Take, for example, the United States Postal Service, awakening to the painful realization that digital communications are fast eliminating the need for mail delivery.
Via Washington Post:
The Postal Service, too, is looking at the future as a variant of the present. USPS, convinced of the long-term need for physical mail delivery, has been relying on increases in volume, according to a Government Accountability Office report published in April. Yet delivery volume for first-class mail fell 22 percent from 1998 through 2007, tumbled an additional 13 percent last year and was down 3 percent in the first half of this year despite heavy mailings from the Census Bureau.
Defenders of the Postal Service argue that it is changing as fast as it can. They note that it has cut costs by more than $40 billion since 2002 and has reduced employment by 130,000 people since 2007, to 600,000. Radical change will face opposition from unions, big customers and its congressional overseers, who will feel enormous pressure to take short-term measures to protect jobs and have long acted parochially in opposing the closing of post offices and other service changes that could affect constituents. Consider that even changing the number of days of delivery requires amending a congressional statute….
Yet, those arguments are simply not enough. General Motors argued for years that it was improving quality and cutting costs as fast as it could in the face of huge obstacles. The market didn't care. GM's top speed wasn't fast enough.To avoid the fates of Kodak and General Motors, the Postal Service must learn from their failures. It must start by convincing Congress and other stakeholders that it is in the middle of a full-blown crisis. It can either lead change or be overrun by it.
[Image via Google Images.]
