We start in the Champagne Bar at St Pancras at 6.30am. On the way there in the cab, Ricky is already giving it 110% with the verbals, while Gab and Tom look like they want to kill someone. Possibly Ricky. Lordalan sets the scene by plugging the quality of English Sparkling Wine. In truth, he’s right: it really has won several credible international wine awards. But it’s up against the brand awareness of champagne, and it sorely needs public awareness of its competitive quality. The task is to prepare a website and video as an online ad. Although, perhaps with an unspoken nod to the emergence of technocratic administrations as a solution to crisis, this week’s task will be judged on the basis of the inputs of an industry expert panel. The horse may be dead, but at least they’re not flogging it for once.

I’ve approved of this method of judging in the past, not least because it allows the candidates to receive feedback – albeit partly indirectly – from the task’s client: the element of learning – which should be central to the concept of ‘apprentice’ – is momentarily restored. And the client quite possibly learns something about providing constructive feedback in challenging circumstances. But the actual tasks beg the question as to whether Lordalan is searching for a business partner or a PR trainee, even if they do move us on slightly from scoring people on their ability to punt tat.

The other members of Team Pheonix (Nick, Adam, Jade) elect Tom, the wine trader, for his second consecutive week as PM. He takes Adam to a vineyard and then runs a wine tasting, during which they both get visibly and unprofessionally bladdered for our ‘entertainment’. Tom retains a modicum of composure, while Adam possibly still has some blood left in his alcohol stream. He’s learned how to hold his glass (stem and base), but not his drink. Meanwhile, Nick and Jade brief a website, and would appreciate more input and less fizz-sampling. Jade’s contribution isn’t particularly obvious either.

They do a competent job, but by gearing the website around detailing producers, stockists (the constant maintenance of which is a no-no in website terms – I speak from 10 years’ experience producing them) and ‘where to buy’ they have drifted a fair way from the brief. This is, as Karren points out, a website for people who’ve already bought the idea and now want to simply buy the actual stuff. For the second week, there is the suggestion that Tom only feels safe working in areas where he has existing knowledge but doesn’t quite grasp the central requirement of the brief.

Their video, shot in a bistro pub as a typical English celebratory gathering (bubbles at wine bar prices in a time of austerity?), sees Jade wanting to shoot Adam but is also … competent. It mentions quality and awards, but it’s sadly lacking in excitement. The choice of a song called Regret as the backing music escapes comment, except from the world’s bloggers and forum trolls. Apart from the song’s title, I quietly wonder if rousing guitar chords say ‘quality’ to most people, even if it is the most likely soundtrack in yer average bistro boozer. At least the band (New Order) were English, but the track is also 19 years old. And as The Telegraph (of all papers) points out:

The Mancunian electro pioneers are more Boddingtons-and-drugs than champagne, I’d have thought.”

I’d have gone with Rumer: English, young, contemporary and classy. But I’m the kind of man who drinks cava on a schoolnight and actually listens to Miles Davis: I might not be the demographic.

Over at Sterling (Ricky, Jenna, Steve, Gab), they all want to lead but Ricky gets the minority victory. The programme telegraphs who will be putting the plonk into plonker from an early stage. Gab and Steve visit Tesco to look at sparkling wines. Yes, really. While Gab studies label designs, colours, logos – the things (apart from price) most of us buy wine on the basis of – Steve spends an age asking if the store has a sommelier they can consult. Behave, young man: when did your branch of Tesco last have a sommelier on hand to guide in your choice of aperitif? Slap him, someone: there’s still time.

This focused input is followed up by suggestions on brand names. Skipping over the suggestion of ‘Chink’ (streuth …), he alights on ‘Grandeur’. They are raising awareness of the quality of an English produce in a market totally dominated by the French. Belissimo! [sic] To my astonishment, no-one beats him to death with a dictionary or disembowels him with a corkscrew when he so richly deserves both. (And I’m still missing Lewis, for crying out loud.)

Ricky, who doesn’t even like wine, is making David and Goliath comparisons with Phoenix, and casting himself as David. (For those without a training in classics, a strapping amateur wrestler is casting himself as a little weed with a slingshot. We’re spared the leotard.) He is, however, totally up for the challenge, although he also has every faith in his team. (This is the kind of decision that distinguishes disaster – which can happen to anyone – from tragedy.) He takes on board the vineyard’s points and co-opts a verbal format from Tony Blair, high priest of British credible public speaking, to announce that his focus will be ‘Quality, quality, quality’.

His mighty faith is then entrusted to the hands of Steve (who’s already gifted the team not just ‘Grandeur’ but ‘Less fizz, more sparkle’ and ‘Oozes quality from every pore’) and Jenna (who wants to get married in or on a throne – hopefully a real throne rather than a vernacular one). Men in cheap shiny suits may well ooze – preferably off camera, so soon after dinner – but it’s a definite contender for a verb never to use within a million miles of any campaign focusing on quality. I don’t want to drink anything that oozes at any price.

Despite their verbal telephone reassurances to Ricky, Jenna and Steve proceed to use ‘humour’ in the video. We can forget champagne at this point: suddenly the global domination of the French cheese industry is under severe threat. An initial flavour of wood is quickly swamped by a tidal wave of cheap cheddar. Jilly Goulden would struggle for adjectives with this one. For 40 seconds or so, I’m transported to a world of ITV sitcoms from the 1970s, but less competently executed. How Ricky doesn’t weep – or, given his extra-mural pursuits, beat the pair of them to a pulp – when he sees the video remains a mystery. Maybe we should add understatement and self-restraint to his portfolio of skills? On the bright side, the website is … well, it’s ok. Black, white and gold. Looks expensive and says ‘quality’, despite that oozing malarkey. And Gab’s logo – which merges an English rose bud with a champagne glass – is possibly the one component of both team’s efforts that has actually totally nailed the brief.

The panel, despite looking like they’ve been served chilled in pre-frosted glasses, are surprisingly polite. That’s true class for you. Perhaps they could consult for Mr Hewer on eyebrow deployment? Even Karren is developing facial tics. The Pheonix website and ad don’t visibly move anyone, but they don’t totally distress anyone either. The unspoken conclusion – which Lordalan will later amplify – is that they are knowledgeable, reasonably well executed, but somewhat off the point. A pitch for the existing wine connoisseur who right now might prefer a mug of cocoa.

For Sterling, Ricky pitches with his usual confidence and skill (he really is good at delivering a pitch – even this one), the logo is admired, and the website leaves eyebrows unmoved in any direction (12 hours after taking notes while watching the programme, I can barely recall it) beyond those straplines. And then they show the ad. Somehow managing to leave their pistols in their holsters, the panel ask if they have found similarly flippant adverts on other champagne websites. As questions go, that’s up there with “Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?” In a moment of undoubted innovation, Jenna and Steve had brought new meaning to the phrase ‘disaster movie’.

These tropes get rehearsed again in the Boardroom before it becomes apparent that this was a challenge for one team to lose rather than win. Despite Tom repeating his weaknesses of focusing on his knowledge rather than the brief, that video has holed Sterling below the waterline. Team Tom go off to toast each other in a rooftop Jacuzzi. An episode that has already tested my stomach lining treats me to some rather pasty and surprisingly flabby young entrepreneurs wearing too little for comfort. Dear BBC: this isn’t Miss World. We can live without the swimwear round, ok?

Gab, who had grasped the requirement (we need to brief a design team and understand the competition) and contributed a fantastic logo, was duly spared blame and further embarrassment. And when she outlines Steve’s failings, he demonstrates his listening skills by asking for specifics: this is like watching a drowning man asking for water.

Ricky, who must be feeling monumentally let down at this point, correctly brings back Steve and Jenna. They choose to demonstrate their self-awareness by electing to stand totally behind the decisions they made. They continue to do this even after Lordalan (who – whether or not he wrote his own words– shows the on-screen awareness to admit people compare him to Sid James) nearly explodes with disbelief at the video’s sub-Carry On aesthetic. Even a Victoria Wood song about British wine drinkers who put their sprouts on in November couldn’t have done a worse job of raising brand visibility. They even play the responsibility card, despite all the evidence that what they had been responsible for was ignominious defeat.

Nick Hewer backs Ricky’s assertions that he had adamantly stressed the need to promote quality above all in the video. Jenna finally calls the video ‘a mistake’. While Ricky might have chosen to visit the shoot, Steve – for his articulacy – was there, and didn’t stop her. Ricky, who has now lost twice as PM, points out Steve’s main skill: deflecting accountability. It’s not a great self-defence speech, but its accuracy saves him.

Steve bangs his drum by pointing out he won as PM, has been on 6 out of 8 winning teams, and has never been in the final three before. No-one has the nerve to point out just how lucky he’s been. Jenna maintains she doesn’t shy away from anything and works hard consistently. She has, however, lost five times and her ability to take it on the chin is starting to look like lacking the awareness that it’s time to step out of the ring. Her cab is called. Steve is told that’s he’s amazingly lucky not be joining her, and that he’s a PM next week no matter what the task. In a week of understated judgments, how lucky he’s just been is possibly the most glaring.

