I am now currently playing with Google Earth as I am posting. Just watched the Amazing Race about 2 hours ago and I just can't get enough of it. Also, I am eagerly waiting for the Apprentice this Sunday, after seeing last week's task really heat up.
Now I shall comment about this controversy that Excel was unethical in "stealing" capital edge's megaphones during the Shania Twain perfume promotion task. Since I had heard about this business ethics controversy in the US after this episode was aired, I really wanted to see whether Randal and Rebecca were unethical, so I paid attention to every itsy-bitsy move of the candidates from both teams.
In my opinion, Randal and Rebecca did nothing wrong, but instead, they were so smart and quick (though Rebecca had a broken ankle) that they eventually managed to beat Capital Edge to those megaphones. In fact, I should say, Capital Edge made a whole lot of blunders on this task that were advantageous to Excel.
Let's look at it closely.
Yes, Adam had reserved megaphones from Radio shack first and told the Radio Shack staff that his team would collect them the next day, but he made a big mistake: he did not confirm his order with a credit card. Darn, he had not even left his name or his team name over at Radio Shack! All he did was to say, "3 of us would come and collect the megaphones." At least Excel had the courtesy to ask who reserved it and when the Radio Shack said that they didn't know who it was, they were absolutely smart and quick to carry out according to Randal, "Operation Sabotage!" Nice strategy of you guys rushing there early and buying all of the megaphones available and crippling the other team.
And there came Alla crying over this whole affair saying that they would win because the other team played dirty. No way; they played fair, but because they played smart, you lost.
In business, it's all about making the smart moves. If you make some careless blunders such as not reserving things under your name properly, then obviously you are bound to lose out. The margin was way too close: Excel beat Capital Edge by just 5 calls, but consider this: Rebecca had a broken ankle and this was a street task. So according to me, in a street task, if a physically able team with 3 people can lose to a team which has only 2, and one of them has a broken ankle, then the loss is embarrassing and huge.
OK, now to the Boardroom: I felt Adam certainly deserved to stay for another week because so far, I have never seen anyone participate in this interview process with as much grace as he did. Not only did he show that ethics are important in business, he also contributed as much as he could to the success of any task, especially this one. I can't agree with Bill's comment that he didn't have any fire in his belly. He actually did. Yes, his horse carriage idea was useless, but that was not really the reason Capital edge lost. They lost because they did not employ enough advertisers to promote Shania's new perfume. Moreover, the advertisers were all Spanish speaking people who didn't even know how to pronounce a single word in English. And who's fault was that? Felisha's. She was in charge of the labor but she did a bad job of not getting a large group of English-speaking advertisers. But she too was not responsible. In fact it's the project manager Alla who spent 60 % of the budget on horses and hence she should have ben fired. As a leader, you have to know how to maximize the use of resources; if not, your team is going to suffer. When you know that the horse carriage idea is going to be a big drain on your budget, scrap it, or try to work out a tighter budget. This move shows poor planning skills.
Ok, that's it for now. I will talk about Amazing race later...
posted @ 2:13 PM
