Page 114 - The Drucker Lectures

The Information-Based Organization [ 95

dred years ago, it’s the large symphony orchestra. We are mov-
ing towards the symphony orchestra, in which you will have
many fewer layers of management and many more specialists.
The triangle player has no ambition to become a bassoonist, and
absolutely none to become first violin. He wants to be a better
triangle player, the way our computer people have absolutely no
ambition to become marketing vice president, but they want to
have a bigger computer. We have many more specialists, and
they have to be integrated into the score. And by the way, let
me say [Gustav] Mahler taught us how to do it, because Mahler
created the modern orchestra when he took over the Vienna
Philharmonic. He found in the orchestra’s contract that they
had to play five evenings, and he said, “No, you are going to be
on duty five evenings, but you play four. The fifth evening you
sit out in the audience and listen.” And somehow we have to
force people in our organizations to move where they have to
“listen to the music” by putting them on a task force, or by mov-
ing them from one specialty to another, or perhaps by making
them go back to school.
What we are now seeing is the passing of the giants. I was
recently at the University of Michigan, 45,000 students. There
is no advantage to that, none whatever. There’s nothing you can’t
do with 8,000 or 12,000. And the liberal arts colleges, probably
nothing you can’t do with 3,500 today, or even 2,800. Six hun-
dred is too small. There you begin to feel all the things you can’t
do. And 10,000—no point to it; all you have more layers of vice
presidents. At the University of Michigan, the president is leav-
ing, and they wanted me to sit down with the search commit-
tee and talk about what to look for in the next one. And I said,
“There’s only one thing I can tell you: By the year 2010 you’re
going to have more vice presidents than you have students.” And
they’re going there very fast, simply because they are trying to
manage something that is much too large.