Remember The Apprentice last year? Each week saw a well-fought battle between Summit and Tenacity, with victories achieved through great teamwork. Here are four times Tenacity won by being one cohesive unit.
Wearable Technology: Teams had to design a piece of wearable tech and pitch to three retailers. Summit decided to go for a jumper with a built-in video camera. Shame they didn't use it to record the key errors they made. Summit didn't work together at all, argued amongst one another and even admitted to not liking their own product. Oops.
Tenacity, playing to their strengths, fell in behind a powerful leader (after she took the reins from a less powerful one) and delivered a pretty cool-looking jacket with solar panels on the shoulders to charge devices. It wasn't perfect, but the girls' ability to rescue their project impressed nonetheless.
Coach Tours: In this challenge, Lord Sugar asked teams to set up and run a coach tour, with the winner being the team with the most profits.
Tenacity designed a tour visiting high profile destinations for high prices. They knew their individual team strengths, as Lauren gave a great tour of Blenheim Palace and Daniel provided good leadership. Summit, on the other hand, were held back by bad traffic and planning, plus let's not forget James' really awkward forced sing-along. In the end, Karen Brady's summing-up of Summit's efforts said it all: ‘I'm just recovering from the coach journey from hell'. Ouch.
Home Fragrance: This time, the challenge was to sell a brand new range of home fragrance products. Both teams did pretty well at this, but teamwork skills split the winners from the losers in the final reckoning.
Overall, Summit did a good job, but a team is only as strong as its weakest asset and Summit never tried to iron out their problem spots. Tenacity, however, went for a single goal of profit margins and maintained focus. The result: a telling win.
Country Show: With the Royal Bath and West Show around the corner, Lord Sugar asked teams to sell two items never sold at the show before, plus a high-ticket item with previous success at the event. Most sales would give the win.
Tenacity won on two fronts. First, they got the best items. Second, they worked with an outstanding knowledge of their member's strengths, putting the best people to the front to sell the products. Summit, meanwhile, suffered from bad management, which caused a teamwork breakdown. The margin of loss was huge: Tenacity finished with sales of £30,115.25 while Summit had just £4,757.50 to show for their efforts.
If you loved last year's The Apprentice, we've got some great events to get your team into the spirit of the current series! Have a go at our perfume-making event, or visit Lord Sweetener's boardroom in our Apprenticeship Challenge.
