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Well, last night was the climax of 12 weeks of do-not-miss TV. Now it's gone, it will leave a big gaping hole in our Wednesday night telly. Every year I watch it, but this year I seemed more excited than in the past to see who would at last become Lord Sugar's next Apprentice. It was a very close call but it was Stella who ultimately stole the crown from Chris.

Perhaps this excitement was because I feel like I know them all personally. Strange how we get so closely acquainted with people that we don't even know. And it helps me to explain why people still to this day, four-and-a-half years on, people wait for me to speak to confirm that yes, indeed, I am "Jo from The Apprentice".

Going back for the final as a previous candidate is fabulous. It's an opportunity to experience all the great things about The Apprentice without any of the fear of getting fired. Our final was to create an event and sell tickets. We plumped for a Victorian theme with can-can dancers, all taking place just above the Thames in Tower Bridge. Our party was so wild that the bridge shook, leaving me convinced that we would end up crashing into the depths of the river itself.

But it's the final candidates who deserve all the recognition. Unless you have been in the Apprentice you will never understand how physically and mentally exhausting it is. Keeping it together day after day, week after week is debilitating. It's mental and physical torture. It took me weeks after my time on the show to adjust to normality and to recover physically. For those that go all the way it's awesome to see them being creative, committed and total focused on their goal.

I am delighted that Stella won, not just because she is Stella but for all up-and-coming business women too. We know that more female role models in business are exactly what is needed to inspire the next generation of young women so it's win, win, win.

What got Stella the job was her steely character, her seamless leadership and her all round good performance in the majority of tasks. What she had above all the others too was a determination and a focus that, by her own admission, she always gets what she wants. It's the most important characteristic of all for employees to achieve, no matter what. I call it the "shot at dawn mentality": the unswerving single-mindedness that means you will when everyone else won't. What I liked about Stella was that there was no doubt, no question that she wouldn't win. This type of certainty in ability is rare, particularly when it's coupled with a manner that draws people in, rather than turning them off.

If only everyone had this mindset, we would always have happy customers, fabulous bottom lines and fully aligned and motivated employees. Of course, this is what organisations all strive for and all eyes will be on Stella to see what she can achieve without the fuel of adrenaline.

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This week I almost turned off after 10 minutes. It was the interview round this week and I find it unbearable to watch every time - the interviewers get worse year-on-year. I know The Apprentice is reality TV but this round should be a little bit closer to ‘reality’ than it is. Joanna said it was like “mental torture”, and it wasn’t any less painful for us as viewers. It wasn’t the candidates that I found most cringeworthy but the interviewers. As a member of the HR community, I find the interview techniques condescending, outdated and aggressive.

If any one of us carried out interviews like that in our own companies we would instantly be in very hot water!

Not only were they intimidating and aggressive, they were insulting too. Accusing Stella of being a “glorified PA” when she is the only woman on a trading floor of all men not only offended thousands of PA’s but traders all over too.

Jamie, Stuart and Joanna got fired this week, leaving Stella and Chris as well-deserving finalists. It’s going to be a fabulous climax on Sunday when the winner will be revealed.

The last three fire-ees had come to the end of the road: Stuart because of his unreserved ‘blagging’; Jamie for his overuse of clichés (a man of many words with no substance); and Joanna because she will be better off on her own.

We had been waiting for a week to find out whether Stuart was telling the truth and he ran out of runway when Lord Sugar’s aid finally checked him out. What was frustrating about this is that he took the place of Liz who got fired instead of him last week.

The winner of the losers, however, is Joanna. The highlight for me was when she declared that no longer was she “Joanna the cleaner from Leicester” but “Joanna from Leicester the business woman”.

Past Apprentice candidates always have mixed views about their time in the show - some view it as the end of the world, while some view it as a beginning. My time in the show inspired me in so many ways. It invited me into circles that I had never experienced before and until this day is affords me a very privileged position as a media commentator. It tested me to my limits and revealed characteristics that I didn’t know I had (both good and bad). The key to any challenge such as this is to take the feedback, learn the lessons and grow as a result, using the outcomes in a positive fashion.

It’s a great ending for Joanna because she has decided that it will be. It’s a powerful life lesson that, when something doesn’t work out quite as we plan, it’s down to us to decide how the next chapter will pan out. Organisations are crying out for Joanna’s cup-half-full mentality and those that can engender it in their workforces will always outperform their competition.