In showing that – in real life – winning is sometimes a matter of losing less thoroughly than the others, the episode has sounded a rare note of actual reality. By avoiding a mercenary ‘counting the float’ judgement, it’s also chosen to avoid making decisions on the basis of a very flaky simulation of actual business practice. As a recruitment practice example, I’m still scratching my head a little. Steve and Jenna should both have been shown the door in no uncertain manner, preferably by having their heads slammed into one. Of all the contestants, only Gab emerged with any real glory by making a good contribution despite circumstances. Nick’s lack of questioning of the slant of the website should have attracted more attention. Jade continued to be better at criticising others than offering a better alternative. Ricky’s input was fine, but his faith in Steve and Jenna was misguided and he needed to rule with a firmer fist. Adam ‘choreographed’ an uninspiring video: he didn’t mess up, but it didn’t strengthen his case either.

Tomorrow night, I can go home and watch Lewis on the TiVo. Fingers crossed that the whodunit will take more deciphering. In the meantime, the closing words of Regret:

Just wait till tomorrow
I guess that’s what they all say
Just before they fall apart”

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• They’re talking about dining on expenses, right?
• Do they mean ‘dine alone’, but they’re too embarrassed to say so?
• Do they want me to recall that bit in Nudge about a drinks party organised on strict economic principles? Because I don’t …

In the event, the article was really nothing of the sort. It was plugging a book – Tyler Cowen’s An Economist Gets Lunch – that the journalist had chosen to present as applying “an economist’s cold logic to the world of food”. Mr Cowen may be a professor of the dismal science, but he also writes a foodie blog, and reading around the reviews – no, I’ve not bothered with the book – I get the feeling the foodie in him generated the desire for a book that the economist in him has found a way to pitch.

Consider the following snippet from USA Today’s review:

[…] a mind-bending book for non-economists. Cowen offers lots of mantras for foodies, the dominant mantra reading like this: “Food is a product of economic supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed.”

Pardon my quoting Homer Simpson at this point but … “doh!” Eating somewhere where I’m not subsidising an army of greeters, where the ingredients are fresh and I get value for money and something that tastes good didn’t strike me so much as economics but common sense. I got the feeling that the book might leave my mind no more bent than it already is. Besides which, these are lessons that were readily learnable not just from the evidence your wallet and tastebuds should have gathered over the years, but from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, published 12 years ago.

If your mother hadn’t already told you, Bourdain dispensed sage advice such as not eating fish in restaurants on Mondays (as it’s almost certainly been bought in on Friday). And with Bourdain you also get drugs, violence, sex and rock’n’roll. Depending on your own taste, that might get you salivating rather more than the prospect of a banquet of calculations and equations. Oh, just me then? I always was a messy eater …

But what does interest me is the choice of angle. Unless I’m seriously mistaken, the book is not about how to eat well for less. We’re not really talking about nutrition here, but about why doing something in the style of an economist is … well, the shorthand adjective is ‘sexier’. I can grasp the allure of a crisply laid table cloth, or even the bohemian charm of covering a rickety table with an old kaffiah if we’re talking authentic ethnic fare in a genuinely ethnic bistro (something that seems to press Cowen’s buttons). But this is proposing that dinner is somehow more tempting when it’s eaten off a cost-managed furniture item that has been laid with a carefully compiled spread sheet.

At this point, I blanch (sorry) a little. Where is the enjoyment of good food, the sense of occasion, the joy of sitting down with others? Even where the available extracts are about economics, I’m not sure I’d agree. Consider the following:

It feels greener to buy from the local farmer than to patronize a large, multinational banana company, but perhaps with a dubious political history at that. But there’s nothing especially virtuous about the local farmer, even if it feels good to affiliate him.”

I don’t vet my local farmer’s market stalls for their political allegiances or ask them to fill in morality questionnaires, but I can’t help but argue that buying from them not just lowers my costs but also means I’m investing in my local community. I don’t just want to eat well, I want to live in a region with a healthy local economy too. My local farmers market also swarms with Green Party members, and I think they do actually have a point or two about food miles, pollution from transportation and so on. And I thought I was supposed be looking for fresh supplies? I know bananas don’t grow in Buckinghamshire, and I accept that I’ll have to submit to Bid Bad Multinationals for much of what goes down my gullet. But I’m buying dinner, not selling a case.

Selling a case, as in an economic argument, seems to be Cowen’s strength, at least judging by the responses he has invoked. The Spectator Book Club recommends the book:

[…] if you want to talk some economic sense into your leftie friends over a dinner table […]“

while Boston.com finished its review with a fitting riposte:

Advice to Mr. Cowen: Books are the product of supply and demand. Readers hunger for supplies that are fresh. This particular supply, to put it kindly, serves up a pale, desiccated, maddening dish.”

My main learning point from all this is that members of the Spectator Book Club are assumed to have ‘leftie friends’. Who knew? Meanwhile, whatever the demand Mr Cowen has sought to stimulate, the Washington Post, New York Times and Serious Eats have been quick to supply less than kind reviews. I will, I suspect, be following the wisdom of the market on this occasion.

Business is business, but it bothers me that the implicit message is that the way to sell us a book about eating is to make dinner into business too. I eat of necessity, of course, but I like my necessities to be life-affirming too. I have shopped in obscure ethnic stores for decades, and can knock you up a thoroughly decent armlov, with a lovely bowl of gatnabour to follow. For a table of four, I can do that for about £4.50 a head and blow the rest on merlot. And, provided I wanted to invite you in the first place, you can make yourself at home while you eat.

I have to eat, so I like to make shopping, cooking and eating enjoyable – for me and for those I share the occasion with. I have to be able to afford the ingredients, of course, but a complete diet includes a dollop of love, a tablespoon or two of joie de vivre and a generous splash of joy. That goes some way beyond conducting a cost-benefit analysis, and – for me at least – also involves avoiding dining with people who leave me with the impression that their wallets and sphincters are pursed so tightly that they probably float in their bath. (No doubt with the water heated on an overnight tariff.)

In olden days, we used to test people whose morals and behaviours we distrusted to see if they floated in ponds: any sign of being watertight and it was straight off for the public burning. Since then, we claim to have been making progress …

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Anyway, this time the teams will be picking two urban artists to represent in cutting edge galleries – which turns out to mean Brick Lane again (presumably Whitechapel Gallery wouldn’t play ball) – and attempting to complete a sale to a corporate client, who they will meet to gather information for a brief. It is mere milliseconds before the voiceover, and several of the contestants, start mentioning Banksy. The art gallery-goer in me squirms a little, until I realise that’s the point.

I may have exhibited and sold work in the past as an experimental calligrapher, and I might be off to a friend’s Private View tomorrow night, but this is a programme about business decisions and making sales. Part of the point is to name-drop artists people might have heard of. I might be waiting for anyone to be knowledgeable enough to mention the seminal influence of Blek Le Rat on the recent modishness of stencil-based defacing of the built environment, but I just need to get out more and watch less BBC 4. And at least Adam comparing Banksy to The Stig is quite funny. Several bloggers couldn’t resist jokes about helmets at this point, although that would be to miss alternative fnar moments as the episode unfolded.

Both Project Manager elections are on the foregone conclusion end of the spectrum. For Phoenix, Adam, Jade and Laura bow to Tom’s graffiti nerd credentials. Tom is this year’s coolest candidate, and he wowed the Brick Lane posse with his bestubbled boyish pout last time round: let’s not mess with a formula. For Sterling, Jenna, Ricky Martin, Nick and Stephen select Gabrielle, who’s already been edited to present her as the wacky creative one.

Learning previous lessons, they both have a strategy. Azhar would be so proud, although I hope he’s thrown a coat over his micro-shorts if he’s out prowling the rain-swept pavements of Bristol for gritty urban art. Tom wants to go for message and history. Meeting the corporate client – Renault – he quickly shows he’s followed the marketing campaigns to date, although I might not have said “Joie de vivre” myself. One of the Renault reps wants Frenchness and sex. In London, armed with a £5K budget, that should be a walk in the park. Well, maybe not a walk and maybe not in the park, but achievable.

Gab’s client is Beefeater Gin. They want art that talks about their brand and about London. Oddly for a company that is briefing someone to source urban art, they mention ‘heritage’. I know they had graffiti at Pompeii, but still. To Karren’s astonishment, Gab doesn’t ask about the budget, let alone possible locations and sizes for the art they will be attempting to source. And neither Steve or Jenna pipe up either. In other circumstances that might be refreshing, but if ever there was a time to actually talk … On the other hand. Her strategy is to show enthusiasm to the artists, having grasped that their task is to represent them rather than themselves. For this task, it’s about being an agent rather than an innovator or an entrepreneur.

