Page 115 - The Drucker Lectures

96 [ The Drucker Lectures

I drove by the NYU Medical Center, and my driver asked me
why they didn’t expand when they had the opportunity to buy up
the next block. I happen to know this. It’s already too big, basi-
cally 2,200 beds. The best hospital is probably about 900—even
a teaching hospital. And so you will see small institutions pro-
vide the best communication link. The British had 1,000 people
to run a subcontinent. You will have concentrated institutions,
rather than diversified ones, so that the score is clear. And you
will have upward responsibility for information, for objectives,
for results, for educating the boss.
And you will see institutions that are groups of specialists.
And yet everybody should, theoretically at least, know the mu-
sic, so that he knows what [French composer Claude] Debussy
sounds like and doesn’t think only about what the bassoon part
is. You must take integrating responsibility for putting yourself
into the big picture. Commands go from the top down; infor-
mation goes from the bottom up. And so we are facing an enor-
mous job of restructuring, which we have just begun.

From a talk given as part of the Britannica Awards, presented by Ency-
clopædia Britannica to recognize “exceptional excellence in the dissemina-
tion of learning for the benefit of mankind.”