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Well, I was as shocked as anyone. This week Stuart was leader of the losing team and didn’t get fired. He put up a fighting performance in the boardroom, promising Lord Sugar a “field of ponies” that would boost his business by millions of pounds. It was this rat-a-tat gunfire of self promotion that secured him another week to entertain us. Instead, Liz got fired - a shock to us all. She had put in a sterling performance throughout the series and I was tipping her as a potential winner. The task this week was to organise and sell bus tours of London and Joanne’s team outsold the opposition despite giving away substantial commission to a tour operator.

When Stuart's team lost he looked certain he would go; if it was up to us as viewers, he probably would have.

We Brits don't like people who consistently blow their own trumpets and speak so highly of their achievements. Stuart’s immaturity is his defence – but the bigger problem is that his bragging is an instant turn off and makes the hair stand up on the back of our necks.

Liz on the other hand was quite the opposite. She never upset anyone, never annoyed us and never really put a foot wrong. She was applauded by her team members and they never thought she would get fired.

In The Apprentice, however, sometimes this isn't enough.

Stuart's air of self assurance beat Liz in the boardroom and is typical of what can happen in organisations. People can get promoted just because they think they are great and seem to convince everyone else they are too.

Stuart is the archetypal young pup, eager to please with a tail wagging excitedly. A bit "like me", Lord Sugar always compares.

We all like people similar to ourselves but Liz was the one with the all-round ability, with skills and abilities that far outweighed Stuart's. But, as many of us women find, putting our strengths forward is not as easy as it seems. It’s not as natural in women as it is in men.

Next week I'm running a workshop for the banking sector on gender in the workplace and will use some sections of my own boardroom scenes to illustrate points such as this. I had things to say and credit to take but stopped short of saying them out loud in the name of my own female modesty. Since running my own business I have had to deal with these gremlins, because if I didn't win business I wouldn't be able to do the things I can now.

I think Liz will learn that, if you are great at something, you need to find a way to tell people graciously and with pride. Unfortunately, this is The Apprentice and it’s usually those who shout loudest that get to stay for another week.

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Oh my goodness - this week the boy’s team, lead by Jamie, won by a gnat’s whisker of £70. It was the buying task this week. On paper it looks so easy; to an outsider, 10 items in 10 hours seems like a piece of cake. Sat in a cosy office, we would Google the items and drive to the exact location, buy them, come home and have a cuppa. What makes this task so much more difficult is the time pressure and having to negotiate under stress. It’s a fine balance to make sure you buy all the items, get a good price and get back to the boardroom on time to avoid any penalties. It’s one big bowl of stress, stress, stress.

I lead the team in the buying task in my series and lost the task by a similar amount because we failed to get one item, a specialist tyre for a 4X4. The whole day was one big rush. Exhausting, frustrating and painful to watch afterwards! There were traffic jams, tough negotiators and difficulties in finding items.

We all know that stress is bad for everyone, but The Apprentice is an extreme example of stress at work.

Stress is not only bad for organisations and the people within them but it has tangible implications for performance too. Stress creates a blind spot in the brain, which means opportunities simply cannot be seen. When we stress, our days are full of rushing from one place to another with no time to think. In a bizarre way, stress makes us feel important as it satisfies one of our basic human needs: to feel significant. Many of my corporate clients regularly speak of “back-to-back” meetings and no time to think. The better ones make time to be creative, to reflect and to take a break.

But how do you tell whether you have a stress problem or not? A very simple test is to check for an endemic use of the word “manic” in your organisation. If it is said too often, have a go at replacing “manic” with “I’m busy but everything is under control” - because manic is simply panic with an “m”. Nobody wants manic employees; so talk slower, walk slower and today just BREEATHEEE and teach everyone else to do the same.

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This week the teams went overseas to sell UK crisps in Germany. It’s always tricky when a task is taken overseas. It’s also easy to underestimate how hard cold-calling is and how determined you have to be to get an appointment, especially when speaking a different language! What made it even more difficult was the fact that half the team was abroad while the other half stayed in the UK to make the products - as project manager it’s then really hard to spot any mistakes made by the other half of the team.

Both teams took orders for thousands of pounds but Apollo, this week led by Stella, beat Synergy by just over €1,000.

The difference this week was marginal - but the margins are always tiny when getting ahead of the competition, although popular belief might make us think otherwise.

Whether or not the teams look useless to us as viewers, they do go to enormous lengths to outdo the competition. During my time in The Apprentice, one of the tasks was to sell noodles on the River Thames. I would have stopped at nothing to make the task a success, despite having worked 18 hours the previous day and getting up at 5am. I still wonder where I got the energy from in spite of all the setbacks and difficulties. I have always followed the same mentality in my own business, doing more with less and being totally committed 100 per cent of the time.

