Miller's Bolt: A Modern Business Parable

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Thomas Stirr, a columnist for Marketing Magazine, tries hard to
integrate his business and personnel theories into a fictionalized
framework. He calls the result a “business parable,” suggesting that
there are lessons to be learned from the story of Jim Manion, a
marketing project manager who is beset by relationship problems with his
coworkers. When these problems threaten to cost Manion his job, he seeks
help from Peter Miller, an “independent psychologist” who
specializes in helping organizations deal with change.

The book follows Manion and Miller as they attempt to work out
Manion’s problem within a three-month period. Miller’s modus
operandi is symbolized by a conceptual tool—a four-inch-long stainless
steel bolt—that he gives to his client early in their relationship.
Every day, the psychologist says, we are either moving up or down the
threads of the bolt, or worse, getting fixated on one thread, much as
the nut for the bolt is unable to move past a burr on the shaft. The
author makes this visual metaphor for personal development work for
roughly 50 pages, but after that the story flounders under the
unsustainable image.

Had Stirr contented himself with writing the parable as a story, he
might have been able to bring it off. Unfortunately, his
management-consultant persona pops up everywhere. Page after page, the
reader is subjected to uppercase buzzwords (PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS,
LEARNING) and annoying management homilies—set in boldface
italics—such as “Every time you make a commitment, however small,
your personal credibility and image are on the line” and “Companies
hire people based on skills and fire them because of attitudes.”
Turning such corporate-speak into a story requires writing skills that,
unfortunately, this author does not possess.