The Apprentice Week 5 – Dubai These Goods
May 28, 2013 3 Comments
The Apprentice Week 5 – Dubai These Goods
Zee
Courtesy of BBC
Its retail therapy this week in The Apprentice, with the teams dispatched to Dubai to source and sell items. Zee, who has lived there claims to have a lot of local knowledge. Specifically the teams have to find 8 items for a new hotel.
Leah joins Endeavour to balance the teams, and the pattern for the task is set as she and Zee compete for PM. Zee’s local knowledge gets the nod.
Miles leads the opposition Evolve team, and wants to focus on luxury items, as this is his area of expertise.
Contrasting strategies are adopted by the 2 teams. Zee uses his local knowledge to source items and will not countenance either the need for research or buying items from Malls. For him, the Sukhs are where the bargains will be found. If he has the knowledge, this is a sound strategy. However, over the programme, both the viewer, and his team come to doubt how extensive his local knowledge is. In addition, Zee’s relationship with women, and especially Leah seems strained.
Miles, without the benefit of local knowledge and working against the clock, adopts exactly the opposite strategy, and heads for the Mall. Both teams face time pressures, but where as Zee focuses on negotiation, whilst Miles is focused more on getting all of the items, with negotiation as a secondary concern. Teams will be punished for any items not sourced. Surely, Zee’s local knowledge will come out on top?
Zee and his sub team make a mess of the measurements for a flag and need to re-order, when the item they have ordered proves to be too small. Leah’s team are struggling to get any items, but Neil eventually pushes through a Khandoura at half the price paid by the other team. It proves to be the wrong type of Khandoura
In the boardroom, Zee gets poor feedback from his sub team, especially Leah. His local knowledge is challenged by Sugar, as he made mistakes with the oud and the flag. The wrong sizing of the flag is attributed to Kurt, who accepts the blame. The team’s negotiations are applauded.
Miles is accused of wasting time on research at the Mall, and waiting for the flag to be produced. Their negotiation skills are ridiculed by both Sugar and Karen Brady.
In the end Evolve beat Endeavour, mostly down to the debacle with the flag. Miles more measured approach paid dividends in comparison to Zee’s bravado. Zee looks vulnerable as the team unites against him.
Zee brings back Leah and Natalie. Surprisingly, Kurt is let off despite his mistake with the flag, as is Neil over the Khandoura. Zee justifies his decision based on lack of contribution from Natalie and lack of support from Leah. The girls unite against Zee and accuse him of being sexist. Leah is described as indecisive by Sugar, who also calls Zee arrogant. Eventually, Sugar comments on Natalie’s lack of contribution. However, he decided to give her one last chance, and it is Zee who is fired, for basically being incompetent. It is the right decision.
Zee proved to be a very ineffective leader. It is crucial for a leader to build up a team, but Zee only succeeded in uniting the team against him. His bravado and the decision to bring Natalie, rather than Kurt or Neil back was the final nail in the coffin of his objectivity. The strong suspicion that he has a problem working with women is also hard to refute, based on the evidence of this programme.
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Hi Mark. The one thing Zee suceeded in doing was building a team which worked against him rather than for him. He really should have brought Kurt and Neil back in to the boardroom – even then, it should still have been him who was fired. Kurt’s error was silly but someone should have picked up on it, and it ultimately cost the team 28 dirhams (about a fiver). Neil’s error was also understandable. We’re not told exactly what the market price of tha kandura is, but let’s say it was the 300 dirhams first quoted to Jordan. That’s a fine of 240 dirhams over the 60 paid – just over 40 quid and still less than half the margin of defeat.
It was the failure to buy the oud that killed Endeavour. Jordan’s discount saved Evolve 860 dirhams – about £150. If Zee had stopped for a minute and realised that the spec couldn’t possibly refer to perfume, his team might have located the product and bought it cheaply enough to win the task. It was that point of poor leadership – the leader having the hubris to assume he is all-knowing – that cost Zee his place in the competition. And rightly so – he’d shown no positive qualities whatsoever in his five weeks.
My usual weekly review:
http://slouchingtowardstv.com/2013/05/29/the-apprentice-buy-buy-in-dubai-then-bye-bye/
Good points, well made Tim.
Who do you see as the front runners?
Jordan and Leah still look strong to me. I’m waiting to see who’s embarking on a path to redemption – I thought Alex looks solid without really breaking out just yet and Neil was much calmer this week (and in the greater scheme of things his error relatively minor). For the girls, I can see Rebecca possibly coming on strong now she seems to have settled a bit. As to who’s going next, Jason is pure entertainment value so definitely not him, whereas Natalie is all mouth and no trousers. She seems very weak – surely her time is coming?