Post Office Crisis LO538 (Was: Intro - Graham Johnson)

Keith Cowan (cowan@pci.on.ca)
Sat, 25 Mar 1995 17:28:00 -0500 (EST)

Replying to Re: Intro - Graham Johnson LO510

> Your explanation on Australia Post called my attention to the threates,
> opportunities and sollutions being experienced by that Corporation, which
> is similar to the situation we face nowadays at the Brazilian Post.
> Alex Silva
> esap@jazz.cr-df.rnp.br

I cannot help but observe that most post offices, being government run,
defined their businesses as delivering mail in a routine fashion with
lots of manual steps. As technology overtook the flow of information,
the role became less essential, and the large infrastructure has been
under attack as their revenue growth and importance has eroded.

Is it unfair to characterize these organizations as the universal
example of what happens when an organization does not learn and adapt
to new technologies for delivering its base function? Perhaps having
some fuzz around what its reason for existence is?

-- 
Keith Cowan       Phone: (416)565-6253           FAX: (905)858-7131
Toronto        Internet: cowan@pci.on.ca  Compuserve: 72212,51
 -----
Host's Note: I'm thinking about an article in New Yorker magazine several 
months ago about the Chicago IL post office here in the US, how *awful* 
the service could be at it's worst, some wonderful improvement stories, 
and how hard it was to accomplish real change.

-- Rick Karash, rkarash@world.std.com, host for learning-org -----