Author Archives: Ed

I’ll be neither the first person nor the last to point out the role of storytelling in our working lives. Most of us are, without wishing to sound unkind, suckers for a great narrative: a plotline that has us gripped, wanting adversity to be overcome and for the beleaguered hero’s true worth to be finally recognised. The same isn’t entirely true of films, where our pre-conditioned willingness to accept the whole thing as both fiction and entertainment makes us more willing to ‘cheer on’ an anti-hero than is usually the case with books: for most reader’s, a book has to create a more convincingly ‘real’ world.

So, while you might be tempted to think of your organisation’s on-going goings-on as more like a soap opera or a stirring tale of derring-do, stop for a moment and think of a novel: most novels will do for this, although maybe we could try The Great Gatsby or Wuthering Heights. The reason I’ve suggested these two is to make a finer point about our love of ‘narrative’ – that what we respond to is actually human stories. By which I mean stories about humans, rather than by them. And there is a difference between reading books and living life that should matter to anyone interested in the responses of other to the stories that they tell – and the character that they present.

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There are a fair few tropes that remain perpetual battlegrounds in the world of L&D, HR and OD: profits vs people as an over-riding focus and talent’s opposing ‘nature’ vs. ‘nurture’ battalions spring immediately to mind. One of the more abstract of these perennial topics is the divide between process and creativity – or perhaps we should say the perceived divide. We’re not the only people to have trotted round the block a few times on this one: indeed, we’ve written about it before here in several contexts – including HR’s impact on innovation, Google’s Innovation Time Off policy and the story of MIT’s Building 20, and jazz (not once but twice).

That this is an issue that will probably never leave us is well-illustrated by a blog post by Todd Williams, although the apparently inflammatory title – Process Stifles Creativity – was perhaps a rather knowing case of squirting lighter fluid onto the bonfire. Todd’s themes are more balanced than his title suggests, but one sentence very much stood out for me:

People are not rewarded for being creative with the process; in fact, the reaction is quite the opposite.”

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It’s Neil’s turn to get his tats out on this week’s episode of The Apprentice as the phone call comes in at 6am. They’re off to the Tower of London – sadly as tourists rather than prisoners – and have to take an overnight bag. Jason, ever practical, packs his enormous teddy bear. Jordan reminds Alex that Welshmen can be legally killed at the Tower at 9am. I silently want to recommend a challenge set in Chester, where crossbows can still be legally used against the Welsh pretty much anytime. Ah, the joy of bylaws.

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As The Apprentice mansion still doesn’t run to an alarm clock, it’s Jason’s turn to answer the phone at Silly O’clock: this time it’s 6am. And very fetching he looks in his towel and tattoos. (The level of tattooing on the candidates is quite striking, although none of them appear to have taken the opportunity to have the odd sneaky crib-card inked about their person. Or sold any skin for advertising. Oh, the lost opportunities …)

We’re treated to the usual intro sequence, with only two exceptions: the addition of ludicrously over-stirring classical background music and the revelation that they are not only in dormitories but in sleeping bags. The future of British industry is, it appears, effectively camping in a mansion. A youth hostel would surely have been cheaper? (And why, only once as far I recall, has one team taking the phone call and ‘forgotten’ to tell the others: the evidence is available on YouTube for those of you feeling maliciously inclined.) We are, however, still treated to the modest asides to camera. Neil needs to get back on the horse, which I hope is a metaphor rather than a slang reference. Rebecca wants to show what she’s capable of: we’re spared any shot of what she might have in her hands. A grapefruit knife perhaps, or a mutilated wax doll?

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It’s 4.30am in Apprenticeland and the phone is ringing. We are treated to the vision of Jason in his stripy jim-jams, being far more polite into a receiver than I might be that early in the day: ah, the transformational power of knowing you’re being watched. If only it lasted …

The ‘everyone hurtling around getting ready’ sequence is its usual regrettable self. Knowing that they’re going to Dubai, Fran (I think) is wondering which of her bikinis to take. Not a garment the locals are big on in the UAE, my dear, but why did you bring a selection of bikinis to The Apprentice in the first place. And in a transparent set-up, we are presented with this week’s evictee from the outset. Zee – who I didn’t feel I needed to know wears a nipple ring – is already crowing about his local knowledge. There’s a watery trap in this series called “This Task Has Got My Name On It”, and Zee’s designer socks are already soaking wet, I fear. More perplexingly, Myles – fully dressed, unusually – is quoting the Bible at Fran in the back of a cab. I’d expect such a metropolitan man of the world to try a smoother line of chat, but life is full of surprises. Even if The Apprentice doesn’t always follow suit. (The relationship between the programme and ‘real life’ is a very odd one on many levels.)