Let artist selection begin. For Pheonix, Jade and Adam go to Bristol. (It’s where Bansky is from, so for BBC1, Bristol is shorthand for artistic epicentre. For me, Bristol means murals, unsuccessful but cool bands in rather studenty pubs and Tesco Metro branches getting rioted at, but perhaps our experiences differ.) If part of the task is to demonstrate ability in an unknown world, the programme makers have found the perfect candidate in Adam. Unfazed, he promises to offer his ‘unique opinion’.  This starts with him liking the work of ©opy®ight. It goes unmentioned on the voiceover, but I can’t help but wonder if two things about his work particularly grabbed Adam’s imagination: nipples. Perhaps not the ‘sexiness’ Renault were looking for. It looks more revved up Vauxhall Nova to me, but I’m a gay pedestrian and I might be wrong.

Meanwhile, Tom and Laura encounter Pure Evil in Shoreditch. As you do. To me, his work looks like Andy Warhol prints of women impersonating pandas left out in the rain, but you can judge for yourselves here. (I’m also guessing the pseudonym has been chosen for marketing rather than applicability: he looks and talks more like a probation officer.) I’m thinking its derivative enough to sell well, but Tom seems to prefer establishing his endless knowledge of key pivotal moments in the evolution of urban art to exciting Mr Evil about being represented. Evil is confounded when it could have been embraced. They then visit James Jessop, who produces vast paintings in the style of B movie posters or covers of the kind of 50s trashy novels where Godzilla ravages Jane Russell. Neither of them like it, although they remember to be polite.

Gab starts with Nathan Bowen. I mishear this as Nathan Barley the first time, and flinch uncontrollably till I realise that kind of reference would be a little too cool for the programme makers to have engineered. His prints and smaller pieces look like Daleks in tea cosies drawn by someone whose lifestyle featured too many crayons and too little Ritalin, but it has Union Jacks and Gab gets excited. The spectre of Brick Lane looms again. Ricky and Nick, seeing his work on the streets of Bristol, decide it looks like “a crazy workman alien peeing on another crazy workman alien”. In the back of my head, an evil voice mutters something about being peed on by aliens being the kind of thing some folk would pay good money for until I remind it that we’re talking about Beefeater Gin and not the House of Lords. And, like Adam, they are strangely hypnotised by the perky breasts of ©opy®ight. No, let me rephrase that … When Gab and Steve visit James Jessop, Steve asks the artist what he wants to get across. Judging by the rather vague response, Jessop is all about passion. And beer. I can’t help but think he won’t be an easy sell. Nathan might draw urinating daleks, but he has charisma. But when Gab visits Pure Evil, it’s charm all the way. I don’t recognise any of her words as being art criticism or appreciation per se, but she loads her spraygun with enthusiasm and lets rips. For once, it’s Pure Evil that can’t do the resisting.

When time comes to pick artists, they both want Pure Evil. (I’ll let the metaphor go: it’s so cheap there’s no margin in it.) Handing the artist the casting vote, Mr Evil votes for Gab. He, at least, has understood the task: who’ll most likely flog his work. Give Pure Evil 60% and its turns into Sweetness and Light. So Pure Evil and Peeing Daleks it is. Nick doesn’t seem so sure about the Daleks, and mutely mauls his own head, while Gab decides he should draw live during the show. (Steve wants him to do this out the back, unseen, and is politely ignored.)

Tom is left with no Plan B. Not overtly seeking Adam’s input, he turns to Jade who dithers like a graphics package set on blurry. Tom decides to gamble and go for the giant B movie posters of James Jessop. They’re expensive, but one sale would sweep the task. Adam wonders who’d have a front room big enough for an original Jessop, forgetting that Renault might not refer to their corporate reception area as The Front Room.

When the show/sale starts, he calls people Madam at a Private View and says he thinks people appreciate his honest naiveté. I re-lower my eyebrow when the sales figures prove him right. Tom pulls off the corporate sale, although I’m not sure what it was they bought. On 40% commission, he’s done well, and airbrushed nipples are obviously a better investment than I’d realised. The edit quietly pre-announces the result when he starts making excuses to camera about art being a subjective purchase and people need to talk themselves into it. Actually, there is a very fair point, but I can’t help but think it pushes the envelope of the format further than even a fairly wide flatscreen telly might accommodate. Elsewhere, Jade is selling ©opy®ight stuff, Ad’s calling people sweetheart and racking up sales, and Laura is trying the soft sell. Nice of the makers to leave in the comedy moments, isn’t it? The Jessops, meanwhile, stay safely on one of the few walls in London big enough for them.

At Gab’s gallery, even a live Nathan can’t shift incontinent monsters at £500 a pop, but Pure Evil sells. (Ask any major retail chain.) Steve is trying too hard with the public, and too little with The Gin People. No greeting on arrival, no drink (although he waves his empty glass at them while he talks to them), and no goodbye. Karren, despite the warm-up act supplied by the artists, struggles to believe what she’s seeing. Making key visitors endure a Private View sober? What are they thinking?  Ricky haggles with a man in a bow tie, and completes a £3.1K sale of art he’s non-plussed by.

And so the Boardroom. Gab’s failure to ask about budgets and Steve’s grim handling of the client at the show don’t play well, and there was no corporate sale. The team, possibly sensing failure, are a little quiet in their praise for her. Tom’s lack of Plan B when the artists selection fell through is a major regret, although taking the risk on the Jessops is applauded and the team are wowed by his knowledge. The panel think he overplayed it.

In the event, Gab’s team wins by137 quid, and they get to go action painting. Well, paintballing indoors. Let’s draw a veil there.

Saved by his gung-ho approach a long way from his fruit and veg and by outselling everyone on the night, Adam is spared the boardroom. A faint scent of Favoured Son passes through the room, and Sugar approves of Tom’s selection. Tom admits his two big mistakes – failing to impress Pure Evil and having no Plan B. But the Favoured Son scent lingers: his willingness to take the big risk and stick by it wins over Lordalan. The failure isn’t the gamble, it’s failing to pull it off. So we’re back to judging by sales, and Laura’s aggressive self-defence mechanism fires into action. Along with her mouth. Her lack of sales on this occasion and her copious supply of words seal her fate, and her cab awaits. Jade, meanwhile, has her card marked for consistent indecisiveness.

I’m left pondering the format, as are journalists and readers at The Guardian. The programme is unclear as to whether the panel have seen the candidates’ business plans at this stage, but you could easily argue that Tom should have gone. The big failures were his. As in previous weeks, responsibility on the task doesn’t seem to be the deciding factor, so what actually is the role of the tasks in the decision process? The very different nature of selling art was passed over here, as were the costs of putting on the exhibitions: wine is only free for the visitors, unless they’ve been ram-raiding a branch of Majestic off-camera. Colossal failures on winning teams are sanctioned, allowing candidates who should be removed to stay in the process unduly. (If you watched last night’s The Apprentice: You’re Fired, the straw poll of the audience on the remaining eight was fascinating. Steve is judged to be well past his sell-by date, while the front-runners are Tom and Nick.)

The real process seems to be more like a modular degree course: some low-marks in one or two components are condoned as long as the overall performance is strong. Except where this clashes with the game-show elimination format, which dictates someone has to go. And ‘out of comfort zone’ tasks have a place, but the emphasis on pace (24 hours to create a sauce, put together an art exhibition, etc.) is no more realistic about the adaptability of individuals than it is the task in hand. The falsely instant trumps everything. Struck as I was by Mike Clayton’s review of the episode, I though his neat closing quote  – The alternative to evidence-based decision-making is decision-based evidence-making – applied to the programme as much as the candidate. It felt like the decision has already been made to keep Tom, so the emphasis of the final conversation was shifted to sales to expose either Laura or Jade. And that’s ok if that’s how the programme markets itself, except … we keep getting these only vaguely different tasks and would-be cliff-hangers about winning teams. And we keep getting the messages that tat sells and aggression wins.

Still, it has vestiges of both business and entertainment, I guess. Selection processes are contradictory, favouriting defies logic, and people buy pictures of breasts. I’m not sure it’s learning, but I suppose the programme still has one foot in reality. I just hope it doesn’t think it’s doing anything to improve reality …

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I’d bet the farm, the house, and the Apple shares on the following proposition: Our institutions are failing not merely because they’re bankrupting us financially, but because they’re bankrupting us in human terms — that, having become something like Alcatrazes for the human soul, they fail to ignite within us the searing potential for the towering accomplishments necessary to answer today’s titanic challenges.”

This is heady stuff, ripe with the whiff of heavy lifting undertaken in the search for meaning, or ways of creating and unearthing it. Umair is adamant that the first great concern is with what makes us “searingly, painfully, achingly, enduringly, joyously human” – not with enhancing productivity or efficiency. As he argues, we’ve been pretty inventive at those over the centuries – even over the last few years (imagine how bewildering today would look if you stepped directly through a door from, say, 1987) – but it’s a lot less clear-cut as to what we’ve ‘solved’ has been what most needed fixing.

