Green Bean is right. When you’ve got a team of people that are snapping and sniping at each other, it’s not a good idea to crack down on them like a drill sargent. If you do, you’re just going to give them a new target.
No, you’ve got to instill positive morale and a sense of teamwork. Easier said than done, I know, and one’s success will most likely be limited. Still, it’s better than cracking down on them harshly and barking orders, at least in this situation.
I’m not totally sure I buy the “Pamela was a bad leader who made bad decisions” argument, at least as far as her herding the Apexiennes is concerned. If she had been the PM on their first task, I think it would have been the wrong way to lead. Bradford may have been a winning PM, but he made no friends on that team by making an “executive decision” on the toy, and then backtracking to something similar to what the women had suggested without apparently giving them any credit to the client for it. That was the wrong way to lead the team the first time out.
This wasn’t the first task. Since the first task, the women had shown a highly dysfunctional and poisonous dynamic. And that needed the imposition of tight discipline and high expectations. Sometimes, Crazy Joe Clark with his baseball bat is the right answer. But since the women have had a bit of a taste of getting close and working as a unit, perhaps someone who hasn’t disgraced herself and has a less confrontational style (like, say Jennifer M?) could weld them into an efficient unit. I don’t think that a softer approach would have worked here, though, because there was still too much acrimony.
Note that the reason the women failed here had nothing to do with any lack of teamwork. Their tactics were fine, but their strategy was faulty, and that strategy (i.e. the pricing) was something Pamela imposed. And she was justifiably fired for it. A drill sergeant can impose tight discipline and teamwork, but a general is the one who plans the war. Pamela is, at best, a sergeant.
What’s the deal with Raj and his dittohead remarks? “These balls have more spin than a Democrat!” “What’s the deal with serving these Clinton balls?” Huh? If he gets fired, at least he has a shot at becoming another right-wing radio talk show host.
I’m also enjoying Mully’s weekly ship ratings. And I agree that Apex is playing Survivor.
I do want to address the point someone made comparing Pamela’s delegation decisions to Donald’s. They aren’t comparable, at least to me. Pamela had an assigned task at which she failed. Donald was conducting an experiment for which he got his answer. Her job was to make money. His job was to test her leadership. She failed. He succeeded.
I wonder: has Lib ever disagreed with any of The Donald’s decisions? :dubious:
Well, you could ask him. 
OK, I’m asking.
Pamela was a superbitch because she could be. I agree with GreenBean (Hiya, Greenie! Howya been?) up to a point. The point were we part is were she was responsible for the loss. What she was responsible for was the near win.
And it did seem to me that Trump set Pamela up. She had to either whip those beyotches into shape and produce a minor miracle or she was gone.
Don’t forget the reference to “Slick Willy.”
One, if a humorous remark does not make people laugh, don’t recast it four more slightly different ways. It’s still not funny.
Two, if your primary hermeneutic of life is comparing everything bad to parallels in the Clinton administration, you are clinically insane. Yes, all ideologues are clinically insane. It would be as bad as a liberal comparing Anna’s spins on her serves to ‘Tricky Dick.’ Let it go. Move on with your life.
And here, I was leaning towards liking Raj, and he goes all Fox News on me. <sigh>
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Are they puposely taking turns answering the phone topless? And why haven’t we seen John do it yet? He’s the pretty boy jock.
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Speaking of the beefcake, notice how the men put him on camera for the QVC segment? Too bad we didn’t see the video of how that decision was made. More hustling of their boy?
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It’s hard to tell by handles of who is male and who is female, but it seems to me that the women here are saying, “Pamela was bad for being a bitch,” and the men are saying, “Pamela was good for being a bitch.” Comments?
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Next week: Thinking the men are at a disadvantage in designing women’s clothing? There probably is potential for a really bad idea, although, with the first good idea, they’ll probably all get on board with it. Conversely, imagine how the women, each of whom who thinks that they are fashionistas, will get along and come up with one design by consesus. <maniacal laughter>
Peace.
Well, I’m female and I think she got shafted. I’m not saying she was perfect, but she was much better than many of the females. I think the bitchiness was necessary to get these women in shape and any other way would have caused the women to take advantage of her. I do admit that I knew that women would try to get rid of her for when she talked to them on the bus. Bah.
Pamela’s firing for poor leadership was completely justified. A leader (even a micro-managing, overbearing, bitchy one) is a member of the team. Pamela’s language, peppered with references of ‘them-against-me’ revealed that she never considered herself a member of team Apex, and for that reason alone she deserved a beheading.
I think she was overly embiggened by Trump’s initial praise and let her superiority complex guide her behavior. Too bad, since she was the best xx chromosome on the show.
Nothing really substantial. I don’t think I’m in a place where disagreement with him on major issues of business management would be anything but vaguely surreal. I’m pretty much giving him the benefit of the doubt, and trying to learn lessons by analyzing his decisions to figure out why he decided what he did. His empire is no fluke. He has built, lost, and rebuilt from nothing. He knows what he’s doing. That’s how I look at it.
But this isn’t really “business management” as it’s actually practiced. It’s artificial. It’s like determining the best NFL quarterback based on performance in the off-season “Quarterback Challenge.” Trump may be a business savant, but that doesn’t mean his choices on this show are reflective of his considerable business acumen.
In the real world, Pam wouldn’t be fired, assuminig good management. She’d be pulled to the side and told to tone down the drill sergeant routine. Meanwhile, genuinely disruptive people (like Stacy) would be either fired or pushed onto unpleasant, unimportant tasks until she got the hint and started shopping her resume.
