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Business Rule #14:
Perception Counts
December 17, 2004
(PAGE 3 of 6)
What about Jennifer Massey? Personally, I would want to have a talented, well-educated lawyer on my side any day of the week over a successful military man. Now—before the hate posts start appearing on the message board decrying that “LaVelle is against the military!”—for the record, I’m not. I have a great deal of respect for the military and all of its courageous soldiers who should be home for the holidays instead of overseas. But in respect to my business and my company, a lawyer is better equipped to deal with real-estate situations where there are endless legal obligations and innumerable contracts that have to be read and examined. An attorney would be better suited for the job.
Those may be the hard-and-true realities, but the all-important perception is that a West Point graduate is ready to be a leader! Groomed for success! Ready to use right out of the box! Perception won out over the hard facts once again, and everyone completely bought into it.
You’re probably wondering what I thought of the first-season outcome. Well, I must admit, I thought it was fair. I was rooting for Kwame—I really was! But I too would have fired him—if, for no other reason, than his hand-selecting Omarosa for his team! What was he thinking?! Heading into the final task, Kwame was awash in great perception. He had a superb pedigree that made him seem destined for Trump’s side. But alas, his performance on that final task really showed what can happen with a terrible team, improper management, and not enough real-world experience to hone your skills. It killed the perception.
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Perception. You can’t away from it. The perception is that The Apprentice is all about business and learning how to run a company. Well, I can tell you that a lot of armchair MBA’s have sprung up over the last year claiming to have the answers as doled out from The Apprentice. It’s only after you take a long hard look at an episode—especially from this current season—that you can unravel what the real business lesson is. Odd firings, boring tasks, and completely fairy-tale outcomes plagued this season so much that I often had to wonder if some shows had been scripted. Even as I write this, Chris Webber is filing suit against the show for claiming that he was supposed to host the charity basketball game when in fact, he says, he was never approached about it at all.
So why do we love The Apprentice if it’s chock full of misrepresentations and is devoid of substantive business advice? I’ll tell you why: we like watching a celebrated tycoon rip regular people to shreds on national TV. It’s a perverse thrill related to our own self-inflated sense of career importance. Trump’s good friend, Michael Douglass, once said that Trump is a “great actor.” A true compliment indeed from a great actor. But Douglass was, in a way, really complimenting himself, because Trump merely portrays a character famously brought to life by Douglass in the Oliver Stone film, Wall Street: Gordon Gekko. The only difference is that Trump does it with a keener sense of self-promotion. Trump is what would happen if Don King got Gordon Gekko pregnant.
The Apprentice is completely about idealized perception, and everyone buys into it—and that’s great because it really drives my point home. Let’s look at it this way: The Apprentice draws particularly good numbers in the affluent, well-educated, upwardly mobile 18 – 49 year old demographic that is most coveted by advertisers. Not surprisingly, these are the same folks who buy Trump’s books, stay in his hotels, live in his buildings (or at least aspire to), play golf on his courses, and collectively fund his lavish lifestyle.
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The perception is that The Apprentice is all about business and learning how to run a company.
