'The Apprentice' is back

Sir Alan Sugar starts the long gruelling process of whittling down 16 entrepreneurial wannabes down to one who then gets the six figure salary and becomes Sir Alan's latest apprentice.

The reason this is classic viewing is that we have all worked with managers like this. They know best and have all these wonderful ideas which often go wrong. If it does go wrong it is certainly not their fault, it was the team that implemented it. If the worst comes to the worst they can always move on to the next company or project with their reputation intact.

I call them 'pigeon' managers, they come in crap over everything, then fly off leaving the rest of the team to clear up the mess. You can often find them re-inventing the wheel, trying something again that didn't work five years ago, talking in business code or schmoozing with the high and mighty.

The candidates are the usual mix of entrepreneurs, managers and assorted others. It will take a couple of weeks to get to know the different characters but it was nice to see they all started off by making the same mistakes as in previous series. Did these people bother doing any research?

Week 1 was coffee selling and as in most of these tasks there were a couple of simple ideas that the teams needed to grasp. In this project it was to get your stock levels right and get the location for your mobile vending van right.

The boys team had a minor problem with the stock when they bought the coffee but nothing major and they made good use of the mobile coffee van.

I was not overly impressed with the management skills of Jadine, she had two very good salesmen on the mobile van and she interfered with them and held them back. Had the other team been a real threat this could have lost her the match and possibly her job. Iron control will not work with these type of people, they need a certain amount of autonomy and more freedom when they are winning. You only need to step in if things are going wrong.

Jardine also got obsessed about the eclipse branding insisting that all cappuccinos had the eclipse logo sprinkled on the top. This is fine but brand is for long term customer loyalty and repeat visits, there was absolutely no need to be obsessed about it when they only had one day.

The girls team failed completely both with stock and the mobile van. The people Andy let take control of those key operations were incompetent and he needed to step in. Ultimately he paid the price Sir Alan values leadership skills and clearly sees it as a skill that cannot be easily trained or developed but must be present in some form.

I have no doubt that both Sophie and Gerri will be back in the boardroom as they will make the same mistakes again. If Andy had not taken the bullet it would have been a difficult choice between the two but I think Sophie would have gone, she just doesn't seem to have the business acumen that Sir Alan wants. Although it is still early days and time will tell.

The BBC website is good although I wanted to mention that giving Jo from last year a column is a bit of a mistake. Sadly she is a member of the HR profession and was an example last year of everything that is wrong with HR.

Next week is all about doggy products, should be interesting.