I’ve been a fan of the Donald and his TV show The Celebrity Apprentice for a long time now. Which doesn’t mean that I always think he makes the right decision or that you really learn a ton about business, but sometimes you do learn a lot about business and last night was one of those episodes.
First, I don’t think Bret Michaels should have been fired, but this being reality TV and nothing about reality TV being real, I wasn’t surprised. And, having taken numerous creative writing classes at the University of Iowa and University of Washington, I know a thing or two about foreshadowing and the narrative arc. So I can’t say I was surprised.
As a businessman, I have to say that Brandy Roderick was a terrible PM. She didn’t really have control over her team. She didn’t give them a clearly defined scope. And, her ability to communicate with her team was terrible.
Having stated that, here are 5 lessons you can learn and use from last night’s season premier:
1. You need clearly defined goals: I think both Brandy and Trace were guilty of this. They didn’t really set goals for their team, instead just setting out to raise a lot of cash. In the case of Trace, he got a huge $100,000 check from T. Boone Pickens, so it worked out because his team raised over $400,000. In Brandy’s case, it failed miserably. She had no idea where her money came from, who was raising it, who was responsible for what and she had no controls.
2. Measuring your goals is important: This falls on Brandy again because it became a big story line, but you have to be able to measure what you need to measure. Brandy had no idea how many meatballs they were going to make. She had false numbers on her fundraising. Everything that could have been measured or should have been measured wasn’t. This led to a lot of trouble.
3. Being a good manager means knowing how to delegate: This falls on both PMs last night, but it played out in the story mostly by the way that Trace knew he had to delegate specific tasks and duties to Gary Bussey to keep him in check and how Brandy gave one of her most important tasks to Omarosa and got screwed. Being a good PM means you need to know what your team members’ strengths and weaknesses are and delegate accordingly.
4. Stakeholder expectations can make or break your team: From the opening scene, Donald Trump had it in for Bret Michaels. As a project manager you have to know that he is your primary stakeholder and you have to flesh out his desires. Bret failed to do that by taking the lead on the first project, losing control of the task and, ultimately, giving The Donald the room he needed to fire Bret.
5. Stakeholders are everywhere: In point 4, I mentioned how Donald Trump was the primary stakeholder. This is true last night and it is going to remain true throughout the show. That’s the setup. Having said that, any good PM is going to need to recognize that not just Donald makes decisions on the success or failure of the team. It goes without saying that both Trace and Brandy failed to recognize that the other members of their team are stakeholders in the team and because of this, both of them were faced with team members that didn’t have the teams’ best interests at heart. For Trace that person was Stephen. For Brandy, Omarosa. If either or both PMs had recognized that these stakeholders had different goals than the team, they could have more effectively managed the team and these players to create a better team.
In my opinion, last night’s show really showed effective and ineffective project management examples. Hopefully there will be more examples of good business skills this season because I am sure that we will see tons of drama.