The Apprentice's Sorcery

What is it about The Apprentice that captures people's imagination? And then makes them say stupid things?

A case in point was when one of my 'Internet Buddies', as Uncle Bryn would call them, last night Tweeted the immortal line, 'Dog Food - interesting challenge. Who is the target market? Humans or dogs?'

Well at least we can rule out cats. I am no classically trained marketeer but I draw on my own experience here and say I have yet to see a dog carry a basket around my local Budgens, make an informed choice on its brand of dog food and then proceed to the checkout. Maybe I go there at the wrong times but I'm just telling you as I see it.

However, I have seen pooches in my local Pets at Home superstore but most of those are attempting to sniff the butts of other dogs or are weeing on the bags of straw for rodents. And I can also say that one of my Border Collies actually did try to sniff the backside of Garfield on the TV once so maybe dogs do pay attention to the TV and adverts for Dentasticks are not wasted.
Maybe I am being too literal after all. But as one Tweeter put it last night, 'Do you have to be a twat to be on The Apprentice or can anyone apply?'

Maybe you don't have to be one to watch it but it might help understand the nuances. I can safely say that I don't get it.

Learning By Failing

In today's Telegraph there is the usual feature of 'Ask James' where the Dragon's Den star, James Caan, gives his sage advice to job seekers. He is definitely qualified to do so, having made his considerable fortune off the back of starting, building and selling a successful recruitment company.

I had the good fortune to listen to James Caan speak last year at a small conference in London and he is very polished and enigmatic - every inch the 'nice guy' you see on Dragon's Den. I also think that much of his advice is very sound and this week's advice was a very good debating point about how to handle the very tough interview question of, 'Why did you leave your last job?'

I can sympathise with Caan's experience as I have heard every last excuse about the employer did not value the person, the targets were unrealistic, the hours too tough, the boss was an idiot, the company was going down the toilet, the pay was not good enough, the commission scheme changed, the company held back commission payments, the job role changed, and many more. I am excluding redundancies here but there is no reason why you cannot include them in the same question. The point being is that most candidates at interview look for another excuse to hide the stigma of having left their last company. And I say 'stigma' here as that is actually what they think it is. After all, no one would want to air their views about their boss at an interview with their prospective new boss, would they? Not unless they thought that leaving their last job was in some way a stigma that had to be explained.

Maybe I am using the wrong word here but it is that mental concept that an excuse or plausible reason has to be found for leaving your previous company and especially in these troubled times when there may be a considerable gap between leaving and finding a new role. Someone or something else has to be blamed.

Having been the interviewer in such situations many times, I cannot tell you how underwhelming it is to hear such excuses pushed out time and again. It doesn't matter who the person is or their age, the excuses seem to be the 'island of comfort' to explain people's inner lack of confidence in their abilities - the paranoid instinct that says there is always someone else to blame.

Failing, if it could be called that in losing your job, is part of life. It is as enriching as succeeding in terms of experience as without failing it is hard to know how to avoid it again while the subsequent feeling derived from succeeding after is all the more intense. We can all give our pithy stories of those celebrities or business people who pick themselves up after failure to succeed as such role models give us inspiration, but I often go to far greater depths to see how how people cope with and use 'failure' to their advantage.

Now let's stretch the word fail, here. Failure is not the only thing that pulls us down in life - there are many more reasons why people have to pick themselves up or make the best of a situation and I include in that people who suffer adversity for no good reason as well because they have similar, and often far steeper, mountains to climb but the principles are similar. So when I use the word fail in the same sentence as a name like Simon Weston it is not what I mean that he failed but here was a person who was dealt the cruelest of blows by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is one of hundreds of names we could use in the same context who have powerful, often thrilling stories of how they conquered adversities that threatened their very lives as well as their abilities to heal and move on.

It is from those people who have been dealt such huge blows by dint of accident, birth or negligence by others who use their situation to their advantage and become stronger characters and then successful people despite their enormous problems. Their special inspiration started by dealing with their point of adversity or 'failure' rather than dwelling on who to blame.

So when you sit down to think about the fact you have been made redundant or have lost your job because you personally failed to hit your target, don't try to hide the problem by inventing a reason or trying to transfer the blame. Think for a moment that you are in that position and you can dwell on the inequities that you may think put you there or you can plot your way forward, shedding the 'monkey on your back' that is the stigma of losing your job.