Of course, you could dismiss as philosophical baloney. And you might get a populist cheer for doing so: philosophy is not our most thriving discipline. The latest figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency seem to show a slight decline or slowest growth in applications for most of what I’ve always thought of as somewhere between ‘the classics’ and ‘the professions’ – law, education, medicine, architecture. Delving deeper into their websites downloadable files, my amateur statistical skills suggest that, while philosophy might have been the founding discipline of the cradle of civilisation, less than 1% of our undergraduates are pursuing it now. There’s an interest parable about Greek as a metaphor for the trajectory of the modern man there for someone wanting to write a more profound blog post than this.

But perhaps Umair isn’t just a voice in the wilderness. (Although he might need to tone down the swearing on the Twitter feed and ask less clever-dick questions to get some of those he’s talking about to listen. “First three songs on your mixtape for the end of the world?” might be a bit arch for some people’s tastes. Although I can think of a couple of Elvis Costello songs if Umair’s reading …) Over at HR Fishbowl, the same human-centric urge also seems to be breaking the surface, as they attempt to mould The Future of Work: A Manifesto.

In the spirit of social media, and in response to their comment that:

[…] it’s only in its infancy and we’ve purposely kept the clay wet so we could further mold it as we gathered feedback from people like you […]“

my equally infant, similarly roughly-shaped-from-wet-clay thoughts ran something like the following.

Value: under a heading that boldly asserts that  “Human beings are the most important asset we have”, each of the 14 points maintain that each of 14 abstract nouns ‘has value for the organisation’. I don’t doubt that they do, but I wondered if that was the point. If we want work to ‘suck less’, is it the organisation that we need these things to have value for, or is it the individual? If we want work to create ‘something for the purpose of human flourishing’, I think it has to be the latter.

Identity: a follow-on point. The fledgling manifesto bears a few traces of Richard Sennett’s arguments about work being a means of creating identity and personal meaning. Unless our identities are to be shaped around creating value for not just something abstract but something other, work has to create value for us if the identities it shapes for us are to have value to us.

Boundaries: seeking to dissolve boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘life’, and between ‘I’ and ‘we’, is admirably optimistic, bordering possibly on the Utopian. And yes, we probably do all – at least at some stage – aspire to love what we do, but we will need to change more than HR practices to create nations of workplaces where everyone gets that opportunity. I’m not sure there are enough love-inspiring economically-viable opportunities to share between us to give everyone a crack at total satisfaction. As long as there are (metaphorical) toilets, they will need cleaners.

If “new human workplace has a respo­nsibility for the susta­inability of all the resources it uses, including human beings”, that has to include all the human beings who will still struggle to have opportunities to find value beyond remaining economically viable. Judging by the quantities that our species has written about the human condition since we invented writing systems, the transition period may be lengthy.

Markets: “If markets are conve­rsations, then the people who are doing the talking and the listening and the sharing are the most important asset we have.” Fine talk, but customers and investors matter too. Yes, we need to be market-friendly, but the market needs to be friendly to us too. If we fancifully describe human organisational history as a vast, tangled vine, it’s littered with crops that withered before they found a buyer. You can’t sell pipe-dreams to non-smokers.

Language: I’d encourage the draft’s authors to go back and try re-wording it in plain English. Ban words like ‘monetarize’ or ‘social capital’ or ‘connectedness’. I tried re-wording this:

The role of manag­ement is to release the flow of infor­mation and data and to get it to the right people at the right time. The new workplace is data-­driven; but infor­mation is not wisdom. It’s the human analysis of the data that drives value.”

I wound up with: “The role of management is to ensure wisdom is applied in the right place at the right time.” Perhaps, but is wisdom the chicken or the egg?

“We need to bring our whole true selves to work”:  I hear echoes of Will Hutton and The Work Foundation here – the phrase is as familiar as the sentiment (see this earlier post as well as this one). Again, I don’t necessarily disagree, but I can easily see why many might. Surely we bring to work what we think is appropriate or acceptable there, what will be recognised and rewarded. Our whole true selves are messier, more complex and contradictory, and we may not be thanked for following through on this ideal.

Work is a context, and we edit ourselves for it just as we edit ourselves for weddings, parties, first dates and so on. And some of us value the vestiges of separation we have left between ‘work’ and ‘life’. Ownership might be up for debate with the former, but most of us would – I suspect – rather the latter was less negotiable.

There isn’t anything explicit in the Manifesto about two aspects of ‘design’ that will be very much in play if we do bring our whole true selves to work – job design or organisational design. If work and organisations are vessels and containers, bringing more inside them might make them less rather than more comfortable unless they change their shapes to accommodate us.

What gives: carrying on from the previous point, I’m much less clear how organisations will change than individuals. To me, there’s a non-sequitor in the following sentence, masquerading as a full-stop:

We will feel a sense of belonging and purpose if we’re involved in the direction and purpose of the system. Ownership has value for the organ­ization.”

Ownership and belonging are not the same thing, and conflating them in the unspoken name of engagement doesn’t strike me as helpful. Yes, the manifesto is a draft but I reach the end of it still living in a framework where leaders and managers have responsibilities (and status) within organisations that determine the role and inputs of employees. ‘Value’ is mentioned, but not defined: in places it could be fiscal, in others social. I can see what’s in it for organisations, but not for the individuals for whom things are intended to suck less in the future.

The text bears the tyre marks of several contemporary bandwagons – virtual communication, networks, agility – but it doesn’t provide them with a sat-nav. There’s more wool than knitting-pattern, and there are gaps in the thinking that the bridges don’t cross. “Let’s empower ourselves and each other to make our lives better, and thereby make our societies better” is a lovely sentiment, but until I’ve got a route map from a happier job to a better society I’m not much clearer on how I get from A to B. Like many a blue sky, it contains a fair bit of warm air.

So, a constructive suggestion. Take the draft manifesto and rework it in plain English. Aim to produce something a twelve-year old can not only read but can explain to someone in their twenties who’s performing satisfactorily if not dazzlingly in a job that is keeping them afloat, and who will feel more optimistic for hearing it. Then work out how to achieve it.

There will always be boxes, and many of us will spend a lot of our lives in them. The boxes make things more manageable for those who manage. Re-decorating the inside of the box is not the solution. Human beings – our starting point – don’t necessarily want to be defined solely by their work. If you don’t start by asking how life, society and the human experience of them could be and then redesign work accordingly, you might be lighting the wrong end of the firework.

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I might be being grumpy today: it’s not impossible. But doing my own Googling to track down where the idea first took off, I found endless versions where the people posting it were contributing by offering us such shattering insights as “that’s really cool”, or “that’s lovely, I’m gonna blu-tac that in my workspace”. Bless. I appreciate in this age of digitalism, social media and transient, ephemeral communication that cut’n’paste is the new black, dude, but if a list about staying creative generates a lot of people doing a half-arsed Patience Strong/Hallmark greeting card impersonation, isn’t that a little worrying?

Having read a little around research into creativity and innovation, and how it can be encouraged and supported, and having ventured my own creative toes in music, literature and art, I’d be the first to put my hands up and say that true originality is very, very rare. Indeed, as Steven Johnson explored in Where Good Ideas Come From (read our review), many creative ideas spring from the previous work and ingenuity of others. Some are attempts to mimic something else: the wah-wah pedal – that inescapable element of the theme tune to Shaft and nearly all music that gets described as ‘1970s porn soundtrack’ (I plead ignorance there, m’lud: I was too young) – was an attempt to help guitar players sound like trumpet players manipulating their mutes. (No euphemisms were harmed in the authoring of that sentence, btw.)

But there’s a hierarchy of theft – sorry, plagiarism – isn’t there? There’s an awful lot of ‘pick’n’mix’ about nowadays, where the simplicity of sharing, reposting or clicking a ‘Like’ button means the same things circulate endlessly. As everything becomes digital, it becomes easier to copy. Theoretically, it becomes easier to manipulate too, but copy and paste seems more widespread than copy and heavily rework. So is that being creative, or is it posing as being hip, Daddy-o? Isn’t it rather closer to being spotted wearing this season’s ‘must have’ (ahem) t-shirt than to having designed it? I’m thinking that there are two types of bird towards the bottom of this Heirarchy of Theft (which I’m also thinking it looks more original with Capital Letters too – cheap tricks have the same potency as cheap music). The lowest rung is occupied by parrots and lyre birds, who simply repeat what comes through their ears. They’re whistling a happy tune, but they’re not composing.

There’s a layer up from this – perhaps we can call them magpies – who have their metaphorical bird companion’s eye for the shiny, lustrous object, gathering and assembling them into glittering hordes. Fine art’s been here with the whole assemblage thing (which my Fine Art friends will no doubt advise me sagely was played out decades ago), although many of us probably also did something similar at primary school. We called it collage. Simon Reynolds’ thought-provoking book about pop-music and social culture, Retromania, spotted the same thing at play in the organising of ‘events’. The people organising them now style themselves – and what telling words those are – as curators. Sometimes, this process adds insight or throws up interesting juxtapositions or provokes new thoughts about the familiar: the Grayson Perry-curated The Tomb of The Unknown Craftsman exhibition at The British Museum (recently ended) was a good example. But sometimes it’s someone bunging stuff in a room and giving it a title. The quality of the content may be lower, but many of us do something equally ‘creative’ with our spare rooms, garages and sheds.

