In it's May 30 - June 5, 2011 issue, Business Week's cover story profiles what they see is the imminent collapse of the U.S. Postal System. This, of course, terrifies me because of my postcard hobby. The article is interesting to anyone who uses mail or who wants to understand decision-making in Washington.
Some of the highlights include the difficulty benchmarking the USPS: the other delivery companies (which are private) also handle logistics and seem inappropriate comparisons. Instead, authors of a report of the state of the postal system looked to other countries' mail services. (We don't compare favorably.) Since I am a management professor, one of the issues interesting to me is the lack of a long-term plan as well as the culture of the post office that is focused on efficiency rather than survival.
If the article is correct, something will happen that forces the hand of the government by the end of this year.
4 comments:
Based on what the employees at one of my local post offices have to say, this is probably very accurate. Maybe they should hire you and people like you as consultants.
Nooooooo.... I send many postcards through Postcrossing and many come to me.... Someone please help.
I read that too. Very insightful and not positive at all. Still seems like there's too many people steering the ship that don't see the waterfall up ahead.
What a terrible thought! Maybe the greeting card industry will step in and throw its weight around since they'd be heavily affected (yeah, I don't know where that idea came from--it just hit me). I know my local post office has made the comment that I'm one of the only ones who sends a lot of personal mail. Let's hope something good happens and that the postal system survives!!!
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