Re: The Apprentice


"Frootbat" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4401d567$0$13217$8a667849@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 16:47:43 -0000, "michael adams"
<mjadams28@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Frootbat" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4401ceff$0$13217$8a667849@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 11:33:28 +0000, Roland Perry <roland@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In message <46dgdmFaj9nsU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, at 11:06:31 on Sun, 26 Feb
2006, michael adams <mjadams28@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> remarked:
Selling 2 cwt of rubbish - as the girls did, shouldn't normally
generate twice the sales value of selling 1 cwt of quality
produce.

That's why I wrote "it didn't really make sense that the men doubled
their money (from roughly 300 to 600) and the girls tripled it (from
350
to 1100".

So either the girls were good at persuading people to pay good
money for rubbish - or the men underpriced their stock. The quality
of which was maybe more suited for an upmarket clintele.

Remember also that the men were selling for half the price they
thought
they were, for much of the day (the pound/kilo confusion). That alone
should have got the project manager fired.

Surely the guy who made that mistake should have been fired, not the
PM.


It's the manager's job to pick the right people for each task
at the start as best he can, and to check that he made the
correct decisions as the task progresses. Given that he didn't
have a lot to go on at the start, only people's own asesments
of their own abilities he should have been monitoring every
aspect of the operation all the time. What else do you suppose
he should have been doing ?

Then what's the point of bringing two other people into the boardroom
if the PM is to blame for everybody else's mistakes?

May as well just fire the PM every week.

I'm not saying the PM shouldn't have been fired - though there was a
lot of competition from others - but I don't see why he is to blame
for the weighing error.

Very few people would have expected somebody with a degree in business
to be so clueless they can't do weights and measurements correctly and
had to be "monitored all the time".

....

Nobody is saying he has to be monitored "all the time" on the
weighing and charging task. Once his mistake had been pointed
out to him he wouldn't have made it again. Or if he had
he would have been taken off and put on something else
to be fired later maybe. But all aspects of the operation -
where new situations may crop up at any moment need to be
monitored all the time.

The very fact that the guy has a business degee might imply
that he never actually bothers with weights and measures at all.
More like balance sheets and the like. He probably buys
pre-packed cellophane wrapped fruit and veg in Sainsbury's
and because it's Sainsburys who he trusts, he probably doesn't
even look at the prices. He just slings the stuff in the trolley
onto the belt and pays with it all with his plastic. He
probably couldn't even tell you what a pound of carrots would
look like, never mind how much they would cost.

These are precisely the sorts of things the manager should
have been thinking about, when setting and monitoring the tasks.

....


I also don't see why a PM should "monitor every aspect of the
operation all the time". Is this really what bosses do, or do they
trust their "workforce" to perform simple tasks, such as adding up?

....


Well clearly if they did that - as this programme demonstrated
- they'd go bust. Wouldn't they?

Because clearly not everyone can add up, can they?

So you're wrong.

So why not just try and live with it eh?

Instead of whingeing.



michael adams

....









.

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