Celebrity Apprentice – Week 8 (Do it live!)

Week 8 Started with both teams intact from the prior week. In Week 7 no one was fired but The Trumpster promised to fire someone this week.  The teams were given their tasks.  They were to create and perform a live commercial for three different home repair companies. Bret Michaels once again stepped up to become the Project Manager for RockSolid. Summer Sanders became the Project Manager for Team Tenacity.

Both Teams met with the executives and received the guidelines for the commercials. The executives were very professional and straight laced. When asked about comedy appearing in the commercial they were not interested and felt that comedy didn’t really have a place for their line of work. Bret Michaels threw that out of the window and incorporated a butt crack pun in the plumbing commercial. When the executives heard that commercial they were not amused.

Team Tenacity wanted to incorporate Cindy Laupers singing in the commercials. While making the commercials Cindy’s voice started bothering her and Tenacity had to rely on the back-up singer for the rehearsals.  Summer created some commercials that had a great deal of information about the company.  Curtis Stone mention that he thought that the commercials were a bit copy heavy. Cindy came through at the end and was able to perform for the live spots. The executives were very happy as they listened to Team Tenacity’s spots. The execs went to report to The Donald who they thought won and the teams were brought into the boardroom.

In the boardroom RockSolids commercials were played first.  Bret was grilled about using the crack comment when the execs said they didn’t want any comedy at a plumbers expense. Bret defended his position and stood by his decision. Tenacity’s commercials were played next. Donald Trump though that the commercials were too wordy and that sentiment was echoed by the executives. The execs also wanted to hear more of Cindy’s voice in the spots. Curtis was asked what he though about RockSolids spots and he gave a very structured and intelligent critique. Sharon Osborne and Marie Kanellis took exception to Curtis’ remarks. They said that Curtis was smug and mocked his being Australian. Maria even went as far as to say she wanted to punch him (Kinda of worrying coming from a professional wrestler.)

Trumpomatic asked Summer what would she like for him to say. Summer said that she would like to hear him say that Tenacity were the winners but Trump said that he could not say that because RockSolid were the winners. RockSolid was dismissed then Tenacity was grilled about the creation of the commercial and who contributed the most. Summer took some heat for her delegation of the task and for not defending herself in the boardroom. This ultimately led to Summer being fired.

The show is almost to the season finale and these celebrities still do not know how to handle being in the boardroom. Curtis Stone so far is the only one that holds people accountable for what they did or didn’t do. His weakness is the fire needed to state his case more forcefully during the task and in the boardroom.

Donald you get a thumbs up this week.

Celebrity Apprentice – Week 7 (Reorganization)

“RockSolid, you’ve hit rock bottom. The women have kicked your ass… you know that!” – Donald Trump

This week finds RockSolid down to only two team member vs Tenacity’s having seven. Donald Trump moved Curtis Stone to Tenacity and moved Sharon Osborne and Maria Kanellis to RockSolid.  Both teams immediately took on a new vibe with RockSolid being a more loose and fun team and Tenacity being more structured and focused.  The task was to create a celebrity fitness class for Derek Jeter’s 24 Hour Fitness and to raise the most money for charity. This would have been well suited for Goldberg had he not made the mistake the week before and gotten himself fired. Sharon Osborne was selected to be the Project Manager for RockSolid and Holly Robinson Peete was selected for Tenacity.

Bret Michaels was at the heart of the fitness program. Their class was called the RockStar Celebrity Bootcamp. All the moves were edgy and had names of things that happen in the world of a rock stars such as Groupie Thrust and the Tour Bus Thrust to name a few. Curtis Stone and Summer Sanders were the driving force behind the fitness program for Tenacity. Cindy Lauper had to leave for the first part of the task for an event with Lady Gaga leaving Tenacity short one team member.

RockSolid’s operation was very loose. Sharon allowed for the team to just work as things fell into place. Ideas were flowing from Bret and Maria and they just pulled together and created a very entertaining fitness class. Sharon retained the responsibility for the fundraising. Team Tenacity worked with more structure. Deadlines, follow-up, delegation and Holly was responsible for the fundraising. 24 Hour Fitness was offering $24,000 to the team with the best original concept.

