Joe diVincenzo said:
>When I read the company has no responsibility for continuous
learning I get a rush of adrenaline snip
>Is there not a responsibility to the business? and in return to the
employee? If it is relatively inexpensive to replace employees with one's
that have more up to date skills then you may be correct. I personally
view labor management relations more of a compact to succeed together than
for one group to rip off the other.>.
Joe, I agree with you but the market seems to have taken a vicious turn
into a new model. Unfortunately that model is one that I have a great
deal of experience with and it ain't nice. The authors Robert H. Frank
and Philip J. Cook write:
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"For a parable in modern economics, consider the local opera house. At
the turn of the century, Iowa alone had 1,500 of them. Thousands of
sopranos earned adequate, if modest, livings from their live performances.
But now thanks to modern recordings, the world's best soprano can be
literally everywhere at once. And since it costs no more to stamp out
compact discs of Kathleen Battle's Mozart arias than her understudy's,
most opera fans listen to Battle. Thus Battle earns several million
dollars a year while most other sopranos, many of whom are almost as
talented, struggle to get by."
The name of their book is "The Winner Take-All Society: How More and More
Americans Compete for Fewer and Bigger Prizes. Encouraging Economic
Waste, Income Inequality, and an Impoverished Cultural Life." (1995 The
Free Press)
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As Frank and Cook analyze this narrowing at the top of all professions and
the wholesale elimination of job types that do not carry over into the
Information Era they describe the same kind of hopes and dreams about the
"brass ring" that I encounter daily in my company and students. In the
arts there is an unbelievable attrition rate. For example, there are
approximately 26,000 vocal majors in professional schools in any one year.
(Peterson's guide to the performing arts schools) About 6,500 of them
graduate each year. "Opera America" (the pro Opera Association) listed
204 new operatic productions that paid professional fees in 1994. (Ten of
those were mine.) The American Guild of Musical Artists (the opera union)
has 5,500 vocal members that take those jobs. In order to get in the
Union you have to have a job that pays. In order to audition for that job
you have to be a member of the Union. Some get around it. Some find jobs
in religious music or teach but most go back to business or medical
school. These are highly motivated young people who have practiced their
work "extra-curricularly" for years. They have competed and gotten into
good schools and graduated with good grades. But there are no jobs. The
closest guarantee to getting a job is luck.
That makes their work comparable to winning at gambling or striking it
rich as a prospector for gold. (I find it ironic that the columnist
William Safire, who supports this system, has come out against gambling.)
Frank and Cook use the present condition of my profession as a parable for
what is happening in the society at large. They use the "Games" model to
indicate "Winners and Losers" and the "Winners" pay has grown from:
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"The ratio between top executives and the average worker
in their companies has now grown from 35-to-1 in the
early seventies to more than 140-to-1 today."
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In Europe a top Opera Star can make $50,000 for one
concert but most fine singers in New York (not the Stars)
make about $15,000 a year singing. The average salary
for a member of Actor's Equity is $5,000 a year doing
their profession. This is what Frank and Cook call:
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"A winner-take-all market is one in which reward depends
heavily on relative, not absolute, performance. A farmer's
pay depends mostly on the absolute amount of wheat he or
she produces, and only a little on the amounts produced
by other farmers. But a software developer's pay depends
largely on his or her performance ranking. In the market
for personal income-tax software, for instance, the
market reaches quick consensus on which among the hundreds
of competing programs is the most comprehensive and user
friendly. Although the best program may be only slightly
better than its nearest rival, their developer' incomes
may differ a thousand fold."
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This may sound like the market you know, for much of it
uses the same traditional business language but, it isn't
the same by a very long shot. This free-lance or "Temp"
marketplace is found in all of the large corporations
and was being extolled by an executive "Headhunter"
on CNN two nights ago.
