06-06-2008
Could you hone your business skills by watching the Apprentice?
By Adfero
Launched in the UK in 2005, the Apprentice is a reality television programme where candidates compete to become the apprentice of businessman Sir Alan Sugar. But while the average viewer may delight in the competitive and often ridiculous aspects of the show, does the programme actually offer anything useful for those of us in business? What lessons that can be learned by the victories and failures of the candidates?
Is the Apprentice counterproductive?
While many people enjoy watching the show, there are those who do not think it is positive from an entrepreneurial perspective. Indeed, a recent report has highlighted the negative effects of the programme in terms of its ability to influence the success or failure of a business.
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Based on research by the University of Leicestershire, the report found that wannabe entrepreneurs who have incredibly high levels of self-confidence (as do the candidates on the show), find that their businesses end up failing precisely because of the fact that they rate themselves so highly.
The study found that excessive levels of confidence are a factor when businesses fail during their tender early years. The theory is that these over-confident fledgling business tycoons quickly find themselves knee-deep within markets that have no room to support a new competitor.
"Our results showed that when success depended on skill, over-confidence tended to cause excess entry into a market place," said Dr Briony Pulford, one of the researchers involved in the study.
"Market-entry decisions tend to be over-optimistic, with the inevitable result that new business start-ups tend to exceed market capacity, and many new businesses fail within a few years."
The show has also failed to win favour with the Federation of Small Businesses. In a report in The Scotsman Andy Wilcox, the organisation's Scottish policy convener, complained that the programme exists only as a simulation of a real business environment and cannot accurately reproduce the exertion and determination shown by many small business owners.
A business lesson or a bit of fun?
Some would argue that The Apprentice offers both. While the business tasks are clearly contrived and heavily weighted towards playing on the weaknesses or strengths of certain candidates, a discerning viewer can learn some lessons at least by watching them get it wrong.
For starters it is interesting to watch the team dynamics from a managerial point of view. By the very nature of the programme, none of the candidates are team players and they are all out to win as individuals, which undermines the very idea of working as a team. So from the viewer’s point of view we get to see how strong characters interact with each other and it gets us thinking about how we would go about managing them to bring out their best.
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The role of the project manager is also interesting. The delegation of tasks and the allocation of sub-teams tells us a lot about the manager’s thought processes and priorities. Watching the candidates in this situation could give a unique insight into how some employees may really feel about working with certain types of people or having to undertake certain tasks. This is particularly true of those tasks on which the employees do not feel 100% confident about doing well. We may become more considerate managers as a result.
We’ve all sat on the sofa watching the show and thinking we could do a much better job in the weekly tasks. And in fact, those of us who watch it and re-think the tasks by our own design are actually learning as we go. We can certainly pick up on how certain things should be done and how they should not be done. Sometimes it takes the errors of someone else to see the errors of our own methods and to find the impetus to make the necessary changes.
Ultimately, what each viewer gains from a TV show like The Apprentice is very different. Some people will feel glad that they are not out there in a cut-throat business world each day, and others will feel inspired to go out there and start a business. There can be no doubt that this and other shows about business, such as Dragons’ Den, are the drivers for a boom in business start-ups, whether for better or worse.
But perhaps the trick is to not take it all too seriously. After all, television is television and its ability to represent reality can only go so far, especially when there are ratings to consider.