This episode of The Apprentice reminded me that it only takes an extra 10 per cent for organisations to outshine their competitors. That’s not a lot. The gap between being good and being outstanding is very small and it’s down to a state of mind that has to become a ritual. In this week’s Apprentice, the difference between winning and losing the task was just three appointments.

People and organisations who perform at full efficiency are certain to get ahead in business, but the tricky bit is maintaining people’s excitement and passion to go that extra mile every day. It’s a two way thing but ultimately, as in The Apprentice, the person has to want to do it. Even with all the coercive and persuasive methods to motivate people, it has to come from within - as the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

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This week’s task was to create a backdrop for a DVD that customers could star in. One team picked a motor racing background and the other a skiing setting.

It was a fun and interesting task; creating a product, bringing it to market and selling it. Again this week we watched the candidates do things that they would never do in real life, including dressing up as a giant penguin! As a candidate, this is what is so brilliant about being in the show. It takes so many different twists and turns, taking us into so many different experiences, all of which will live on in our minds for a very long time. We all learn big lessons but it’s the range of things that we have to do that makes it such a valuable and memorable experience.

The results were close and only £40 separated the two teams in the end. Stuart was the team leader of Apollo - he did a really good job of annoying the heck out of his team (and most of the country viewing it too) - and Sandeesh was the team leader of Synergy.

This week Sandeesh bore the brunt of her team’s failure. She was always on a sticky wicket because she had been on the losing team several times and had been in the final three more than anyone else. It was difficult for her to continue to fight her corner.

However, what I liked about both teams this week was their flexibility of strategy. All the management texts tell us that planning and strategy are of the utmost importance - but equally as important is the ability to change strategy depending on its degree of success.

The worst thing you can do is stick to a strategy when it’s failing. Of course, when there are lots of things to consider, a change of strategy can be a difficult thing to execute but changing direction is much better than sticking to your guns when they are not working properly.

The key to a successful organisation is one that thinks on its feet, is bold and takes action when it’s needed. It’s not about conceding but finding a new direction - and taking people with you in the process.

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This week was the creative task. The annual Apprentice TV ad always provides much entertainment because every year it always seems to go so badly wrong! This task was about branding cleaning products. The two products that the teams created were The Germinator and Octi-clean (where eight hands were better than two!). Both teams tried to use humour to position their products but they both turned out like 60’s chintz, cheesy and cringeworthy.

While the Germinator seemed a much better proposition on the face of it, it was giving out the wrong message and misleading. The axe fell on team leader Alex because of his lack of leadership and the fatal tactical mistake of bringing Sandeesh back into the boardroom when she hadn’t done anything wrong.

No matter how bad these TV ads turn out to be when the candidates watch them back in the boardroom, we are always so pleased and proud with the outcome (even though we are usually well wide of the mark!). In real life, it usually takes weeks to turn around a creative campaign but we have to do it in two days. Because of all the hard work we put in, there is always a sense of pride of starting something from scratch and seeing a full-blown ad on TV.

It really is a case of “getting lost in the moment” in The Apprentice that sends us down the completely wrong road, but how many times does this happen in companies? How many times do we all get it so badly wrong in business - remember Gerald Ratner?

Fortunately (or unfortunately for businesses), getting things wrong is part of life. Taking chances and risks is part of the journey to getting it right. As I was reminded recently: “You are not a failure because something didn’t work out; you are a success because you tried.”

Failure is part of the journey to success. Failure costs us the job in The Apprentice, but how much room is there for mistakes in business today? In these tight economic times there are narrow margins for error - but to create a truly entrepreneurial culture, some slack in the system has to exist. Allow for things to go wrong occasionally and keep yourself ahead of the game.

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This week’s task was to select clothing to sell for one day only in Manchester’s Trafford centre.

The main difficulty in this type of task is that you don’t get time to do any market research. There isn’t much time to make selections so quite a lot of it is guess work. Unless of course you have an “expert” on the team.

This week, Alex was the self-proclaimed expert - on both retailing and the Trafford Centre. When he so willingly put his neck on the line you knew that it would bite him later if they didn’t win. Once Paloma, Synergy’s team leader, had cleverly off-loaded her responsibility for any of Alex’s judgments you knew that this could be the nail in his coffin later in the day.

It was a narrow victory for team Apollo who pipped their opposition by £50 through picking the more popular lower priced glitzy party dresses.

In the boardroom it was carnage. Paloma took Alex and Sandeesh back in with her: Alex because of his mistakes on the task and Sandeesh because of her previous track record. A vicious fight ensued that made for uncomfortable viewing.