So how can we stimulate the grey matter to produce vibrant rainbows? Looking at that list, 2, 3, 9, 16 and 30 are useful ideas, but they’re useful for 33 – producing or implementing the creative idea, rather than having it. From my reading of Steven Johnson, some of the ideas here are worth exploring – 11 – 15, 18 and 32 in particular.

Reading a recent interview with Jonah Lehrer (author of the recent Imagine: How Creativity Works) in The Times, I’m left with the impression that the key is in the right hemisphere of our brains, which excel:

[…] at making remote associations, joining disparate thoughts and solving puzzles.”

Just when you feel we might be getting somewhere with this, the article starts exploring things that might help or be associated with stimulating the process. At which point I didn’t need to be terribly creative to imagine the looks on the faces of HR functions and managers. I almost Googled to see if ‘having kittens’ was listed anywhere as an advanced management technique. Here are some examples from the article:

• Relaxation
• Hot showers (no mentioning of singing – it seems it’s the shower that does it)
• Staring at the colour blue
• Marijuana
• Drinking (although drinkers might want to observe ideas 2 and 30 carefully)
• Amphetamines (more useful for Idea 33, but may cause constipation, insomnia and heart problems)(but then so can working too hard)
• Depression (again, it seems particularly useful for Idea 33)

There is brief discussion – unlikely to be helpful to even the most broad minded workplace – of frontotemporal dementia, which at least argues that creativity does not fade of its own accord, but fades through a lack of fresh stimuli. There’s also an on-going reference to sea slugs that I hope doesn’t catch on in discussion of workplace creativity: being prodded on a regular basis is bad enough, even as a simile, but there are some physical comparisons that most of us would probably find dispiriting. Although given the point about depression, maybe even the sea slug thing has legs …

Two other ideas that are familiar from Johnson’s research are the beneficial effects of travel (literally in Idea 19, but after a fashion in Ideas 11 and 20) and – missing completely from the list – living in a crowded city (although perhaps its implicit in Idea 13). So the ideal creative workplace environment would be to be hired by a multinational that periodically transfers you between major world cities where you sit in blue shower cubicles watching films while getting totally out of your tree? With a waterproof notebook. It sounds kind of fun (although possibly not when repeated ad infinitum), but it does sound like it’s not about to happen.

Stone cold sober, glancing at a colour best called ‘wood veneer’, I’m thankful I have a cup of tea to hand, but I’m wondering if we’re tackling the problem by asking ‘How?’. Might we come up with better ideas if we paid equal attention to two other questions:

• What? – what exactly do we mean by creativity, and should we rule out problem-solving (which can be simply know-how) and/or cut’n’paste?
• Why? – this all sits on an assumption that creativity matters, but what’s its role in the bigger picture?

At which point, excuse me but I’m off for a shower. I just need to track down my underwater DVD player and figure out that waterproof ashtray I’ve been working on …

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As Gwyn points out:

In many organizations, there is this implicit assumption that everyone aspires to be a leader. As a result, leadership roles in these places are ever in danger of being populated by people who privately lack the interest or desire to develop the skill required to lead others effectively.”

As she goes on to point out, many organisations see promotion to leadership as the only route of progress and the desire for it as the only sign of ambition. Leadership has not only become a golden throne, so to speak, but has been elevated to a golden plinth as the end goal of any high performing individual’s career. Employees feel obliged to play along, either as they have no other way of getting their contribution or ability recognised or they see no other means of improving their own situation.

It’s a side point at this stage, but I recall a Harvard Business Review survey that compares three factors as indicators of success at the next level in different combinations:

Ability trumps all (thankfully), but it seems a lack of aspiration is far less a handicap than a lack of engagement. Some of us really do have greatness thrust upon us, as Shakespeare once quipped, and some take his advice and don’t fear it. (But surely there’s a bigger question lurking here: why are people with no aspiration being promoted?)

Gwyn also highlights the ‘expert to leader’ dilemma, where organisations make the assumption that the ability to inspire and teach others comes pre-installed alongside the ability to do. These organisations were plainly not in any of the Maths or Physics lessons I attended as a child, highly skilled though my teachers doubtless were: as most of us have experienced – from the annoying end of the equation – these are actually distinct skill-sets. “Those that can’t do, teach” is an old joke, but an unfair one. If they’re paid to teach and they can teach, their ability to do is not so relevant. If they’re paid to teach and they can do but not teach, everyone has a problem.

Gwyn then proceeds with a checklist of motivational factors that she argues those looking to move into leadership should ask themselves to identify good and bad reasons for moving into a leadership role. It’s a very good list, and one I’d like to see talent managers and HR execs pinning to their wallboards and reviewing once or twice a week. But I see a few problems. It’s not that Gwyn doesn’t: she acknowledges that changing the current state of affairs:

[…] relies on the willingness of organizations to give greater value to, and make room for, those whose skills and talents lie elsewhere. It also relies on the willingness of individuals to examine their real motivations before throwing their hat in the leadership ring.”

My qualms start with the individuals, as the implication is that they will already have high levels of self-awareness. If they do, it’s a promising start: self-awareness is crucial to good leadership, but it’s quite a big ask. Perhaps that list should be circulated to employees rather than simply sitting on a pinboard in HR? It would be a refreshingly blunt way of an HR function spelling out what the organisation means by ‘leadership’, even if it might put a visionary cat among some of the pigeons. It might even, perhaps, be the start of the organisation’s Leadership EVP that helps the candidates check how well they fit against it.

Surely this utopian state of affairs also relies on organisations lowering the golden plinth of Leadership a few steps too, so that it no longer operates as the ultimate recognition and reward. Having noted “Position or status is your principal motivator” among her bad reasons for wanting a leadership role, is it too logical a response to suggest that we change the position and status markers within organisations to stop aspiration being such a major factor? If position or status counted for slightly less – I’m not suggesting we abolish them – perhaps they might glitter less alluringly to people we might prefer not to be attracted to them?

We also need other types of reward and recognition, so that contributions other than leading can receive their due – and these roles can attract those most likely to thrive in them. If we look at the contributions that are distinct to leading – inspiring others, coaching and mentoring, directing and co-ordinating the talents of others to maximum effect – is there actually any cast-iron link to ‘being in charge’ other than our traditional definition of leadership? Why, as in the case of one of our clients, did specialists confide a sense of feeling obliged to ‘get a foot on a ladder’ (to a leadership position) when their real aspiration was to enhance their specialist skills to the organisation’s benefit? And why did they feel that their real aspiration was going unrecognised – or might not be rewarded if they fulfilled it?

Organisations don’t only employ those attracted to leadership for the right and wrong reasons. They also employ those who aren’t attracted to leadership per se but want to develop and advance themselves, those around them and the company. (These are also the people that good leaders should be wanting to have around them, I can’t help but think.) Of all the ‘under the carpet’ problems raised by Gwyn’s article, finding a way forward for these people seems to be most organisations’ hardest challenge – possibly as it requires them to think the furthest outside the metaphorical box?

There’s another eternal side issue here too: the difference between leadership and management. How many people are driven by the personal benefits of management – being able to order others around, an elevated status and a sense of power – while reluctant to take on the responsibilities towards others that come with leading? Managing is an important contribution, but it’s not the same as leadership. Yet the emotional pull of the ‘leadership’ word sees it being applied in many situations where it’s not truly deserved – and often being claimed rather than awarded.

Which is where cultural differences struck me. I started to read the comments, and was reminded that the writer – and the majority of her audience – are American. There was talk of leadership having ‘chosen them’ that would, coming from British lips, invite ridicule in most contexts. While some where talking – I think – in terms of organisational choices for leadership development, one or two were speaking far more personally. Having read the likes of Matthew Syed, I’m possibly too far to one side of the ‘talent is born/made’ argument to be swayed, but I can’t imagine many British contexts in which “I was born to lead” wouldn’t be the kind of statement that would tempt your audience to glue your car door handles shut or stick inflammatory post-it notes on the back of your suit jacket.

But those who were talking about organisational choices have a good point. How many companies promote from among those who present themselves for upward progression, without too much questioning of the link between the reward and the motivation? In other words, do we promote those looking for promotion rather than those most likely to succeed? Do promotion panels need Gwyn’s checklist as much as the candidates?

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Actually, this is a time-honoured Apprentice task. (I’m saying ‘honoured’ but …) Take a punt on the first batch of stock and pick two locations. Restock once you’ve sussed the market, and biggest total sales plus stock in hand wins. It’s all abaht smellin’ wot’s sellin’. (Thank the lord – or perhaps the Lord -we’ve moved on from street food, or someone would have to make a nasty joke about Adam’s nasty little balls.)

Steve is transferred to Sterling, and Laura to Phoenix, and the jockeying for PM begins. In this week’s Non-Celebrity Deathmatch, Nick plays Jade. From the off, Nick seems to be pretty on the ball. (Except maybe on choice of hairstyle, which came in for what I think has been its first adverse comment: considering his One Direction do Donald Trump approach to coiffure, he’s been very lucky.) Picking a shopping centre and a market in Romford, the mall gets beauty products and the market household goods. Mr Hewer isn’t the fake tan type (although I wouldn’t exactly call him pale and interesting either), but he seems impressed by the approach and the decision-making. If you’re going to flog stereotypes for big margins, do it in Essex, my son.