JK Rowling gives a very good account of this in her address to the Alumni at Harvard University where it was only when she faced the total depression of having no money, no job and no prospects that she could truly focus on the most important skills and ideas she had. It is something we can all use as well. Losing a job is tough and it is worse in a tough time. You may well have to accept that you did not perform as well as you should in your last job or because you were in the lower quartile of sales performers that you were identified as one of those who should leave.

Get over it. Think about what was it that you did and, more importantly, did not do that made you less successful than you should have been. Think about the number of meetings you regularly had, how you presented yourself, sold your company and why you failed to influence people as well as you could have done and then start thinking about what you can do to change things. So many times in my career I look back and think about how I could have done things differently and better, even when I was successful, and always it comes down to my lack of prioritisation. Even when I succeeded, I could have still not got bogged down in certain things and focused on more productive things that could have yielded even greater success and very often I find it was all to do with not moving from my personal comfort zones. Once I identified that, came to terms with it, I find things are far easier.

Sometimes you have to be honest with yourself about these things and being your own hardest critic is a recipe that can often lead to depression but is also the way to catalyse change. So when you think about that tough question about why you left your job, don't do what everyone else does and blame your last employer or someone or something else - take it on the chin if that's what it was.

The important thing is to do some reflection, once you have realised that you own your life and you are just as much to blame as your employer for losing your job. Was it your feisty attitude that put you at loggerheads with management which caused you to defocus? Was it the fact you you found it difficult to juggle personal issues and work? Think hard about why you possibly failed because learning the reasons allows you to see how you can change and be better for it.

There is a good reason why I mention all this which James Caan did not mention. That is that when I hear those 'excuses' from candidates I think to myself these things can easily be repeated.

If it was an issue with the boss then I know I am not perfect so it's likely I could cause the same issues for the candidate. If it was the company's lack of resources, well no company is perfect and so there is bound to be small things that cannot be provided. If it was the company not doing so well, it could happen here. The fact is that as an interviewing manager I would rather have people who have experienced things, understood what they have gone through and tell me how they dealt with it and how they will perform better in the future. Excuses are not a lot of use to me, interesting as they may sound.

Honesty is the best way and that starts at being honest with yourself. If you left a job because the money was rubbish, my alarm would be then why did the person enter the job in the first place? If the resources were rubbish, explain to me which ones were missing and tell me which company has it 100% right? If personal matters got in the way, what strategy have you worked out to cope with issues that may occur in the future that will no longer affect your performance? You see, employers should be very concerned about excuses about leaving the last job and it is certainly the reason why I ask the question. And for the skilled interviewer, if the answer is in the slightest bit unconvincing, then the follow up next questions will be like body punches as every interviewer should be looking for weaknesses and gloss.

Here's an exception - I saw the interview by Alan Sugar of the Apprentice, Jasmine, who won the competition and he lined up the question beautifully. Jasmine was the owner of her own restaurant business and Sugar pointed out that she would never enjoy such freedom to be as creative and as successful as she liked than when owning her own business, so why did she want to work for him? Her answer was that she wanted to work for Alan Sugar and here the alarm bells should have clanged. She was either bare-faced lying, motivated only by winning the prize of winning a job working for a dubious boss at £100,000 a year or her business was not as good as she made out. There was no follow up question - he left it at that. A skilled interviewer would have picked that whole 'facade' to pieces and find out what really made the girl tick. The same for the other pretty blond girl but each interviewer in turn backed off.

Most managers just want to hear what they want to hear. So you can get away with playing the excuses game in an ideal world. But today we are no longer in the ideal world - companies are not recruiting much at all and the jobless total is rising fast. Each interview is a precious moment to sell yourself better than any. Only you know your superior qualities and in that short time you have to show the exceptional things that make you different, not just qualified for the job, and sometimes exactly why you may not be qualified but the right person. You will still get the odd tree-hugging manager who has to have an exact match to the piece of paper but trust yourself that your special qualities will win.

