On A Postal Note

The end of the year offers a great moment to share some thoughts from a street level view as this organization navigates full steam ahead in continued economic and political times. Time flies when we are having fun moving the mail. Like a theme park USPS real estate is expensive, the service lines are long, and the delivery ride is short.

I recently read Colin Powell’s latest book “It Worked for Me in Life and Leadership” and one of the most memorable chapters of the book was the “Indispensable Person” which describes how Abraham Lincoln would frequently hang out at the telegraph office (a U.S. mail competitor) during the Civil War and wait for telegraph reports. One day a telegraph came in about a Union army calamity describing the capture of a brigadier general and one hundred horses. Lincoln reviewed the report and began to mumble to himself as he squirmed in his chair “sure hate to lose those one hundred horses.” The telegraph operator asked, Mr. President, what about the brigadier general? Lincoln replied “I can make one of those in five minutes, but it’s not easy to replace one hundred horses.”

If you think about the workroom floor and all the advancing technology of the 21st century that provides business horsepower, it is basically replacing people power at a rapid pace. The human element today is no doubt still seen in the same way we were during the Civil War era. Some management leader somewhere is thinking out loud, a mail handler, a clerk, a carrier, I can replace one of them in five minutes, but I sure would hate to lose all this new automated technology. The best we can do as craft leaders is to take care of the new technology, get the most out of it, and make sure collectively we are pulling in the direction that “We Deliver.”

As we forge the future we can’t forget the fact that our mail iceberg continues to melt from a condition I will refer to as postal warming. I guess I would define it as a result of human actions and business tampering causing industry problems. Mail is a very time sensitive product slowly showing signs of decreased volume in some products, increasing opportunities in others, and forever a topic of continued opinionated abuse.

One important future responsibility for all of our brothers and sisters is keeping the communication lines open with each other in this digital age. We benefit from improving our professional working relationships, putting aside our personal differences, and bringing our individual talents to the team table to overshadow our group weaknesses. Infighting and disruptive behavior only creates voids in communication, breeds negativity, and causes delays in accomplishing the real energetic work that must get done.

We are all scouts in this colony monitoring the mail climate of the next century. All of us are change agents, and our events today must outlive us well into future generations to know it was real change. Mail is still a great place for a young postal worker to raise the flag, set up camp, and promote fraternal core values. We still got a lot of work to do, and when we network with each other our future tasks will become much easier. Get involved in organized labor! Don’t talk about what the courageous volunteer members are doing, be part of the transformation you want to see for the next century. We know you got skills. See you on the way to 2013 and beyond.

Ronald Williams, Jr.