Jade’s crew take so long to pick locations that they almost run put of time to buy stock. Not that they know what they want to buy, or how it’ll be divvied up between locations. If Nick H was selling lemons, Karren would be buying one to suck by now. Tom frets about margins and costs, and Azhar about strategy, which they’ve opted not to include in their initial haul. Laura poo-poos the idea of fake tan. Despite video evidence of her doing this being broadcast, nobody mentions this ever again, which is rather fortunate for her.

In the compressed timescale of the programme, it is only seconds before we see Jenna flogging fake tan like hot cakes for Nick’s team, and getting £10 a can for it. Meanwhile, Ricky and Steve sell mops in the market with more than hint of Waiting for Godot as played by Terry and June. It’s entertaining, if not riproaring, but they are saved by the rain and by Nick phoning desperate for more stock of fake tan. In a rare mistake, they fail to drop off the remaining household stock with him, 4 minutes away, and opt to sit in a traffic jam en route to the warehouse. Still, they bag the last 84 cans of orange gunk, and some more hot water bottles. I can’t imagine why they are popular in Essex, especially with fluffy covers – with fake tan? no, babes, no! – but the important thing is they already know they’re selling. Someone says the tan is really shifting, but nobody gets the joke.

Meanwhile, Jade’s team are struggling to sell a rather motley range of stuff in Ilford. Laura does fairly well selling toy insects at a 500% mark up, so Tom phones Jade to suggest getting more. She isn’t listening. Az phones to ask what the strategy is. He looks like a man phoning a call centre where the operative can’t hear the caller. He repeats this several times. Laura takes the executive decision to be annoyed by it. Karren is still praying for someone to sell her a lemon. Thankfully, Adam – despite Pitsea market being 15 miles away, and other stalls being priced very low – is being asked to be a market trader. Pot? Kettle? Not ‘alf, missus. He sells like a man possessed. Back in Ilford, Tom has the air of a man who wishes he’d brought his hipflask. Or perhaps a pistol. Az phones Jade to ask for a strategy. Again. Seems she’s out of stock.

In Romford, and running out of stock, Gabe gamely flogs beardtrimmers to women as bikini line topiary devices. Now that’s what I call creative. Unaware that they have an opportunity to catch up, Jade’s team – thanks mostly to Tom spotting the margin on them – get more toy insects to sell, and off the little critters fly. Only three knicker a pop, mind, but business is business …

Come 6pm, and Lordalan has laid on pitches at Lakeside. Lots of people are asking Nick for fake tan, and paying for it. Four people are asking Jade for a strategy, and paying for it in a different sort of way. She opts to do deals and flog stuff cheap. Her team are left with stock in hand of all seven selected items. Nick refuses to drop prices and carries on selling. Jade appears to have forgotten that value of stock in hand is included in the final total. Karren is visibly dreaming of gin to go with that lemon. Karren is possibly not alone in this.

In the boardroom, Nick’s Sterling rack up £955. Jade’s Phoenix flop into the ashes with a total of £838. As Jade says “let the fights begin”. Boxercise revisited, perhaps, although Azhar’s proverbial arse might be better covered this time? Lordalan gives them a bit of a monstering. It was all a bit clueless, even when some people said ‘Hang on, this is all a bit clueless, isn’t it?’. Despite knowing she’d lost and having a tea break in The Losers Cafe to reflect, Jade says she’s unprepared. She brings back Tom – which surprises everyone – and Azhar, who I have the impression she would prefer to beat to death off-camera.

Having established that no-one, including Jade, knows why Tom is in the final three, he is spared. Jade was totally out of control, ignored team mates and had no plan. So, true to the spirit of the 2012 series, Lordalan fires Azhar.

Apparently, Azhar was ‘moany’. Given how much he had to moan about, this didn’t strike me as that unreasonable, and asking your PM for a strategy isn’t moaning as much as asking them to do their job, surely? Having long given up on The Apprentice as a business lesson, I hope for entertainment. This week, the task was tired. There was no drama: we knew Jade was going to lose about 8 minutes in. As Azhar said at one point, it’s not just about selling. And her team lost at that too. And the candidate who doomed their team to failure stayed – for her ‘enthusiasm’ (although I was a little vague about what she’d been enthusiastic about) – when she really should have gone.

Me, I’m off to the kitchen. We’ve got half an old lemon somewhere, and I’m getting desperate.

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For me, the pun of ‘engagement’ is so easy and obvious, but I’m not convinced that I believe the parallel between pro-actively participating at work and pro-actively participating at home is a realistic or fair one. I appreciate that the changes we’ve witnessed in modern life might mean we superficially look as if the opening stages – carefully crafting and positioning an online profile that shows you as the ideal candidate, while simultaneously reviewing the profiles of others to try to read between the lines and ponder the curious omissions – are fairly similar.
But even this overlooks inconvenient differences. Some have been more attractive than others, but no future employer has ever caught my eye across a crowded room and made my heart skip a beat. Nor have any suitors requested that I submit my CV to a third-party consultant for vetting and appraisal, or sit a series of psychometric tests. (Although the latter might have meant that one or two cases of terminal incompatibility came to light before the waiter brought the coffees.)

Work and our relationship with our Significant Other(s) are fundamentally different things, and only one line from a song is springing to mind that bridges the chasm. Even then, when Joni Mitchell sings The Boho Dance she’s garnishing a fiction with a simile:

You read those books where luxury
Comes as a guest to take a slave
Books where artists in noble poverty
Go like virgins to the grave”

I dare say we still have a few artists in noble poverty, pursuing a dream that isn’t based on the fiscal, but I suspect the efforts of the Department of Work and Pensions may be winnowing their number or recalibrating their expectations. And her metaphorical artists are being perversely (I hesitate to say ‘ironically’) virginal in having chosen to utterly dedicate their lives to the thing they love despite a lack of reward. Devotional celibacy – or at least the aim of it – is the thing of convents, surely?

Outside our workplaces, those of us (un)fortunate enough to have them may be looking for many things – a meeting of minds, a compatibility of hearts, someone to worship or be worshipped by – but we usually believe, at least at the outset, that this is ‘for good’. Barbara Cartland may have had more engagements than I’ve had KFC bargain buckets, but she was as far from the norm in that as she was in so many other ways. What most of us are seeking – and I’m going to use the most commonly used words, as they are significant – is someone to share our life with. The emphasis is not just on ‘share’, but on ‘life’ in all its rich plurality. For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health – we know the drill, even if the wording of the pledge varies depending on our faith, our lack of it or a legal requirement to perform a civil union.

I don’t want to sound negative, churlish or petty, but I’ve not experienced a job or a company or an HR department that has created that desire to willingly share all of life’s ups and downs. I’ve seen people be very happy in the same job or the same organisation for decades, but I doubt they’ve shared everything. I know that life partners can and do keep secrets from each other, but the list of things I don’t ever intend to mention at work is exponentially longer. Some things are private, but work isn’t one of them. Of course there are parallels: relationships and jobs have both long been the subject of expert advice (and tales from wives from a variety of ages) on how to make them succeed, and the tips frequently mention compromise (given the title of this blog, I’ll let that one slide …), openness, communication. I’m not sure how often compassion and forgiveness make an appearance (probably less than they might), but the topics that get mentioned are fairly predictable given they relate to the on-going interaction between two or more human beings.

Except, except … in any workplace, acquaintance, friendship, affairs, sometimes even love and marriage occur: we’re human, and these things happen. (We also spend a lot of lives at work: many of us meet more people through office life than any other way: even hearts succumb to laws of averages.) The guest list at my forthcoming nuptials includes many people I’ve met through working with them, but they’re invited as people, not role holders, direct reports or line managers. They’ll be there because I like them. (And I’ve worked equally effectively and contentedly with people I wouldn’t cross the road to drink coffee with, without that appearing to be a problem to either me or them.)

Yet in the arena of HR-speak and engagement, my relationship is not to a human being but to a pair of abstract concepts: my prescribed role and the organisation. Nor are we talking about a relationship between equals (which may be what marriage has always been seen as, but I’d humbly suggest is now generally true). In the labour market, as opposed to the cattle market, we are hired, promoted, demoted, sidelined or fired, but we’re the object of all those verbs, not the subject. We do things for organisations, they (mostly) do things to us. Not least, they rarely make any assumption that they are making an offer for your hand in perpetuity. We are tacitly or implicitly expected or required to demonstrate dedication and commitment, while our employers are at liberty to terminate the arrangement with a rueful ‘business is business’. “It’s only a job” is a phrase you hear most often when the job is something you’ve very recently parted company with; it’s not a phrase it’s conducive to your career chances to be heard uttering while you have one. You might feel married to your job, but it’s more likely it feels like it’s having an affair. Or several affairs, to be accurate. (Feeling special now?)