So when asked that question - you will have done your contemplation. You will have come to terms with why you were chosen to leave in preference to others, you will have looked at yourself in the mirror and seen your flaws, you will have had your honest words with yourself and you will have identified what you need to do to be more successful in the future. By the time the question has ended you will hit the interviewer square between the eyes and tell them you failed but you know why, you dealt with it, you benefited from the experience and this is what you have done about it and why you are a much more capable person because of it. In fact, you were glad you failed because most people go through life never knowing the reasons that hold them back from being very successful - failure exposes the weaknesses within, that becomes the powerful force for change that is the platform for a successful life.

So when Simon Weston realised that he could not turn back the clock or get his body back, he faced it down, stopped blaming others for his misfortune (even though there were others to blame), fought the demons it caused and used it to become the incredible man he is today. He, along with thousands of others who have been dealt the really hard cards in life, are the most inspirational people on earth because their 'failures' made them the people they are today. At a recent service on the Falklands, Weston met the man who pushed the button that sent the Exocet missile into the hull of the Sir Galahad that fateful day and changed Weston's life for ever.

He forgave him because in many ways, he had a lot to thank the man for. The ordinary guy from the village of Nelson in South Wales, became a great inspiration for many as a result.

That takes some incredible guts and human spirit to say that even if it sounds illogical, but misfortune and failure can make ordinary people quite extraordinary. Believe that, and you will ace the dodgy question at your next interview - just make sure you are 100% honest with yourself, know what you have learnt and why you are a better person because of it.

Play that message to yourself a few times and then think of all those whingers who make the excuses. Sounds a whole lot better, doesn't it?

'Loyalty Not Helicopters Required'.

Former Labour Minister, Lord Foulkes, has suggested that what the Army chiefs need is more loyalty rather than resources and their utterances about the matter amounted to disloyalty.

Just to be clear about what the idiot said, "[Sir Jock Stirrup and General Sir Richard Danatt] threaten to undermine our effort in Afghanistan and give succour to the enemy". He suggested to peers that the two should be reminded of the "importance of loyalty particularly when we are engaged in a very difficult war where victory is essential for the future safety of this country".

Some might suggest that the two most senior Armed Forces Chiefs were showing loyalty to their troops, 18 of who have died in July so far alone. Some might suggest that the two most Senior Armed Forces Chiefs might know a little more about running armies and fighting wars than armchair heroes like Lord Foulkes. Some might suggest that Lord Foulkes' comments were reminiscent of the politicians who ran the First World War out of Downing Street rather that experiencing the appalling conditions of the front lines for themselves.

Some might suggest that Lord Foulkes could not give a damn about the 190 troops that have died in Afghanistan because the war is not about life or death or our future safety but about politics to him.

I must admit that Rt. Hon. Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (a name to conjure with to be sure) has all the ht credentials to be a top level idiot. On his website, because he is hip and up to date on all matters technical, he sagely points out that peers are not elected (how else would Alan Sugar become one, let's face it), but he goes on to say, "Although we are not elected, there is no reason why we should not, and every reason why we should, be accountable."

In that vain, it was Foulkes who valiantly tried to distance the establishment from Fred Goodwin at the height of RBS crisis by writing nasty letters to the FSA on behalf of 3 of the former Non-Executive Directors of RBS who had allegedly been threatened after asking questions about the bank's financial situation. Lord Foulkes is certainly a loyal Labour MP and so deserved of his peerage granted in 2005.

In his long career in politics, because that was his calling, it is notable that he has not spent a single day serving in any of the Armed Forces. Nowadays he has the jolliest of jobs as a backbench sniper for Gordon Brown and is a loyal pseudo-Scot as he was born in Oswestry before being called to that most political of lands - better still he is President of the Caribbean Council which means his regular 'holidays' on those lovely Islands are all fully paid for by mugs like us. And boy does he love the area as he is on Boards for something to do with the Dominican Republic and a Cuba Initiative. He's well looked after when it comes to getting suntans, as he is on the Virgins Island Group, Tobago, Central America and Belize. Very nice and comfy.

But, as with most MPs and peers, he has 'other interests'. In January he hit the headlines in The Times as he is paid £36,000 to introduce the law firm Eversheds to select committee Chairmen in the Lords and Commons and he shows great loyalty to Eversheds in doing so.