I also take issue with the notion that Pam “failed” at her task of “making money” (your words). Pam’s team did very well, especially compared to their past performance, and in fact her team probably would have won but for a fortuitous phone call from some woman in Oklahoma who liked her pannini grill. And she did that on a team that was by all accounts a walking disaster staffed with people who she had not done any prior work with. In the real world, a turnaround specialist who took a company from bankruptcy to near-parity with their chief competitor in a short time would be hailed as an management hero, not shown the door as a failure.
Trump dropped the ball on this one. He isn’t always right, and it’s perfecty non-surreal for people to point that out. I’m no NFL quarterback, but I don’t think there’s anything weird about pointing out poor on-field decisions on Sunday afternoon when I’m watching a game. Why is this any different?
Female here.
Although I agree with jeevmon’s distinction between strategy and tactics, as discussed above, I still think Pamela got screwed. She was thrown into a nest of vipers and told to whip them into shape. She did so. She brought them within one sale of a win. Despite George’s “it doesn’t matter how close you are if you come in second,” it does matter. She was given an impossible task and came damn close to pulling it off.
Did she deserve to win overall? Probably not, given her weakness as a strategist – but she definitely didn’t deserve to be booted after this round. Who should have been? Stacy, for the Enron comment.
(Thank god I don’t have a date tonight – I’m really looking forward to the long version of the boardroom!)
Not to him, it isn’t. He’s putting the person in an actual position of great authority and power (very similar to the authority and power that I have as a Senior Vice-President).
Well, “fired” is a metaphor here. Donald looks at this whole thing as a long job interview process. “You’re fired” simply means “you’re not hired”.
But the task was not being compared to prior tasks; it was being compared to the competing team’s task. Like George said, it doesn’t matter if you lose by $10 or $10,000,000. Or like Carolyn said last week, you just don’t get it — they failed, failed, failed.
It’s so cute that you actually believe this.
Granted, but given the choice of the three alternatives presented Thursday night, no sane manager would forgo continuing to evaluate Pam in favor of continuing to evaluate Stacy. Pam may or may not have ended up the ultimate winner, but she had the potential to make a serious run for the big prize. Does anyone really think Stacy has the stuff of a finalist?
First of all, it’s exceedingly obvious from both the past few weeks and from certain shows last season that Trump isn’t overly concerned with performance on the current task – whatever you think of Stacie J, she absolutely did not have anything to do with the cost overruns that caused the women to “fail fail fail” last week. The notion that performance on prior tasks isn’t a factor is simply impossible to defend.
Secondly, there is a reason why losing PM’s aren’t summarily fired, and why they get to drag two of their cohorts into the boardroom. That’s because losing isn’t necessarily a failure of leadership. That’s particularly true in this instance, where the happenstance of some anonymous woman in Oklahoma calling in contributed to the men’s win more than any particular business decision they made.
Just asking – if Pamela didn’t deserve to be fired this week, who do you think should have gotten the axe?
And what’s the criteria anyway, when they came so close to winning – how do you decide – maybe look for positives, skills and traits that hadn’t shown up before?
Who (besides Pamela) is guilty of any of the failures we saw before:
No contribution to the effort
Not performing up to spec
Wreaking havoc
Drawing attention away from the task
Not being a team player, i.e., adding to the split
??
Being a PM is kind of a double-edged sword in that , if you do your job really well, then everyone on the team performs it’s task at appears competent. BUT YOUR TEAM MAY STILL LOSE. And I kind of think that is what happenend here, Stacy is annoying, but she didn’t do anything particularly wrong on the task, IMO. Maria possibly, but I think Trump viewed that failure as something outside the realm of what he expects out of a businessperson. Ultimately I think Pamela was “fired” because somebody had to be and Trump latched on to some sort of business related reaosn. I agree that Pamela is probably more ocmpetent than many of the others, but she was kind of a victim of her own success.
Originally posted by Rysler:
Nan, I don’t think so. If Elizabeth wanted to warn Maria, “Good job guys, Pamela’s coming down to talk to Maria” would have been sufficient. Instead, she basically slammed her over the PA. I don’t know if Elizabeth wanted to hurt Maria, undermine Pamela, or both. Or maybe she’s just too stupid to know what the hell she’s doing. I wouldn’t trust these girls to sell bootleg CDs on the Red Line.
Originally posted by Farmwoman:
I gotta disagree with those who think Pamela was acting bitchy. Yeah, she was a bit of a hard ass, but it certainly wasn’t bitchy. It was necessary. Do you seriously think that anything less than a total hardline stance with these girls would be effective? If one of the guys had been put in charge, and acted accordingly, I doubt many people would be making the same complaints about the male that they’re making about Pamela. That said, she deserved to be fired because of the stupid pricing mistake, but not becuase of “poor leadership”. She’s quite possibly the best leader the girls have had so far.
On another note, I want to see Stacy R. be team leader. Badly.
Sorry, but I’m married and I like my wife’s plumbing. Thank you all the same.
Good thing for me, then, that I’m not defending it. I never said it wasn’t a factor, but that it was not the comparison being made in this case. You said something about Pam doing “very well”. I already told you what George said. And speaking from experience, when you lose a bid by ten bucks, it’s no consolation to insert an “only”.
That’s why Donald outshines me (and you too, of course). He understands that there is a delicate blend of criteria necessary to run a company. Leadership is one, but not the only one. Pam’s belligerence was what did her in. Donald remarked that she seemed absolutely convinced that she was right even though almost everything she said was wrong. That’s exactly what he does NOT need running his company — a hard-headed know-it-all who borders on being passive-aggressive.