Of course, it’s us that sometimes do the terminating. If we’re going to quote popular song, indulge me while I argue that Prof Karl Pillemer’s “refrigerator list” of the five lessons gleaned from the collective 50,000 years’ experience of the subjects of his book, 30 Lessons for Living:

1. Choose a career for the intrinsic rewards, not the financial ones.
2. Don’t give up on looking for a job that makes you happy.
3. Make the most of a bad job.
4. Emotional intelligence trumps every other kind.
5. Everyone needs autonomy.”

can be boiled down to the pithier advice that David Bowie sang in Everyone Says ‘Hi’:

Don’t stay in a bad place where they don’t care who you are.”

Peter Cook made reference to Morrissey, and (rightly) includes The Smiths’ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, presumably for its line “I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows …”. I was thinking more in terms of what HR can do to inspire engagement and a sense of belonging that couldn’t equally be boiled down to ‘be nice’, at which point I stumbled over another Morissey quote about the perils of blandness:

Don’t talk to me about people who are ‘nice’ cause I have spent my whole life in ruins because of people who are ‘nice’.”

M&S Food Hall and branches of Laura Ashley bring on the same reaction in me, although attitudes to blandness are subjective. One man’s beige …
I did, however, find a quote that fits both work and life when it comes to ‘love’ and identifies something I do see as common ground between them, although I need to add two caveats. The first is that its author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, was not a rock icon; literary icon, aviation pioneer, oui, guitar hero, non. (His Little Prince neither wore purple nor sung about doves, rain or berets.) The second caveat is that context is everything. I’ve always been a bit puzzled by the phrase ‘work/life balance’, as I’m not sure how you balance something with a sub-set of itself. Work, surely, is something one of the plates we spin along with family, our relationship with our Significant Other, leisure, housework and so on: life, meanwhile, is the whole crockery set. If it happens outside life, doesn’t that mean it’s death? Most jobs aren’t quite that bad, or that final.

But what I think does matter, for those involved in any of those sub-sets of living, is of trying to find agreement of outlook. It’s not about adoration, it’s about sharing enough to feel that the circumstance is one you wish to stay in – in the world of HR-speak, I guess this is ‘alignment’, although it’s not a word I’d use at a Valentine’s Day supper. (When it doesn’t happen any longer, people leave organisations, musicians leave bands and relationships founder.) Hence my very un-rock’n’roll quote:

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

But who can we get to write the music?

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Anyway, for those still sentient enough to care, the task. Streetfood. Or rather “high quality food from mobile units” in the “culinary capital of Scotland”. Despite not just the Edinburgh Festival but its larger Fringe and the innumerable other events of the Scottish capital (including at least one food festival), someone thinks this kind of thing is still ‘in its infancy’. Shoot that researcher.

Judging by Jenna’s worries about people talking Scottish at her, geography teaching is in its infancy further south. (Yes dear, they do speak differently in Edinburgh. It’s because they’re educated.) Or maybe she’s been prompted to say it so we all think this is 2012’s ’11 Go Mad Abroad’ episode. Still, a bonus mark for not inflicting this nonsense on Glasgow, where the candidates might have learned some short, sharp and possibly un-broadcastable lessons.

Recognising the importance of charm and bonhomie to selling tempting food on pavements, the teams elect Adam (Phoenix) and Jenna (Sterling), and are given two days to create and market a signature dish. Piling straight in with the deep-fried mars bar references, Adam gives the impression that his signature might be a roughly drawn X or perhaps a paw print. Tom, who usually injects a note of urban sophistication, misjudges this one and suggests bento boxes. (The culinary equivalent of a fur stole with a suit, me lad: don’t try it in the boardroom.) Jade goes Crimson again, and clutches her pearls like a dowager. Katie wants pasta, and pasta is cheap so that rings Adam’s bell. Italian it is, and Tom is in charge of creating the dish, while Steve, Gabe and Jade will do branding. Belissimo! (Sorry, couldn’t resist …)

It doesn’t initially sound much more appetising over at Team Sterling. Jenna’s aware that Sterling have only one victory to date, and that she can’t cook. Remembering that Edinburgh gets a lot of tourists, they flirt with Scots pies before deciding that casserole with a scots twist is the winner. Nick makes noises about the cost of ingredients. The kind of noises you’d not want to hear from the man that will cook your dinner later.

This week’s market research consists of a gourmet food fayre in London before they hit the trains. They savour scallops and celeriac with seashore vegetables. (No, me neither.) The messages are consistent and clear: organic trumps everything, go for the best ingredients you can, local is good, people want quality … Adam, ever the fast learner, mentions how cheap corned beef is. In the nicest possible way, Tom cringes rather visibly.

Sterling discuss locations, and Katie argues for a football match. Steve reckons Hearts fans want burgers, but she won’t be swayed. Introduced to their Chef Aide, they’re also introduced to the giddy concept of meatballs, and shown how to make them. All the while, Adam is insisting dinner is about profit, not taste. You have to quietly wonder about his track record at romantic dinners for two. Tom continues to argue for quality and flavour, but Adam’s mind has been made up. And then dipped in egg and breadcrumbs.

Things go from facepalm to facepalm as Steve, Katie and Jade suggest the evocative brand name “Utterly Delicious”, only for Adam to insist on adding ‘Meatballs’ but allowing himself be over-ruled on using the name of their designated Masterchef. The team seem determined to make complete rissoles of themselves. Matteo’s Utterly Risible Rissoles, perhaps. Pausing only to go for a ‘sophisticated’ black look for their meatball van, it’s action time in the kitchen. The testosterone levels are obviously rising, as the boys seem increasing anxious that their balls aren’t all the same size. (Somewhere, just off camera, a woman is laughing up her sleeve.) At 47p a portion, someone should have cracked the time-honoured joke about not getting many of those to the pound, but the moment is squandered.

Phoenix get their input from a Michelin starred restaurant, who are all about posh. Thankfully, no-one has their fnar-o-meter switched as they are advised that “It’s all about the meat” and to “go for something well hung”. Possibly because an estimated £2.50 cost per portion is a mirth killer. (Gabe, meanwhile, seems to think that’s more than a restaurant meal. We hope she means to make rather than to order, or that’s another candidate off our candlelit suppers for two list. Surely young architects make more than that?) Once into the kitchen and pre-branded – Gourmet Scot Pot (a bad pun, but it says what it is and also remembers to say ‘Gourmet’) – they get the cost down to £1.54 a portion, and make something that looks not only edible but quite tempting.

Over at Hearts FC’s ground, the Risible Rissoles aren’t shifting. Well, maybe bobbing about a little in their rather lurid sauce, but that’s it. Tom clearly thinks £5.99 is too much for a punnet of pasta and gristle in a carpark, especially given the local competition. Self-assured (why?) in the back of a cab somewhere (why?), Katie and Steve are worried about the price too. They firmly suggest that 47p’s worth of minced trotter and snout-hair should be going at £7.99. A few minutes later, Adam has a rare moment of sense and starts selling three for tenner. That’s selling as in getting money off (a few) people, rather than as in writing that figure on a blackboard and then standing next to it like a chump.

Jenna’s team have either chosen an equally ill-advised pitch or a poorly judged time. Shortly after hotel breakfast/chucking out time, they can’t figure out why people don’t fancy a plate of casserole, especially when they’re being tempted into the idea by Laura and Ricky in kilts, prancing with bagpipes. Who could possibly resist? At least Laura only looks like a precocious child at a tea-party; Ricky, who’s plainly not tied a kilt before, is doing a worryingly good impression of a psychiatric out-reach patient who likes a wee drop of meths on his cornflakes and has been at the dressing-up box. Imploring people to sniff their produce doesn’t play well either: ‘sniff’ and ‘gourmet’ aren’t natural linguistic bedfellows. Perhaps “Come and have a smell of me casserole” is a chat-up line in Lancashire? Despite a good product, things are quiet until a lunchtime rush and Laura is clearly already identifying who she can blame. Self-assured: definitely. Self-centred: quite possibly. Self-aware? Don’t make me laugh …

Back over at Phoenix, they abandon the footie ground for Grassmarket. Steve is desperate to press his cost-effective balls into the hands of the locals, and strikes a deal with a tourist bus company so that Katie, Azhar and himself can wear any cartoon Italian symbol they can find in 8 minutes and try to flog meatballs at people who’ve come for a sightseeing trip. The shots of Katie dressed as a pizza probably signal the outcome more clearly than anything else. And they manage to literally miss a bus.

The usual descent into the mad hunt for footfall and the demented lowering of prices ensue. Adam’s meatballs might be only small, but they’ve definitely dropped since lunchtime. Laura and Jenna get increasingly screechy. No-one – at least not in the edit – asks how long that casserole’s been sitting over a warmer, or when those meatballs last saw a cooker, but at least they’re getting discount with their dyspepsia.

