cover image The Hit Man: One Man's Strategy for Growth, Change, and Profit

The Hit Man: One Man's Strategy for Growth, Change, and Profit

Philip W. Hurst. Longstreet Press, $19.95 (149pp) ISBN 978-1-56352-717-3

Dubbed""the Hit Man"" for his ruthless sacrifice of underlings to the bottom line, turn-around honcho Billy Pounds arrives from corporate headquarters to shape up an ailing 55-gallon steel drum factory in Hurst's novel-cum-business tome. When barking orders and monitoring efficiency doesn't work, second-in-command mensch Scott Johnson suggests treating the employees like people and asking for their input on the big shop-floor safety campaign. Naturally, the workers stream in during their off-hours--without overtime--to help. Soon workers' comp costs plummet, quality and profits soar, and the rank-and-file who were at first terrified by Billy's New Economy gospel of""constant change"" now hail him as""our leader"" and invite him to jam along in their weekend blues band. Behavioral psychologist and consultant Hurst, co-author of Prescription for Greed, translates the narrative's themes into management-ese in bullet-pointed""focus factors"" (""Positive consequences are the only consequences that optimize performance and inspire discretionary effort"") at the end of each chapter. The book is thus a long, fictionalized lesson from the human-relations school of management theory: with a little empathy, solicitude and social bonding, managers can get workers to embrace the most rigorous corporate restructurings. The book's outlook is pure Forbes, but the style is Soviet-era socialist realism, another genre in which, once given a little say-so, happy proletarians spectacularly boost their output with nary a peep about pay or hours. Instead of folk-dancing festivals, Hurst's characters hold chili cook-offs, and instead of discussing dialectical materialism, they talk about""cycle four"" business models. Commissars of whatever ideological stripe will probably be inspired by his message.