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"...it was once the almost universal practice in American
businesses to promote executives from within, which
enabled companies to retain top executives for less than
one-tenth of today's salaries. As recently as 1984, the
business community arched its collective eyebrow when
Apple hired a new chief executive with a background in
soft drink marketing....Today business executives jump
ship for a better offer as commonly as free agents in
professional sports.....The most dramatic example of
the explosion in pay at the top is Michael Eisner,
who received $200 million in total compensation in 1993."
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For the past nineteen years I've been working to get the singers, in my
company, out of this free-lance model. My particular art form, chamber
opera, is an Ensemble form. An Ensemble is a group that becomes one
entity, takes on its own consciousness and learns specific thought
patterns that are unique to the Ensemble.
(That's right, a Learning Organization! Peter Senge knew that and used
the term Ensemble to describe his idea. That is why I was drawn to his
ideas and am on this list.)
There is no such animal as a free-lance string quartet or a free-lance
Chamber Opera Ensemble. It takes years to develop the mental states that
are a part of the art. I've run a holistic training to undo the
free-lance mental model and develop a stable integrated self-supporting
model that is at home in the Art business world and the society at large.
Refusal to give up the free-lance model makes the Learning Ensemble
impossible. Temporary Employees have made Ensemble an impossible dream
(sorry) in the grand opera companies of America. It is no mistake that an
"Amazin Mets" underdog team made up of 2nd string rejects, can
occasionally discover their unity, think as one and defeat the "Stars." A
Broadway show that is an Ensemble mess can also discover their unity and
begin Learning if they have a minimum of 100 consecutive performances with
good salaries. At that point they are no longer Free-lance but members of
a Cast a very special community.
Unfortunately performance has suffered to the point where a few years back
when Walter Felsenstein, the acknowledged greatest Opera Director of his
time, was approached to direct at the Metropolitan he refused due to the
inability of the Management to guarantee him enough rehearsal time to
create a Grand Operatic Ensemble. Times have not changed although the
scenery is prettier and the ORCHESTRA is the Metropolitan Opera Ensemble.
Their singer's are basically temporary employees hired to do an expert job
for a limited time. America's CEOs bouncing from company to company are
beginning to resemble free-lance singers in many ways. With the
competition for successful companies increasing, I suspect there will be
as few CEO Stars as there are Opera Stars.
Will they be a caring management? If the opera parallel holds they will
be civil to their employees with the same code as between the higher and
lower members of an opera cast. If this trend continues, the regular
business world will be divided, like the Opera world, into Winners and
Losers. (The courts decreed that a prominent opera star was not just a
skilled technician but an inherent gift from God. Therfore she didn't
have to share her business, during a divorce settlement, with her
ex-husband who had trained her daily.) and with Murray and Herrnstein can
this be far behind for CEOs? One thing for sure, an Ensemble or Learning
organization is impossible in such a climate. Maybe slavery or castes but
not a Learning Organization.
Believe me, you don't want the average American worker to resemble the
average American singer! Family is impossible, and security is a dream.
You won't have even begun to see the end of the teenage single Mother.
I realize that the issues of authority, technique and identity are
important to all of us on the list, and we have practical matters that
press down upon us all. I have taken these couple of hours to share this
with you and the list. Messrs. Frank and Cook said nothing that I did not
already know both personally and from other members of my family. I feel
there are crucial matters of vision that must be dealt with. I am
embarrassed when I hear our situation compared to other situations around
the world that are doing as well as we are with a lot less space and
resources. They work together! You never know who history is going to
decide the heroes are, I fear that our version of an economic society has
a better than even chance of not attaining that title. The Aztecs dreamed
of their end before he ever landed and this song was heard in the streets
for a year before the landing which began the end.
"By night a voice was heard in the air:
a woman, crying,
"Oh, my children, we must go far away."
At times she cried:
"Oh, my children, where can I take you?"
-- Ray Evans Harrell Artistic Director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. 200 West 70th Street, Suite 6-c New York City, New York 10023-4324 mcore@soho.ios.com