Back in the Boardroom, there’s not so much as a pink biscuit to be had. Only humble pie and water at Bistro Sugar. Even before the result, Adam is into defending this ‘strategy’ and I’m wondering how much he realises his meatballs are really on the line here. Tom knows enough about fat contents and texture and other foodie blather to argue some kind of defence, delivered with the air of a man who’s slightly aggrieved to have been saddled with this week’s PM.

Jenna’s still worried her team spent too much, but listening to the market research proves to have been the right decision. (Why, in The Apprentice, do the teams of plucky amateurs usually pay so little attention to people who actually make livings doing what they’re about to have a game but misguided stab at? I thought this was about learning …) She may have spent three times as much, but she still wins by £20. Her joy at a day spent on Segways as a ‘prize’ is mercifully edited to the bare minimum.

For the losers, no amount of verbal seasoning can help. Adam gets told his meatballs looked like elephant droppings, and that Hearts FC don’t spend £5.99 on a striker. (Lordalan’s scriptwriters get Gag of the Week for that one.) Katie (who we’ve previously liked, while being mindful that women with opinions don’t fare well in this game) and Steve both made several tragic calls. Steve has obviously been marinaded in spicy tomato sauce for the occasion, as he gets more and more slippery with the events of the day and adopts Laura’s boardroom tactics, getting unpleasant with first Tom and then Azhar. As Adam is in some kind of thrall to him, he escapes the final three and emerges as probably the luckiest candidate of the week.

Down to the final three, as Azhar is challenged to speak up more. He duly makes almost complete sense for about 90 seconds, and you wonder why no-one is asking Adam exactly why Az is there at all. Katie thinks Adam only listens to who he chooses (that’ll be Steve then), and that she’s being scapegoated. Without a hint of irony, Loradalan phones her a cab.

Despite all the discussion about our plucky market trader being out of his depth – quite an achievement in what was a small puddle of pasta sauce – Lordalan recognises his own kind, and Adam somehow stays. Presumably not for supper.

I was grateful I watched this after knocking back home-smoked duck, Armenian chicken with apricots and prunes, and a Slovakian take on bread and butter pudding. (You can learn from The Hairy Bikers, and you get a nice pudding to show for your efforts too.) The programme knocked my appetite for gourmet streetfood as hard as my appetite for trite business lessons. I’ve done festival catering: people want – and expect – a tasty meal, and to pay according to what it’s worth. Most people also have some sense of the cost of ingredients, and know what’s cheap. And when to tell you to **** off.

As My Dearly Beloved pointed out, it was like watching a gaffe-prone Cabinet. You can shuffle people from post to post in the hope that some kind of ability might emerge, but you can only conceal a basic skills shortage so long. Sooner or later, someone has to put their hand up and admit they were in charge when it all went sideways. As the programme makers aren’t about to do it (it’s a successful show, and they’re taking Adam’s ‘profit before taste’ mantra to heart, if not to Hearts), why should the Project Managers? I’m left ruing that leadership is achieved partly through the power of example, and wondering if Episode 7 will provide one. Optimism is important in business, after all.

In the meantime, you can always just follow the money. The bookies are listing Nick and Tom as current favourites, odds on both having narrowed considerably since Episode 1. If you fancy a long punt, Adam is 66/1 to win. For a shorter punt, he’s also 8/11 to be the next one to get fired. And reading that restored my optimism no end …

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It’s not the only phrase about friendship and relationships that has become a well-worn cliché. Another that springs to mind is “you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family”. And family can be a very loaded word: after all, family relationships are ones that we cannot distance ourselves from lightly, or abandon or move on from without emotional upset to at least one party. And views about the nature, meaning and importance of family are often tightly held and hotly contested.

Families can be a source of claustrophobia as well as comfort, of lasting damage as well as sustained nourishment. I remember many years ago working on learning materials for a social work course that contained a case study where one participant’s story started with words to the effect of ‘Think of the family as a petrol can and every member of it as an unstruck match’. Like other nouns sometimes seen with the prefix ‘nuclear’, there’s a background concern that for all the warmth and power that is being generated, there’s a lurking potential for something nasty further down the line.

Which was perhaps why I paused flicking through the April edition of HR Magzine while reading a profile of Helen Cretten, HR director at Berkeley Partnership. Rightly proud of its receipt of a top ten placing in the Sunday Times Best Small Companies report, the company is proud of what it describes as “its ‘family feel’ approach to HR”. The company places both emphasis and faith in a range of business and social gatherings, including a weekly dinner and discussion group in a restaurant. (For a fuller picture of the range of these gatherings, their website hosts a page describing ‘Social activities’ with the heading ‘Big on fun’.

As Helen Cretten describes this to the magazine:

This is not compulsory […] We are not about enforcing fun, but these meetings are a great way for staff to reconnect. They can learn about what’s going on in the wider ‘Berkeley brain’. Although this helps them share ideas which they will take to clients, it was designed to engage staff with the business, rather than for a more strategic goal.”

This is, as the Sunday Times accolade goes to show, much to praise and to be proud of this approach. The Sunday Times’ own website mentions in its commentary on the company that:

People feel a strong sense of family in their teams (89%, a top 10 score). Departments work well together (87%) and have plenty of fun (93%).”

Berkeley seems genuinely to have created an organisation in which most people feel that – rather than have a sense of being obliged to act as if they feel that – they belong. Cretten is proud that the company – including its HR function – is ‘process-light’, and that HR policy should ‘act a blocker’. We can’t know how much her words have been edited before publication, but we might hope that she also spoke practices that were designed to engage the business with the staff rather than vice versa, although its website statement’s suggest that this is the case.

Indeed, the Sunday Times website goes on to highlight some highly unusual approaches that the company takes, not least that it is ‘run by partners who take turns in five main management roles; there is no leader’. And if you look at the company’s own website, the introductory page to the section on ‘Our culture’ starts with the following words:

It shouldn’t just be a happy coincidence if you get along with your colleagues. After all, if you’re anything like us, you’re at your best with the right people around you.”

It’s also headed ‘A good fit?’ This to me reads like a company that understands the importance on the personal specification and the cultural fit as well as the skills profile of its potential recruits: there is a hefty implication of choosing the company we keep – from both the individual’s and the company’s perspective – that sits awkwardly with those words ‘family feel’. What both potential employee and organisation are choosing here are not fraternity or sorority but future working friendships. It also reads like a company that perceives that a sense of belonging isn’t just something you can command others to display: it’s something that you have to generate. Engagement shouldn’t just be inclusive as an aim, but as an activity.

It reminded me of a post we added here nearly two years ago, reacting to an article that had asked the question ‘Who owns engagement?’ and suggested that employees should shoulder most of the effort in enhancing it. We weren’t impressed with the argument at the time: even with 21 months to sleep on the idea, it’s hard not to think that even the most willing employee needs something to engage with and opportunities to do so. We also quoted a well-known anonymous blogger who, although they occupied a senior HR role themselves, was astute enough to observe:

I’m incredibly loyal to the companies that I work for as people who know me would testify. But I’ve never really joined an organisation and felt that I was in the place that I wanted to be for the long-term. Maybe that is a thing of the past? Work is more disparate these days too, we have portfolio careers. Maybe I ended up in the wrong career and should be doing something else (as an aside, I am totally in awe of people who change their careers because they are unhappy).

Maybe everyone feels a little like this, we are all trying to find something, someone or some place that we can identify with. Maybe I’m just never satisfied with my lot. Maybe I’m making something of nothing. More questions than answers.”

A sense of belonging – which is what I feel we are most accurately describing – is something that partly happens naturally through a careful matching of cultural and behavioural preferences, or through adjusting our behaviour to accommodate the preferences of others so that they might do the same in return. But it’s also partly about providing opportunities – as many firms increasingly do – for employees to gain this sense.

What I’m left scratching my head at is our choice of language. Our sense of belonging is surely acutely personal: ask people where they feel most at home, and ‘home’ may not be their answer. In an age where we move away not just to study but to establish careers and families, the original ‘nest’ may be many miles and years behind us before we find somewhere where that sense of belonging develops.

If human issues like engagement and belonging are aspects of the working experience that HR feel a need to grasp and tackle, equating them with ‘family’ seems an odd choice. It seems old-fashioned in so many ways, and not just in terms of the mental image of Dame Maggie Smith as the acid-tongued Dowager who must be obeyed. In a world where the job for life is a historic relic, can we really make interpersonal approaches that equate to “We’d like to be your friend for 18 months, after which we’ll review the situation”?

If you search HR Magazine’s website, most references to ‘family’ are associated with difficulties: family problems being a cause of absence, families’ failures to acclimatise to new locations being a factor in appointments not turning out as had been hoped, struggles with work-life balance.

Are we struggling to make a single word and single concept cover too much ground, or is it something else? That having shared understandings of the concepts of ‘family’ and ‘friends’, we lack a concept for working relationships that has similar implications of positivity, sharing, mutual support. Whatever a friend in need might be, a colleague in need often is a bloody nuisance. And a superior in need is generally a temporary increase in workload. Much as we might need to put our thinking caps on about a better word, it’s the behaviours and the relationships that really need our efforts.

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