the part about staying cool, above). So let’s move on.

Sixth is focusing on the long-term. Frankly, I’m not sure what Todd was focused on. He seemed to spend a lot of time at that table in Burger King, but it was never really clear what he was doing. He wasn’t working on marketing, because Danny and Stephanie were doing that. He wasn’t learning about the operation of the restaurant. So he was, um, well… certainly not thinking about his strategy in the game. Because if he had been, he would have known that playing the blame-game in this situation was simply not going to work.

The seventh rule is to think outside the box, but not too far. Since Todd didn’t seem to really do much thinking at all – rather, he delegated that away, like pretty much everything else – I believe we can safely say he failed here.

Does that mean Todd was one-dimensional, as the eighth rule admonishes players not to be? If we consider that one dimension to be management, then yes, the was one-dimensional. But considering how poorly he did at that, Todd might have actually been zero-dimensional. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, we see that Todd stepped back and delegated, delegated, delegated. That can work if the team leader provides an overall vision or focus. However, Todd didn’t even do that.

Finally, we have the rule that says to use common sense. Do I even need to point out how Todd failed here? Well, yes, of course I do – that’s the whole point of this article! The question is where to begin. Let’s make a list of just the high points:

• Todd assigned the incredibly important task of marketing to two people who would be completely off-site.
• Todd failed to follow up with them enough to even know what they were planning as far as the sidewalk campaign (and whatever else he didn’t know about).
• Todd did not oversee the all-important point-of-sale arrangements, but instead also assigned that incredibly important piece to somebody else.
• Todd failed to learn how to work in the store himself, so when there was a rush, he was completely and utterly useless.

I could go on, but those were the major four. The main point here is that delegation is all well and good, but you’re not going to be able to go into the Boardroom and simply say, “Oh, he was in charge of that, so I bear no responsibility.” Well, okay, you can go in and say that, but you’ll be taking the separate elevator afterwards.

Sometimes, the reasons for Trump’s firings are not immediately obvious. This time, however, I saw that Todd was going to take the first fall from miles away. It’s nice to get a softball once in a while.

Todd blew almost every rule in the book. He failed to use common sense and then tried to build a coalition to blow a smokescreen. But most importantly, Todd was an incredibly poor leader. He delegated too much and did too little, then tried to blame others. Trump wasn’t buying it. That is why Todd lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other Apprentice 3 articles:

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

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