Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Apprentice Season 1 Episode 10

Task:
Make money by riding around in rickshaws.

Rights:
Thought outside the box.

Wrongs:
Did not notice ineffectiveness. Kwame was driving a rickshaw around all day, and the pitch of his services stunk to high-heavens. Instead of thinking to change his tactics, he grinded it out, and brought in no money.

Refunded more advertising money than it was needed or even wanted, for a good reputation. Nick refunded advertising money to someone because they lost the signage during the day. It seemed like the customer was surprised at the generous refund, and it seemed unnecessary, especially since the customer got advertising for half the day. Nick thought his reputation was more important, didn't make sense. I understand wanting to be fair and offering a refund of half the amount, but full amount would have only been benefiscial if I were to do repeat business with the customer. And there was zero chance at a repeat business with the particular customer. It was just not thought out by Nick. And if they had lost by $150, and if I were Donald Trump, I would have fired Nick because there was a big flag raised that told me Nick doesn't have it in him to think about the big picture.

What I would have done as project manager:
Its easy to say that you should think out of the box. That suggestion is not strong enough to get to start in the right direction. What you can do is set a dollar amount as a goal, and see how you're going to get there. For example, if I wanted to make:
$1000: My brain would never leave the realm of working hard on driving people around for a ride, and just putting all I can physically into it.
$3000: I would realize we would never make $3000 driving people around. And definitely advertising on the rickshaws could be thought of.
$10000: I would realize that I should not spend any time driving people around. And that no one would pay that much for advertising on a rickshaw for a day. So I would come up with a grand marketting event/stunt and find one advertiser that would fund it.

Without a target, it doesn't stop your brain from thinking of random strategies to make even less amounts, and you waste the time doing it. When you have a specific target, your brain knows how to eliminate thoughts before they start to develop if its not going to get you to your target.

Lessons:
You cannot think outside the box if you don't know your boundaries. Make your box a lot bigger and set a goal, and the ideas will flow, guarenteed.

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