And when it comes to expenses, Lord Foulkes is a high quality operator. In 2008, Foulkes had been criticised for his expenses claims, which included around £45,000 over a period of two years for overnight subsistence to stay in a flat he had inherited. Between April 2007 and March 2008, Foulkes claimed £54,527 in expenses from the House of Lords. Which is interesting in itself, as on 25 June this year he asked the question to the House to forecast how much revenue was being lost to HMRC by people 'evading tax' in places like the Channel Islands.

Clearly, while Lord Foulkes has a strong sense of loyalty, he has little in the way of scruples.

Of course, some may suggest that as he has not ever been shot at by a member of the Taliban or stood beside a person killed by a roadside bomb or done nothing more than read a few books on the military that he has no idea what he is talking about by asking commanders to show 'loyalty'. Indeed, who is he asking them to be loyal to? Gordon Brown? Parliament? The Queen? Us?

Another Labour Lord sees it differently - Lord Malloch Brown said yesterday, "When you have these modern operations and insurgent strikes what you need, above all else, is mobility." As he stepped down from office, like so many Labourites, he has suddenly found his conscience and spoke the truth.

The British Government is letting down our Armed Forces in Afghanistan and it is the Government who is disloyal to our troops, not their commanders. Foulkes can use his own name to get lost.

Accountancy Is Not His Strongpoint

'Accountancy is not my strong point,' said Jack Straw recently when challenged on a expenses. Perhaps he borrowed the words off the Chancellor. It was a case of another month, another record deficit and another missed fiscal target for Alistair Darling.

I am sure his school maths report read, 'Could be doing better' every term, but how long should we give Alistair Darling? Will Peter Mandelson be forgiven for forcing the PM not to give the job to Ed Balls as at least we could have had more fun associating his name with the economy?

We borrowed nearly £20bn in May alone - a record and the highest monthly borrowing since 1993. The simple causes were that we spent more and brought in less tax than predicted. Even a dimwit like me blogged exactly this in the past - in a recession, the burden on the Welfare State rises and less tax is taken in as more people become unemployed. However, the extent of the problem is staggering, as only 5 years ago, £20bn would be half the ANNUAL borrowing not a monthly figure. In fact, income tax receipts were 11% lower, corporation tax was 27% down and VAT receipts were 19% lower while spending leaped nearly 17%. All this means that the current net borrowing estimates are wildly out - yet again - and was the reason why the Chancellor got a fairly public rebuke from the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.

Money, Money, Money

Money seems to be dominating things of late. Little Hazel Blears, who hoodwinked the taxman on her CGT when selling her 'second home' as her 'main residence' having claimed a whole load of MP allowances on it, survived a vote of 'no confidence' at her local Labour Party's meeting. Again, I have blogged on this that is not just MPs who are out of touch but the political machine. Blears, remember, was so saucily vindictive that she resigned for full damaging effect in the middle of the MEP and Local Council Elections which were a disaster for Gordon Brown. Later, she publicly said that she 'regretted the timing' but there was no doubt as to what was on her mind, as there was no doubt what was on the minds of James Purnell and Caroline Flint. If they were to go, so was their leader. Amid that kind of double dealing and self-interest, Blears was given backing by her local Party. Sadly, I think that the local Labour Party may be horribly out of touch with the views and feelings of the voters in Salford who see Blears for what she is - a poisonous, self-interested fiddler.

I make a public prediction that she will lose her seat at the next election.

Lust For Money Clouds Transparency

One of Michael Martin's almost lunatic lambastes of the Telegraph's revelations on expenses was that the MPs' expenses were due to be published shortly. Yesterday we got the 'redacted' version of them. For those not in the know, redacted means 'doctored'. Much of the extent of what we now know, thanks to the Telegraph leaks, we would not have known. In the name of privacy and security, much of the information was blanked out. For instance, we would never have known that Gordon Brown had paid his brother for a cleaning bill - the whole thing was blanked.

This was the kind of disclosure that the Fees Office and MPs supported and it shows that they were not happy to give up their free-loading and abuse of public money. I still assert that all MPs are paid at minimum a salary in the top 3% of British salaries and have generous allowances to travel and keep an office over and above second home allowances. There was zero need for abuse of the system on a large or small scale - no excuse at all. What MPs fail to realise is that the vast majority of the citizens of this country pay what is owed in taxes, fees, bills and fines out of their take home pay and that is what the Government and the HMRC tell them what they have to do and they do it. For the likes of Blears et al, it's a different system, and even when caught red-handed, they can stand up, smile and pay back only a fraction of what they have abused for and still keep their job and way of life.