Like most people I had tipped Paloma as one of the frontrunners but in the boardroom she just went that bit too far with a deeply personal and vicious attack on Alex, who most would agree is the Mr Nice Guy in the pack.

Quite clearly the two of them rubbed each other up the wrong way and it was the clash of personalities that made Alex “irritate” Paloma all day long.

According to prevailing thinking on diversity, difference is a positive thing. It’s good to have people from different age groups, genders and abilities because it breeds creativity, is a better reflection of customer needs and helps teams to perform better. But managing people’s different styles and personalities can create a hotbed of tension in the workplace.

The answer lies in knowing where people are coming from. Knowing what has formed their ideas and what shapes their world. Understanding people’s values and what they find important is one of the most important ways of creating an effective team. I used to think that idle chat with my team and work colleagues was a waste of time but it’s these impromptu conversations by the photocopier or the kettle that can provide a much deeper insight into people’s lives and thoughts.

The strength of a good leader is knowing where you want to take the team but also at where they are coming from too.

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This week the task was to select two products to pitch to retailers. The pitching always provides a degree of entertainment as in each series nerves tend to get the better of the contestants. But this week, despite the varying standards of the pitch, the teams achieved record sales.

Both did exceedingly well in securing orders but it was Apollo that raced ahead, with their total order of over £135,000 for babygros that change colour and a T-shirt to tame the male midriff. Most of the orders placed were down to the slick pitching ability of Liz, who has to be an early frontrunner.

Despite their admirable effort, Synergy lost – and it was “annoying” Melissa who was fired.

But it was the dissent within the winning team that grabbed my attention. Three of the girls in a “sub team” were sent to pitch their products to high street shops. They all did well in securing orders but I was taken aback by the way each of them protested they should claim ownership of the orders. These women were overly competitive, even by The Apprentice standards.

In the show, you are only as good as your last deal or as bad as your last mistake. Every minute other contestants are stacking up evidence to reveal in the boardroom, so you try to cover up every slip up to stop them using it against you. Imagine the most competitive company you could work in – but worse! In one task I temporarily misplaced our mobile phone for a few minutes. Not a life or death mistake, but in the world of The Apprentice you would have thought someone had died! I’m sure, too, that my reticence to stab anyone in the back contributed to my early exit.

Of course, we are taught that a little rivalry between workers can be healthy, but it is the way in which a competitive culture is encouraged that can make organisations better or a worse places to work. If employees are openly pitched against each other this can have a detrimental effect as they not only want to show themselves in their best light but also show others in their worst.

We should encourage people to take credit for things that they do well yet put their hands up when they go wrong. It’s not about retribution – it’s about taking responsibility.

As HR professionals we are always asking: “How can we ensure that people always give their optimum?” Effective performance management systems are those that encourage individuals to give their best – and benefit the team too.

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This week’s task was to produce and sell bakery products. The teams were mixed to stir things up. Melissa led Synergy and Shibby led Apollo.

Melissa did an awful job, but managed to survive owing to the abysmal performance of the rival outfit, which contrived to deliver only 16 units out of an order for 1,000. Shibby got his marching orders as a result.

Melissa is in the food business and, on paper, seemed the natural choice to manage this task. But she made the archetypal Apprentice error of falling into the “I’m the expert” trap. We all know that being the expert doesn’t always make you the best leader.

In this show you are always hedging your bets. You know that you have to lead at some point and Melissa thought that this would be the task for her. You think the project has your name on it – and then they give you the rule book.

The thing that most people don’t realise about The Apprentice is that each task carries with it a folder full of rules. When I was on it, I would go off into creative heaven on each task only to be restricted by what we could and couldn’t do. My team’s vital eleventh-hour deal to buy a car tyre was also scuppered because the supplier wouldn’t agree to let the transaction be filmed.

It was this that led me to think about rules in organisations and whether they prevent people from doing their best. Boundaries are needed, of course, but an organisation’s ever-present systems and procedures can restrict creativity and entrepreneurial flair.

Organisations are always looking for the edge and to be better than the rest, but committee decision-making, the fear of failure and pressure to get it right every time can restrict those who want to be more free-spirited in their thinking.

My private-sector clients often complain about the restrictiveness of their cultures. This stricture of thought and individuality is one of the most common reasons why people leave organisations. It’s our job in HR to get the best out of people, but I know from experience that sometimes our policies are more about compliance than creativity.

Standing out and rocking the boat are traits of great leaders, but how far does your organisation go to encourage really creative thinking? Those that support innovation are the organic organisations of the future.
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