Well, the season has wrapped up, and for project managers, there were plenty of lessons to learn. We saw failures in communication, planning, execution and risk management. We saw poor ideas that were well-executed and good ideas that suffered in implementation. We saw coalitions form and break apart.
Ultimately, it came down to Holly Robinson Peete and Bret Michaels, neither whom I would have predicted would be a finalist. › Continue reading…
This week’s episode was all about culling the herd down from 5 to the final 2. This is not entirely unlike what happens when corporations face downsizing. After rounds and rounds of cuts where the so called “easier” decisions are made, some rationale must be used to cut even more, to some magic predetermined number. Although I’m not claiming there is any similarity between how Donald makes his “ratings based” decisions and the way a real business operates, nor do I even profess to understand the logic behind how companies sometimes perform these things, there were some parallels nonetheless. › Continue reading…
Well, it finally happened. Cyndi Lauper was finally fired. She has been a terrible disappointment all season, and it finally caught up with her.
Cyndi served as project manager twice, losing once and winning once. In Episode 1, she led the women’s team, Tenacity, in their first loss in the diner challenge. I had expected her to be a really strong contender, and was very surprised by her miserable performance in that task. During that episode, she demonstrated that she was not able to manage the work of other people and I blogged about how she never really “got” the point of the challenge, which was to raise money for charity. She instead focused on running a diner, and did that badly as well. The men’s team, Rocksolid, focused on raising money and trounced the ladies. › Continue reading…
In this week’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice, the losing team fell into a common trap that often plagues presenters everywhere – TMI: too much information. This week was a tough one for the board room, as even Donald said he felt that both teams produced an excellent product and performed well. No one team member or project manager made any particular blunders. As usual, with the typical TV show diversion tactics, the audience was led to believe that one team – Rock Solid – was on a path to defeat, due to Bret’s blatant disregard for the sponsors request for levity, › Continue reading…