Politicians have had a rude awakening, but they will soon be fast asleep again. If the latest elections did not send a message to Salford's Labour Party, I dare say the General Election will.

Off Subject Transparency

Moving away from money, transparency has been a soundbite for this Government which they have carefully guarded. We have had two very unsatisfactory Public Enquiries into things to do with the Iraq War and neither got close to addressing the real issues. So another was announced and its purpose, we were told, was not to apportion blame but to look at what we could learn from it. Once again, we get a carefully controlled remit. Of course, there are more serious matters at stake. The Government made the decision to go to War and all the Cabinet were in on it, including several of today's Ministers. Get a public enquiry to reveal how they doctored information and defied the UN's resolution to go to War and suddenly you open up a case for illegal war and then some personal claims against them. As Blair earns a predicted £12m from his non-executive jobs, faith tours, lectures and book advance, he may sit pretty that he will not get dragged back into the mire.

Thankfully, the growing public pressure on the Government may pay off to some extent. Even previous dignitaries who led enquiries are demanding that all hearings should be in public instead of private hearings only which are the best way to get transparency. We have already seen the Government's colours on this - Jack Straw used the power of veto to suppress the publishing of the minutes of Cabinet meetings that involved the decision making on going to war - a sure sign, as we have seen with MP expenses, that there is something to hide.

We may well yet get a public enquiry that we can actually get to see but you can bet your bottom dollar that it will never address the issue of why we went to war, who fiddled the evidence, who made Ministers vote against their conscience, what really happened to David Kelly and THAT document, who said that there were WMD there, and who ignored that there weren't. None of that will ever get answered, because the truth could finish this Government once and for all, even if they are making a good fist of it now.

Enter The Enterprise Tsar

A superb popular move by Gordon Brown - Alan Sugar is appointed 'Enterprise Tsar'. Of course, no one understands what the job is or why Sugar has capabilities to do it. For those who have experienced his business methods, it is alleged that he is not a shining example of the best of British. His products were mainly poor quality clones and he never really made much wealth from them - his personal fortune came more from property dealings. No matter, his face is the one that delivers the 'You're fired!' on BBC and that was what Brown needed.

Naturally, there was the small matter that The Apprentice is about as true to business as beach football is to the Premier League, but again, no matter. Prim, lefties might argue that The Apprentice shows bad HR governance and subjectivity is the main determining factor for hiring rather then objectivity, hence two pretty girls were left to squabble over a prize that is the kiss of death - working for Alan Sugar. Then again, the standard of the candidates was pretty poor in the first place and hardly representative of modern management capabilities, we would hope.

No matter. Alan Sugar is the face of modern business and the king of enterprise. He is a popular choice, as millions watch his program and numbers don't lie.

Quite what the hell he will do is beyond me, but he's behaving like a politician already as he has a second and third job which he has no intention of giving up.

Round Up

It's a week when Fred Goodwin offered to give back £200,000 per year of his annual pension rights - if only he could give back the jobs of the thousands he displaced by his greedy business deals. He seems to not get it, as with MPs. The fact he negotiated for himself in the first place showed his metal. Giving back some of the money will not save his reputation.

In the US, Bank of America is again in hot water. Having received $45bn of state hand outs, and we already knew its take over of Merrills was a disaster on many counts, it has now been revealed that they allegedly paid $millions in bonuses to Merrills traders in order to 'keep top talent'. That would be the talent that lost the bank billions. It is a symptom of banking executive mentality that they think their businesses cannot survive in the real world without the champagne swigging, fast car driving, expensive suited multi-millionaire whizz kids who can lose them billions overnight and not care a hoot. Well, it seems they have learnt no lessons from the recent catastrophe and it's why there should be wholesale changes not just to the banking system and the regulators - which has not happened - but also vast changes of personnel.

