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Fired, hired or uninspired... Does Sir Alan's formula really do the business?
Sir Alan Sugar has finally chosen Lee McQueen as his fourth Apprentice. But can business learn from his abrasive style?
THE would-be protgs unctuously refer to Sir Alan as "the Master" and suchlike. For 12 weeks, they've slithered about in ever-decreasing numbers, trying to impress and ingratiate themselves with him in order to secure a 100,000 job as his new disciple.
This year's crop were shortlisted for the show from 20,000 applicants, having presumably impressed producers that they were prepared to do almost anything (including eating each other) to get a leg-up in business, or at least find themselves a niche in the media if they didn't win the competition to learn at the knee of the man who's spent months shredding them in the board room.
For the uninitiated, we're talking about The Apprentice, the smash-hit TV show whose four series have incrementally cornered an audience of 8.5 million for Wednesday night viewing which many spend the rest of the week talking about obsessively.
Some watch so they can loudly voice their loathing of Sir Alan; others just love the constant aggro, as candidates live and work together, gradually forget about the cameras, showing their true – and often gruesome – colours.
In order to find his perfect recruit, Sir Alan dishes out tasks, performed by competing teams with randomly-appointed leaders. Marketing greetings cards, selling pizzas, renting out sports cars and finding a kosher chicken in a Moroccan market have figured among the tests.
At the end of each show one team wins, and the leader of the other team must finger the couple of colleagues who've contributed most to the failure. They are flayed alive in the board room by The Boss, and the weakest links usually lay into each other. Ultimately at least one walks the plank, when Sir Alan barks: "You're fired."
That's it, in a nutshell. It's now over for another year, but it seems some business types around the country have been moved to wonder if they should be taking a leaf out of Sir Alan's book, by dishing out the tongue lashing and character assassination.
The Association of Recruitment Consultants has apparently had queries from members, wondering if they should be changing their style. Are they simply confusing reality TV with real life? Is The Apprentice a blueprint for how to catch the right man or woman for the job, or is it more properly a lesson in how to get it wrong?
Anne Watson, whose international recruitment consultancy Executive Focus is based in North Yorkshire, says she's an avid viewer of The Apprentice, as it gives a view of how people behave in the workplace which can't be replicated in a real-life recruitment situation.
"Everyone I know is talking about it. If you put aside the fact that it's a TV programme, and the candidates are probably after the spotlight of TV more than they're after the job with Sir Alan, the long-term focus on them shows Sir Alan what they are truly like.
"Previous winner Michelle Dewberry said she was self-conscious at first, but soon forgot the cameras or always thinking about being seen in her best light, because the work was so intense and the competition
so tough.
"I think it has shown that the real process of recruitment for critical appointments in business needs to be longer. People are much more rehearsed these days, having learned answers and researched everything. Digging down to the real them is very difficult. You have to get past what they've achieved to how they'll behave.
"The programme shows people week after week, and what you think about someone in week four can have changed completely by week eight or nine. You question decisions you made about people early on. Sir Alan puts people in a dozen situations and sees them in a new light each time. That can't be mirrored exactly in how we do things, but we have to try and test them similarly by meeting lots of times in different places at different times, sometimes throwing unexpected things at them."
Victoria Tomlinson, chief executive of Northern Lights PR in Harrogate, says The Apprentice has served a good purpose in showing the basic nuts and bolts of business and making the whole process more approachable and understandable to the public: "I hope it'll inspire people to start their own businesses. What it's about is finding the candidate who best understands that to succeed you need to create a product people want to buy, learn how to sell it, get the finances right, and motivate those around you. It's brilliant at showing that.
"As for Sir Alan, well he's got a management style that's not normal these days, although you have to respect other people's ways of working. Many of his own staff have worked with him for a long time, so you have to assume that what we're seeing of him on TV is not necessarily what goes on all the time."
Jackie Ford, professor of leadership and organisational studies at Bradford University Management School, says Sir Alan makes her blood boil and The Apprentice is an object lesson in how not to manage
or recruit.
"There are many factors that can add to stress levels at work – lack of control, long hours, not being listened to, unclear management, for instance. All of them are there in this programme. Sir Alan himself, as a remote, isolated figurehead is not at all characteristic of leadership in business today, and he is forever knocking people's self-esteem.
"Taking a lead today is not about being some mythical, god-like creature. It's about interaction of equals, rather than establishing a master-slave relationship, as seen here.
"The Apprentice has a blood sport entertainment value, but in terms of useful tips on management, it's more of a How Not To..."
A warning to anyone still thinking of emulating The Master's management style comes from Andrew Lightburn, an employment lawyer at Shulmans in Leeds. He says the programme has been littered with episodes of bullying and harassment, between Sir Alan and the candidates and between the competitors themselves.
"At one point, one of the male competitors turned on one of the women for not pulling her weight in the house. He laid into her in front of the others. If this were a real workplace, she would have a clear harassment grievance to take to an employment tribunal.
"Similarly, Michael was trashed in the boardroom by Sir Alan, who challenged him to prove he was the 'nice Jewish boy' he portrayed himself as by dropping his trousers. That is a clear act of religious discrimination. In a real life situation, he would win compensation of maybe 5,000, and the manager who was found guilty of discrimination would be fired."
Nor would any boss these days get away with sacking an employee in the Sir Alan Sugar manner, says Lightburn. "Criticising them openly in front of others would be seen as harassment and simply sacking anyone by shouting 'You're fired!' at them can't be done without serious repercussions."
It surely says something important about Sir Alan and his values that, from a shortlist of individuals many recruiters would never even glance at, he chose the odious, hard-nosed Lee McQueen, who lied on his CV and comes across as the kind of bloke who'd stop at very little to get to the main chance.
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