[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]As I pointed out last week, the forty-year experiment of trying to provide mail service by using the principles of private enterprise has led to the Postal Service becoming so corrupt and inefficient it no longer is able to perform its primary mission, delivering the mail.
Much like Wall Street, the profit motive attendant to the principles of private enterprise has overwhelmed the agency's mandate.
The Post Office’s old mandate has been replaced by a new primary mission: Enriching top executives. That, in turn, has led to a culture of employee abuse, poor customer service and the looming demise of the agency itself.
Previously, we advocated the abolition of the pay-for-performance program for executives. That is an essential part of any hope to save the postal service.
The pay-for-performance program was initially put into place based on the widely held assumption that outrageously higher pay would draw a higher caliber of executives. There is no evidence of a correlation between greed and competence. Our recent experience with the Postal Service and on Wall Street seem to suggest the opposite.
A more accurate rule of thumb would be: Any person who places more emphasis on wealth than character is not smart enough to be trusted.
Can’t They See?
If the executives entrusted to run the Postal Service were worth their salaries, they should have recognized that the nearly 600,000 employees and the goodwill of its customers are their most valuable assets. Yet the first thing these executives did to offset the Postal Service’s losses was to undermine both. Even while enriching themselves with unprecedented perks and salaries, they began to downgrade and literally steal from employees.
They did everything they could to make it harder for customers to mail a letter, including removing collection boxes. They began to penalize employees for waiting for an elderly or disabled customer to bring a letter to the door.
The postal Board of Governors should consider putting people in place who are less interested in enriching themselves than in problem-solving. With that approach, maybe they would get someone who recognizes it is human nature to work harder for a person you respect than for a supervisor who makes it impossible to avoid punishment. Longstanding behavioral research shows that even rats work harder for reward than punishment.
Winning Strategy
An innovative leader would realize the motivating power of being a part of a winning endeavor. Such an executive probably would have divided the work-floors into groups with each electing its own leader. The groups could compete to meet productivity, attendance, safety, efficiency, customer service goals. Post ongoing scores on a bulletin board. Recognize and reward winning groups with certificates of appreciation to go into their personnel files.
When a problem arises in a group, the supervisor would discuss it with the group's leader. This would minimize confrontations between employees and management, save on grievances, free supervisors for other tasks, and help to identify the natural leaders. Most important, it would give employees a sense of self-direction and raise morale. The peer pressure attendant to internal competition would be more effective in enhancing productivity. Employees would begin to work with the Postal Service instead of against it.
An insightful executive would have realized that one of the biggest drains on postal revenue is getting the routes put up for delivery. Due to the impact of excessive downsizing, there are thousands of unassigned routes across the country on any day. Often such routes are being put up by employees unfamiliar with them. This leads to miscased and misdelivered mail, and a delay in getting the mail processed. It should be obvious to leadership that every case in the postal system should conform to a uniform pattern.
Currently routes are set up to reflect the way they are delivered on the street, resulting in a hodgepodge of numbers and streets going in every direction. For one who is unfamiliar, the layout would resemble Chinese crossword puzzle. They require a several-day learning curve, a tremendous drain on revenue.
All routes should be drawn the way they are set up in the station and pulled down the way they are walked. A new carrier only would need to figure out the route once.
The routes should be set up in the natural way the human brain organizes information. Larger streets should be at the top of the case, smaller at the bottom. Everything on the case should go from low to high.
There are thousands of things the Postal Service could do to increase efficiency. Unfortunately, as my kids used to say, many of these high-paid executives are “stuck on Stupid.” They never saw a problem that cutting their employees' throats wouldn't fix.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
