If I Were Postmaster General For a Day
By
Ron Williams, 3/11/2009
Nobody asked me but… Here is a thought that might add interest
to your day. Just been anointed Postmaster General of the
United States! I know my employees have an extraordinary task
of delivering mail to every household and business in America.
Wow! Sometimes it seems that there are not enough hours in the
day for such a deadline-oriented responsibility. We got all
types of mail volume to handle, passports to process, vehicles
to maintain, change of addresses to deal with, repeat
customers to keep happy, contractors to negotiate with,
facilities to upkeep and masses of employees. I'm talking
about; letter carriers, clerks, mail handlers, electronic
technicians, mechanics, security forces, administrative
support, and military personnel engaged in binding this great
nation together at home and abroad.
It's that time again! Parcel rates must climb to remain
competitive, and now we got to ask the public for an
additional two cents as a return on investment and get their
forever stamp of approval. As the reform drumbeat gets louder
we have to find a way to stop saying that's just the cost of
doing business and change the way we do everything before we
reach the point of change or die. Well, I know there is a
perspective deep down in the trench from those employees
ushering in the new generation, realizing those are the
employees who are thinking that if someone wants their opinion
the higher-ups will give it to them. It's time to find a way
to gainfully employ them in our business model if we expect
this service is going to last another 200 years since they
will be the leaders when all of the elder-states-people are on
the beach collecting interest on a postal retirement. I'm
wondering what we can do inside the box to streamline business
practices and enable us to skip the price hikes for a period
of time in this current economic dilemma and pave the way to a
better win-win situation. Remember that Flintstone character
the Great Gazoo how he was always saying "hello dumb-dumb,"
this time he is murmuring optimistic hints about our three
most important metrics; the employee, the customer, and the
business.
Today, our top priority must be to up-sell the employees just
like we do services, get their feedback about wasted time and
dollars, then formulate their solutions into one big plan and
start testing, and implementing their suggestions. If I
involve them, then I can hold them responsible because we will
all be accountable when we can't figure out a workable plan
and find it necessary to call in the engineers sort of like
"calling in the cleaner." I would direct my managers to manage
all the things without micromanaging, and leave the
supervising to credentialed supervisors who can use sound
judgments to mesh personalities together. Let's evaluate the
spreadsheets together, recycle the red tape in the system, and
construct a postal blue pipeline of ideas built on consensus.
As always there will be those people who have a beef with
anything we do. We will show them the menu and remind them
that the only thing we can do with beef is chop it up, cook
it, and eat it. The drivers driving the trucks have ideas how
to cut fuel costs, what are they? The people operating the
machines have ideas on how to improve performance, we're
listening! The window clerks have feedback on what our clients
want and need to save us all a whole lot of time and money,
let's hear it! Everyone, don't just blab about it. Write down
your ideas and present them with pride and ownership.
My theme of the day would be "let's do everything by the
numbers without chasing the numbers." Our people are all the
talent we need to reel in the real figures and account for
every unit of mail. I would conduct a face-to-face satellite
town hall with as many employees possible before my passionate
and fiery verbal message turns into black smoke as it drifts
across the chain of command with a Haley's comet effect and
the communication is drastically altered on the way to ground
zero. I need to attach a smile to my communication as I reach
out to employees in all postal operations from the street, to
the processing facilities, and back up to mahogany row at
headquarters. I should offer some food for thought in the form
of national performance statistics feedback back out to those
on the front lines fighting the good fight and offer tangible
incentives to employees who can beneficially restructure our
budget, service, and revenue indicators.
We are a huge agency of internal and external customers and I
would ask my employees a simple question; how many of you are
utilizing and promoting our services to everybody you know?
Here's an intentional thought that might sound redundant;
everybody knows somebody, who knows somebody, who knows
somebody else at the post office. I'd create a slide
presentation and do the math together with the employees. If
we have 600,000 employees and we buy rolls of stamps, ship
parcels, and communicate the advantages of our services to
each other, family, friends, and neighbors I think we could
probably generate enough revenue internally to keep ourselves
self-sufficient and independently in business for a long time
to come.
Instead of speculating about Lean Six Sigma verbiage at higher
levels in our organization I would challenge my national
training team to figure out how we can make this concept a
reality so my employees at the lowest levels won't think my
organization is just engaging in the latest business fad and
buzzwords. I would specifically tell my leaders don't just
talk to the engineers, supervisors and managers. Talk to the
employees that do karate everyday on the front lines, in the
trenches, behind the scenes, and make them a vital part of the
martial arts hierarchy so the business can get the true
benefit of the quality management process. It's time to put
some meat on the bones of the cause and effect diagram and
discuss the impacts, and cost of poor quality. Just like
President Obama said, "change starts from the bottom up," and
I think if we embrace that paradigm to reframe business, soon
we won't be able to recognize the place.
I realize after dreaming up this stuff that the grass is
always greener on the other side and acknowledge that this
huge lawn needs regular mowing, fertilization, and care to
keep the weeds down. We are all the future of the United
States Postal Service and we all know what is at stake if we
don't connect the dots together and create a web of control.
Rising rates, declining volumes, and the digital electronic
era present challenges that are suggestive of rightsizing to a
smaller workforce, lost work hours, and decreased business
opportunities. If I were Postmaster General for a day I guess
at the end of the day I would ask for a commitment from
everyone on the Blue team to find the business in the business
and let's get this product to every household and business in
the safest, most efficient, and on-time manner possible. |
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