We are setting ourselves up for the next fall and it will be harder and deeper than the last. The profits and bonuses will start to flow again soon and the make-believe world of making profits out of nothing will be the order of the day, as we foot the bill personally and collectively in taxes and our jobs.

Brown regrets that he did not impose a tougher banking system previously but didn't want Britain out of the mainstream. So why hasn't he learned his lesson and fixed it for next time?

Be A Dragon - Get An Ego

If you want a darn good read about those annoying people who have started 'building their own brand', then flip to Jane Simms' article in this month's Director Magazine from the IOD.

I am sure we have all experienced the same as she had done - attending some self-help or business guru's online or live seminar when they start off by spouting on about how many books they have written, what companies they have created and sold, how much their life is better than ours, yada, yada, yada.

I have read many of Thomas Power's (co-founder of www.ecademy.com with his wife, Penny) articles on how the web has gone through phases and is not at the 'Follow me' stage which is represented at the nth degree by www.twitter.com and I have to say that I am not convinced. It all reminds me of those clever adverts you would find at the back of newspapers which tell you how to become a millionaire for a small sum. If you reply to them and pay the money, allegedly you would get a book detailing how to take out an advert in a newspaper saying how you can make someone a millionaire for a small sum - hey presto you become a millionaire and so does the next person ad nauseum.

Tony Blair is at it although 10 years in power, some dodgy dealings and a new job he never turns up to might be seen as a drawbacks, but he's earning nicely thank you at £250k for 90 minute speeches, £4m+ advances for his memoirs, and around £4m per annum for advisory positions at financial institutions. Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and many more have made absolute fortunes out of our ability to get sucked into the promise of a fantastic career, personal fulfilment and large bank balance.

Big Ego, Big Career?

But all this presupposes we have the ego to go do it. Watching the new series of The Apprentice for just a few seconds and it reminded me of all that it is bad in management - this self-belief and lack of depth which seems to be so lauded by Alan Sugar and his gurus. Former Apprentice contestant, Ruth Badger, got her own TV Show doing a 'John Harvey Jones - Troubleshooter' and going in to fix companies essentially off the back of scowling when other people were talking to make them look small or retarded. Character assassination by sarcasm and facial expressions tend to go only so far in business and mercifully I have not seen any new series of such tosh. The late Harvey Jones, meanwhile, made his name building ICI.

Jane Simms points out that Rachel Elnaugh on Dragons' Den has one claim to fame which is starting and busting the company known as 'Red Letter Days' - great concept but poor execution. Yet she has risen from the ashes with a personal brand of some kind of entrepreneurial guru. The difference between many with failed businesses and her is sheer ego, yet why would a failure like Red Letter Days be of particularly good value to others as it was so badly executed?

Ah well, that's for you to find out on one of her smashing 'Entrepreneur Courses'.

There are some who do match ego with success. Simms cites Gordon Ramsay and Richard Branson and they are good examples of well manufactured brands with real substance. Last weekend, Branson flung himself, albeit tentatively by his standards, behind the phoenix-like formed new F1 Team, Brawn. The result was a spectacular PR coup for the master PR man - not only did Team Brawn dominate qualifying to get positions 1 and 2 on the grid but they also occupied the same positions at the race finish - in the team's very first race, and with a British driver at the front. Branson has a real knack of spotting an opportunity and laying out some risk. Team Brawn was hastily put together when Honda pulled out of F1 due to the recession - how they could have done with Branson's nose for an opportunity and stuck it out.

Meanwhile, Peter Jones of Dragons' Den has won a Government contract to set up an Entrepreneur's academy ahead of many an eminent person and team who know plenty about how to teach the skills of business, entrepreneurship and success. He is a man who has made a lot of money over time and has built a fantastic personal brand of late. This is a big risk for him to take as now he has to prove beyond the puerile facial expressions on the show and fats cars that he has more then one success inside him. It will be interesting to see the result.

Personal Branding And Success

It is certainly wise to build something of a personal brand. We all do it - it's the ability of a friend or colleague to actually say what they think we are about if asked. Our brand is the mark we leave on people. You can build that up more by using clever tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, blogs, and having the front to build a business around yourself. The danger always is that there needs to be some level of substance behind it all as no one likes paying for something that does not add value.

So, do as Jane Simms recommends, brand yourself by all means but make sure there is something that underpins it.