Blog: Entertainment

Apparently Donald Trump contrived an episode just to prove me wrong this week, in which Kwame takes a big calculated risk, loses, and doesn't get fired. It's true that he is evaluating people not just on results but on what effort they put forward, including risks.

Still, the format of the show still favors those who just follow the path of least resistance. Kwame's team did lose by taking this risk. Most importantly, the tasks generally are just not set up to allow people to do what is really important in business: trying business models, understanding customers over time, and refining your business to best fit the market.

It's an inevitable effect of the television format, but the apprentices always have to sell in far too short a time period to really exhibit many of the most important qualities in an executive. Sales talent and the ability to make quick decisions are important, and certainly getting along with others and being a leader is key. I guess I am just annoyed that the show isn't what it could never be, a substantive business exercise that gets at the heart of building a business. That just wouldn't work on television.

I'm not fired. No, I just watched this week's The Apprentice, in which each team had to sell as much bottled water to restaurants, distributors, etc. in two days as possible.

The task was extremely stupid. While it might be possible to make small sales on the spot, I'm sure this business like any other is built up over time through creating relationships. Any purchases of water the stores made were more on a whim, as an experiment, rather than anything substantive. In other words, selling water in two days has nothing to do with actually building a business, where what matters most is making customers happy over the long run instead of just convincing them to buy a case or two of water.

One team kept hearing from their customers that they'd buy more water, but had noplace to store it. It took until midway through the task for one of the contestants (Troy) to think of doing a deal where they would deliver some water regularly to the store. As far as we could see the other team never figured that out. How simple is this? If customers won't buy because of a specific problem, then find a way to fix the problem!

But the biggest reason this show is nothing like real life business is that everything incents the contestants not to take risks. In real life a lot of people are trying to do what you do. If you try a new business plan that has a 10% chance of success but a $100M potential payoff, it is worth it. 9 out of 10 experiments may fail, but the one that wins - or even one out of a hundred - pays for all the rest. In The Apprentice, the only goal is to beat the other team - anything with a 10% chance of success is a bad idea, because 9 out of 10 times you will lose to the other team, while winning really big 1 time out of 10.

The project managers, and Trump, criticize people for doing things and failing, but very little for just not trying in the first place. Someone who volunteers for a specific responsibility seems to always get picked on when their piece goes wrong, because the project manager has to blame someone and they fixate on actual things that happened badly instead of people who never tried. Some businesses definitely work this way, but it's the worst kind of culture.

Trump can't help but end up with a risk-averse, mediocre leader who never has big ideas as a result of this selection process.

There's nothing I can say about Broadway show Avenue Q that the reviewers haven't. But go see it. It's just like Sesame Street, down to the cute cartoons that interrupt the live performance every so often to talk about specific words (except this time, the words are "schadenfreude" or "one night stand" instead of "near" and "far"). But the characters are in their 20s and 30s, miss the secure life of college, and are struggling with unemployment, breakups, and their sexual orientation. Just remember, everyone's a little bit racist. The Internet is for porn. And if you were gay, it'd be okay.

Watch this show.