The stabbing finger. The expression reminiscent of a bulldog chewing a wasp. The infamous coup de grace: "You're fired!"
How we love Sir Alan Sugar. At almost any business shindig you can jolt a moribund conversation back to life by injecting a reference to The Apprentice. The television show is gripping because it is a competition in salesmanship, the demanding activity at the heart of commerce. The money shot is the firing at the end. As with other reality shows, the expectation of cruelty keeps viewers watching.
For me, the most intriguing element is how would-be apprentices deal with being fired. Firing people is easy. The ego of the executioner suffers no serious blow. Most managers have attended courses in axe-flourishing skills. Sir Alan's own schtick is merely copied from bouffant US property magnate Donald Trump, star of the original US version of The Apprentice.
Being fired is harder. I suspect few of Sir Alan's rejects are genuinely upset at losing the chance to work at his glamorous Wembley headquarters, marketing electronic goods at the cutting edge of late 1990s design technology.
It is worse getting kicked out of a proper job, which may underpin a bigger chunk of self-worth than you can comfortably admit. Your chance of being individually selected for the boot for purported underperformance rises with your seniority.
If you are highly visible, so are your mistakes. British boardroom politics increasingly resembles a fractious game of musical chairs. FTSE 100 finance directors, for example, typically last three to five years.
Most companies rigorously manage the dismissal of ordinary employees. Senior staff get better severance pay, but less formal warning that it may be on its way. Main board directors lack line managers to nudge them towards the exit in gradual stages. An acquaintance, who was brutally booted out of his job as chief executive of a sizeable listed business, told me: "It was like losing a limb. And it was a complete surprise."
When I, as a junior reporter, was slung off the world's most magisterial business magazine, I knew it was coming. This softened the blow. Any karmic debt was cancelled out when the man who dismissed me was forced from his subsequent job in central banking. My misdemeanour had been to write incoherently about crude oil futures. His was to conduct trysts with his mistress onsite at the Bank of England. We all have our shortcomings
Post-sacking interviews on The Apprentice suggest that the angrier the self-justification, the deeper the distress. Gary Browning, chief executive of Penna, an outplacement consultancy, says the sequence of emotions experienced by a sackee is denial, anger, acceptance and renewal.
The wiser also-rans in The Apprentice appear to have passed through the first two stages while wheeling their sad little suitcases to the taxi. As they whizz away, they are already getting on with the acceptance and renewal bit.
That seems a sensible objective in real life, too. Don Haddaway lost his job as a senior executive at Thomas Cook in a restructuring a few years ago. He spent his last ride downward in the lift making a mental list of contacts that could help him set up his own business. Artisiam, his consultancy and software business, now turns over £500,000 (€726,000). "It's a cliche," he says, "but it really was the best thing that ever happened to me."
He adds: "It is a mistake to define yourself by your job, rather than the skills on which it draws." An equally useful exercise in lateral thinking is to acknowledge the possibility of career disaster even in the middle of professional triumphs. Responding to dismissal by labelling the boss stupid or prejudiced on scant evidence, as some contestants do on The Apprentice, lacks finesse. There are far more elegant rationalisations, such as:
The economic case - firing me was a mistake, but it was part of a global process through which value is reallocated to raise efficiency.
The existential angle - my mental paradigm of my job and that of my boss in assessing my performance had ceased to overlap. But in this unknowable universe neither view is more "correct" than the other.
The management theory - I did not fail the company. The company failed me. It underinvested in my managerial development and made colleagues unresponsive to my leadership.
Most importantly, says Rebecca Clake, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, you should "stay calm and acknowledge the feedback".
A former contact of mine, Andrew Millar, failed to do either. British Biotech, a respected quoted business, sacked him as clinical research director in 1998, partly for questioning the efficacy of its drugs. Dr Millar fought the company through the press and courts and won. The chief executive who had fired Dr Millar resigned. British Biotech, which had collapsed in value, eventually disappeared via a merger.
Dr Millar got mad and got even. Pursuing revenge is usually the least pragmatic response to dismissal. But real-life bosses should remember Dr Millar when tempted to make over-liberal use of Sir Alan's television catchphrase.