Both Project Managers were stressed about their donors ability to give money on such short notice. Ozzy Osborne was the guest host on WWE Raw during that time and Sharon was able to raise $30,000 from the WWE. Later she received another large donation of $25,000. Holly had been sweating about her $50,000 donation from Ron Burkel. It finally came through at the last-minute.

RockSolid conducted their classes and they were very active and fun while Tenacity’s class were structured and fundamental. In the boardroom Donald asked each team if they thought that they won. Each though that the other won for various reasons. Holly thought that Sharon had the advantage of having very rich friend that could donate a lot of money. Holly was asked, rhetorically if she thought that she had an advantage because of her yearly fundraising efforts.

RockSolid won the $24,000 from 24 Hour Fitness. and the amount was added to their fundraising effort making a total of $131,000. Tenacity was a little worried. Their total was announced as $206,000 so Tenacity won! After all the worrying Holly beat Sharon at a fundraising task.

Trump went on to needle everyone in the room on who should be fired. He asked everyone. He didn’t even dismiss the winning team. Trump said he wanted to fire somebody like a dog. No one was thrown under the bus but Holly snitched to Trump that Sharon said that she didn’t want to be there anymore. Sharon was ready to be fired when suddenly Donald Trump said that he was not going to fire anyone for such an across the board good job.

All the money raised went to the winning Project Managers charity so Holly’s received nearly $350,000. This was the largest amount of money raised outside of a final episode for a single task. The benevolent Trumpster allows everyone to stay for another week.  My evaluation of Trumpomatic… Nice!

Celebrity Apprentice – Week 3 (The Controller)

The task this week was to produce a 4-page advertorial for Norton 360 & Lifelock.  The Project Managers for the two teams were Michael Johnson for Team RockSolid & Summer Sanders for Team Tenacity.  Michael Johnson started out by assigning duties right away.  Bret Michaels immediately buzzed around Johnson until he got an assignment.  Mind you he was already given an assignment.  Clearly there is entertainment value from Michaels surviving long enough to stay on the show.

Sanders took charge of Team Tenacity and made a few decisions but let the team progress on its own.  Sharon Osborne was selected to be the spokesperson for the team but functioned more as a candid diplomat to keep the team on task.  Even though Team Tenacity appeared to be a power keg waiting to explode, they functioned well to produce the advertorial. Sharon Osborne appeared to botch the presentation and the computer failed to project the slide show on the screen for the Norton and Lifelock executives.

Michael Johnson picked Curtis Stone to be the spokesperson for the product. Johnson felt that cooking was big and that people would trust a Chef and a current Celebrity. Bret Michaels thought that it should have been Goldberg.  Johnson listened to Michaels well-reasoned argument for Goldberg, then went with Stone.  Rod Blagojevich thought the decision was a pre-ejaculation.

Michael Johnson’s performance this week made me take a look at management styles.  The four are analysers, supporters, controllers and promoters.  Understand that no style is considered better than the other but knowing the style of the person you are dealing with is very important.  Johnson is clearly a controller.  As a fellow controller I immediately recognized the following traits in Johnson.

• Task accomplisher
• Bottom-line results
• Self-motivated
• Forward looking
• Fast decision-maker
• Initiates activities
• Disciplined
• Likes to control others

Controllers are also known to seldom listen to others around them, focusing only on the task at hand. Controllers often stand up for themselves and take full responsibility for their actions.

OK, the Norton and Lifelock executives chose Team Tenacity’s project to be the better of the two and the women won again.  They though that the men should have used Goldberg as the spokesman and that RockSolids advertorial was a bit wordy. Both of these things Johnson vetoed when brought to his attention by Michaels. In the boardroom Michael Johnson stood up for how he managed the project and was unyielding in he views.  He was ready to be fired as the Project Manager of the losing team. Darryl Strawberry was asked who should be fired and he said… “ME!”  What! Did Strawberry not see past seasons of this show? Did he know that you should not ask to be fired?  After a bit of a scolding by The Donald, Strawberry attempted to back pedal a little bit but it didn’t work.  Trump fired Strawberry and told Johnson the he got lucky.

I understand that in the end Strawberry probably wanted to take the hit for the team but I don’t think that this show is about that.  It’s about cunning, shrewdness honesty and winning.  Sooner or later these candidates will figure that out.  Someone need to call Annie Duke from last season.

Donald Trump.  This was an easy one… Fire the one that asked to go home.