Once upon a time there was a Bell System — A.T.&T. with its Western Electric manufacturing company, Bell Laboratories and twenty-two operating telephone companies. The Bell System had one million employees; one out of every one hundred Americans who worked anywhere — in business, government or the not-for-profit sector — was part of this huge company.  There were one hundred million customers.  A.T.&T. had eighty percent of the market and was highly regulated at the state and federal level.

The government started to permit limited competition in 1958, more in '68 and much more in '71.  By 1974, the government decided that the Bell System should be broken up. After a lengthy court fight, A.T.&T. agreed to a consent decree to divest itself of the twenty-two local telephone companies on January 1, 1984. They decided to organize themselves into seven regional companies.

Deregulation continued, competition intensified, the market dominated. New products and services flowed faster, share prices soared.  Customers, except perhaps for the low use residential customer, benefited. So smaller than huge must be better.

Recently consolidation in the telephone industry has accelerated, so somewhat bigger must be better than large.

The government has taken a dim view of Microsoft with its eighty percent plus of the market, totally unregulated, and may require breakup.  Obviously, too big.

So now America-On-Line announces a takeover (there being no such thing as a merger) of Time Warner, the largest in market value of any combination of companies in history. Not only will the Internet have a dominant player, but much of the content seen on it and in movies, television and print will be under the control of the top few managers of this bigger is better conglomerate.

Most debates these days when two huge companies combine are usually centered on the effect on share owners, top managers and large groupings of customers with claims of synergy, convergence, efficiency and effectiveness, as well as on competitors and social policy.  Impacts on employees and lower level managers are limited to how many will the new emerging organization get rid of — and how fast.

And yet an organization of any size is merely the sum of its employees in small teams of three, five, fifteen or so doing the work of creating, making, delivering products and services, doing the after sale work of servicing, billing, etc., led by managers at all levels helping them accomplish tasks and reach organizational goals. (If top, middle and lower managers aren’t doing that, what are they doing?)

Any organization that forgets its own people will never attain excellent customer and share owner satisfaction in the short or long run.