The Apprentice 5 Weekly Performance Review, The Finale

In this, the last of a series of articles about The Apprentice 5 I will focus on the business actions of each player and give a brief “performance review” for each applicant.

Let me begin with a comment about the finale itself. Wow, what an improvement the last couple of finales have been over the first couple! Whoever is responsible gets a VERY GOOD rating.

The Task:

The final tasks of this season, as usual, involve running charity events with overt corporate sponsors. Both have multiple bosses to please, many tasks to complete and never enough time to complete them. Successful candidates need to show they can plan a good project but accommodate the inevitable changes. Surrounding yourself with good people is often a key factor.

It turns out that there since there was so little discussion of the final tasks, they were obviously no factor in the final decision.

Gold Rush:

The focus on Gold Rush was on Lee this week, more than his trusty minions Lenny, Pepi, and Roxanne.

Lee: Lee seemed to come up with a really good idea, auctioning off the game-worn jerseys of the celebrities. Too bad we never saw if this actually happened.

Why Lee ever thought that Lenny could perform the task of greeting the celebrities is beyond me. Sure enough, he blew it and a competent temp had to be pressed into service to fulfill those duties. This showed Lee did not properly allocate his human resources.

It was good that Lee met with Firefighters rep Christine to present the opening script and list of events. However, she was able to easily poke multiple holes in it and it became readily apparent his plan was severely lacking.

Jaime Pressley spent a lot of this show drifting aimlessly about the venue. Her time was badly mishandled throughout the event.

It’s a well-documented fact that Trump places great importance on being greeted by the Project Manager when he arrives at these final events. The fact that NO ONE greeted Trump’s arrival was a really, really bad move on Lee’s part. The Donald’s comment was, “They never learn.”

I believe ALL the V.I.P.’s ought to be properly greeted by the PM. In the Yahoo clips we saw Sean took time out to sip champagne with all his execs. What was Lee doing in those few minutes that was more important? That, folks, was bad time management!

In another example of weak time management, Lee had to hustle everyone out of the pre-game party room to get the game started on time. This gave the impression they were disorganized, plus it abbreviated bidding in the silent auction, and therefore, income.

Running an auction in an arena isn’t easy, and Lee did a good job soliciting bids and making sure everyone who bid was heard. This was the most important moment of his event and he was front and center, leading the way.

At the end of the day, Lee’s team was able to pull off their event with just a few warts and the customer (Lys) expressed her satisfaction.

In the live boardroom Lee did pretty well, primarily focusing on his own strengths rather than Sean’s weaknesses. However, his attempts to belittle the value of nine years of related business experience was very ill conceived. Not conceding that experience IS important made him appear less business savvy.

That point is important to me, it shows his business immaturity. Coupled with his odd team choices, the minor problems with his event and his loss as a PM in an earlier week, Lee’s rating is VERY SATISFACTORY. That’s not so bad, but it falls short of what is required to be the Apprentice.

Lenny: Ahh, Lenny. Right off the bat Lenny showed he was a detriment to this team when he confused Jamie Foxx and Michael J. Fox in front of the sponsor, Lys. If you don’t have your facts straight and follow it up with a casual, “Well, I don’t know,” you have undermined the credibility of your whole operation.

Despite it being his assigned task, Lenny missed greeting Jaime Pressley. His decision not to answer his cell phone to learn of arriving celebrities was pathetic.

Throughout the show, Lenny’s flippant style implied irreverence and he seemed to irritate teammates, sponsors and celebrities at every opportunity. For example, his behavior in the meeting with Lys had a negative impact on team credibility. There’s a time for humor and a time to play it straight – this was most definitely the latter. On the Yahoo clips we further saw him arguing needlessly with Roxanne.

Lenny’s performance in the locker room was sad. Guessing sizes based on preconceptions like goalies having small heads and everyone being size medium, that was ridiculous. Perhaps if he knew who these people were, it might have helped. Better, maybe he didn’t have the information about sizes, but he didn’t check if it was available elsewhere.

Additionally, when Pepi noticed that some players had less equipment, he shrugged it off instead of having a warning bell go off in his head. There were a lot of famous people out there without full protective equipment on, and had someone been seriously hurt, the money made auctioning the cars wouldn’t even pay the resulting legal fees.

The only possible rating for Lenny is UNACCEPTABLE. He was an anchor to Lee from team selection to the insulting of celebrities.