Celebrity Apprentice 2: Week 2 - Comic Book Character
Season Two seems to have learned one of the most important lessons of Season One: don't do too many "crackberry tasks." The celebrities are getting tested in some good ways ... so far.
So what can we learn?
Lesson One: Nothing is as important as your health. I'm all for doing whatever it takes to meet a deadline. But Annie Duke's objection to Claudia Jordan taking an early night in to get over a sudden illness in time for a crucial presentation was just uncalled for.
The team needed Claudia to be up and at 'em for an important part of the presentation. If she needed a little more rest than the other team members because of an extenuating circumstance, then the rest of the team could pick up the slack and pull together.
That's why they call it a team, Annie.
As a former boss once told me when I apologized for taking three days off for surgery, "There's never anything going on in this office that's more important than your health."
Donald Trump may not agree. The good news is, he doesn't have to for it to be the right perspective.
Lesson Two: Tap abilities, not personalities. Both project managers failed to do a cold-blooded analysis of their team members' respective strengths and weaknesses and assign roles accordingly.
Khloe Kardashian was content to let people volunteer for whatever role they wanted, regardless of their talents or experience. Joan Rivers would have been perfect to script the presentation, but steamroller Annie snatched the task right from under her.
Scott Hamilton had even bigger problems. He allowed the personality conflict between himself and Tom Green to get in the way of utilizing Tom in an appropriate role. Scott was focused on shutting Tom down rather than redirecting Tom's considerable creative energies in a productive direction (admittedly, quite a tall order).
Then, when it came time to staff the presentation, Tom was so resentful of how he had been ignored the previous day he was reluctant to contribute.
And if that wasn't enough, Scott allowed his buddies Clint Black and Dennis Rodman to engage in much of the same disruptive conduct he accused Tom Green of.
Here's the difference: Khloe (to my suprise, frankly) grew into the role and learned from her mistakes. Scott just kept hammering away at the same ineffective methods all day long.
The fruit of that became the defining mistake of the men's team: the failed EEE concept Scott insisted on. Buh-bye, Scott!
Lesson Three: Pick your battles ... and your timing. I have to admit, I'd written off Claudia last episode as spoiled and immature. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe.
When Melissa Rivers claimed credit for the character concept in front of Donald Trump Jr., Claudia bit her tongue, wisely acknowledging that perhaps this wouldn't be the time or place to start that fight.
I was grateful when, later, Khloe clarified that it was Claudia who initially came up with the "skeleton" of the idea everybody else built onto.
[Interestingly, Melissa Rivers says creative editing is to blame for the perception that the Mizz Z character was Claudia's idea first, not hers. In this entertainment genre, that's a distinct possibility.]
Lesson Four: Not every people problem is character-driven. It's easy when you clash with someone to impugn their character - their motives, their psychology, etc. Some of the clashes this season, however, may have simpler explanations.
For instance, Annie Duke has raised everybody's hackles, and we've barely gotten past the second episode. Her problem, however, may not be so much arrogance as a difference in negotiating style.
Annie has shown a tendency to negotiate, to use linquist Deborah Tannen's language, from the inside out. That is, she starts off with "we need to do this and this and this," then waits for others to voice objections.
Problem is, this is a very male style of negotiating. Women tend to negotiate from the outside in instead, asking for others' opinions and circling around to find a group consensus.
Neither style is "correct." They're both valid. The problem arises when a group expects one style and one member engages in the other style (as Annie has done).
The result? Everybody sees Annie as arrogant, and she's completely mystified by their response.
I'm not saying her approach couldn't use some work -- lots of work, in fact. But so could everybody else's expectations.
MY FAVORITE MOMENTS:
"Together we're a set!" Even in the midst of a boardroom fight, you gotta love that Tom and Scott could joke about their shared cancer battle.
"I've never talked about comics with a Playboy Playmate before." And the needle on the geek-o-meter just went WHAM!
Claudia pointing out that perhaps Mr. Trump thought Brande Roderick had appeared in Playboy more than two times because he kept reading the same issue over and over. Gotcha!
THE FIRED APPRENTICE'S CHARITY: The Cleveland Clinic Foundation
THE WINNING PM'S CHARITY: The Brent Shapiro Foundation for Alcohol and Drug Awareness
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celebrity apprentice
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