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Here we go again. Over swelling musical motifs, slo-mo footage of meaningfully fondled cufflinks. As voiceover man tells us about the original 16 potential business partners, the screen shows someone in bio-hazard gear and rubber gloves, grimacing as they agitate something that is possibly edible. Or was once. Will the girls finally show us what they’re made of – other than claws, paranoia and eyeliner? Can they think outside the box, rather than just thinking “A box? Right you, outside …”. Not one but two broadsheets (The Telegraph and The Independent) have just published articles that boil down to ‘why are people still watching this?’ without really coming up with answers. It’s a not a question I feel like taking on at 9am on a Thursday. But I already have watched, and I’m none the wiser.

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The most startling moment of this episode – officially called, with blinding insight, Flat-Pack – happened a few minutes in, and I’ve been trying to have my retinas repaired ever since. Earlier in the series than usual, The Apprentice played the ‘everyone was relaxing at home on a day off, with a camera crew – as you do’ trope, and the remaining 14 contenders (I use the word loosely) suddenly found themselves with thirty minutes to reapply the bling. Girls scampered along luxury corridors, hectically searching for trowels so they could re-do their eye make-up. Meanwhile, not content with flashing his abs at us in a towel last week, Myles decided that the most appropriate way to behave on camera in a men’s dorm is to wiggle across our eye line in a thong. In a programme with no audience voting, I was left wondering which bottom line he was most eager to demonstrate familiarity with. His own, possibly? Fundamental mistake there, Myles. Oh well, maybe he was just showing us his best side …

Thereafter, the jokes continued to phone themselves through. These week’s challenge – delivered, please note, without any fanfare about its central importance to the economy or any other brouhaha – is to design, prototype and pitch an item of flatpack furniture, with a maximum RRP of £75. Before the phrase has left voice-over man’s lips, I am already thinking ‘yep, strictly two dimensional’ and ‘a child of five could do it’ (and the related jokes). But can 14 children aged between 22 and 39 do it? By the time you are reading this, all bets are off. Do not call now: you may still be charged and your opinion will be disregarded. (For those struggling with maths, the RRP limit is slightly more than half of the TV licence fee you have already paid to be seeing this.)

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The title, given that this post is written in response to an external blog post (Ian Gee’s very thought-provoking “Sentiment isn’t just for Sympathy Cards!”), is somewhat cheeky, but I hope that I can go on to demonstrate that an IT-based response to the ‘softness’ of HR issues can – and perhaps inevitably will – trigger an HR-related reaction that can’t help but wonder about the ‘hardness’ of IT solutions.

Ian, on the basis of his profile, has a long and successful track record in the corporate sphere, focusing largely on OD: he knows, we can safely assume, whereof he speaks. As he acknowledges, there are really two issues at play in the area he is currently addressing. The superficial problem – to use the wrong adjective, I admit, but to call it ‘the presenting problem’ would be to potentially confuse management speak with psychologists’ jargon – is how to gauge opinion, feeling and atmosphere amongst the human resources (or ‘people’, as we refer to them outside the office). But there is an underlying problem: the opinions and thoughts that most need to be swayed are those of the occupants of the C Suite, for whom measurement is a matter of firmness, definitiveness and bottom lines. They are not a group of individuals much moved by ‘data’ such as “We have had some informal feedback to the effect that …”

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The one with the brewery. There’s no need for a spoiler, is there? Lord Sugar even utters the immortal line, although you’re made to wait about 47 minutes for it. It doesn’t constitute either suspense or surprise. And given that most of us recognise the human ability to make a fool of ourselves over alcohol (this is a blog, not a confessional, let’s keep things general …), mixing fifteen idiots and a brewery was always going to be a little predictable. Oh well, down the hatch …

It’s 6am in the Apprentimansion. Jason is wearing the kind of stripey jimjams that would make most viewers over a certain age (or of a certain disposition) think of Rock Hudson. Luisa’s Doris Day impersonation, meanwhile, is way off the mark. It’s the series’ habitual soft-porn/candidates-in-their-undergarments section, and the lads have got their tats out for the lasses. Myles impersonates an old Badedas bath foam advert for the cameraman’s benefit, but I’d have thought the chances of a seasoned film crew succumbing to his over-advertised charm at 6.02am were a little thin. Neil, episode 1’s gruellingly relentless back-seat driver, meanwhile reveals a physical quirk. Despite having one of those beards that disappears down his neck, his chest is as bald as his ambition. For at least one good reason, someone needs to deal with that man with a cut-throat razor.

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In the “You’ve Been Fired” follow-on programme for Episode 2, Dara O’Briain demonstrated how a change of background music can alter our perception of a piece of footage. The winning team strolling around a Belgian square could be either edgy or comic, depending on the accompanying score. (Left as just a dialogue track, of course, it remained tragic, but music’s awesome power can’t change everything.)

Throughout Episodes 1 & 2 of Series 9 – and two episodes on consecutive nights really was in danger of being too much of a good thing – I often had an imaginary alternative soundtrack. “Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.” And if Mrs Ampaw-Farr was watching, you might want to pay more attention to Noel Coward than Lord Sugar next time opportunity knocks. Yes, here we are again with The Apprentice. 16 fresh hopefuls, spouting like a school of whales and as estranged from modesty as they are from understatement.

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