There’s an old expression to the effect that “If you’re a hammer, every problem is a nail.” In other words, people tend to view a problem, and approach its solution, in the context of their own experience.
Applying this to the Postal Service, former postmaster general Louis DeJoy was a trucking guy, experienced in moving full trucks of boxes from Point A to Point B. Therefore, when he arrived at the Postal Service, he quickly translated his experience, concluding that the function of the Postal Service network is simply to move stuff from Point A to Point B.
From that perspective, he expressed his disapproval for how the network had so many nodes with different purposes and so many transportation lanes connecting the same points and so many trucks moving around that weren’t full. Therefore, the simple remedy for this apparent inefficiency was consolidation of facilities, consolidation of transportation, and aggregation of volume to ensure full trucks.
To him, that solved the problem. Stuff would be moving from Point A to Point B more efficiently.
Not all the same stuff
What DeJoy failed to understand, however, was that what the USPS was moving through its seemingly random and inefficient network was neither simply stuff nor all the same kind of not simply stuff. There were reasons for why every facility didn’t do everything, for why there was duplication of transportation lanes, and for why trucks weren’t always as full as he thought they should be.
Moreover, if there were elements that could be improved, that didn’t mean such improvement could be applied everywhere. Everything that might need fixing didn’t lend itself to the same solution. The network may not have been perfect, but it was as it was for reasons, not the haphazard whimsy he summarily assumed.
The experienced executives and managers who were at USPS HQ when he arrived either failed to explain this to him or, more likely, preferred to pander to his ego and keep their jobs. He was the hammer, the network was a nail, and he thought he knew what it should be, so don’t argue, just execute his plans to change it. Of course, as events continue to demonstrate, it’s not as simple as DeJoy chose to see it.
It’s the postal SERVICE
It might be safe to assume that DeJoy fixated on taking costs out of the system and raising rates so he could both invest in his envisioned network and eventually reach his goal of USPS financial self-sufficiency. The notion of providing service that’s worth the cost seemingly wasn’t a concern.
DeJoy early-on accepted the allegation that the service standards then in force were “unattainable,” perhaps as argued by operations executives. However, rather than finding out for himself why that was so – if it was indeed so – and investigating how to remedy the underlying causes of service failures, he opted instead to concede to reducing service standards – repeatedly.
Cutting service standards eased the pressure on operations to timely process and transport mail, but it also allowed DeJoy to pursue his goals of cost reduction and “efficient” transportation (i.e., full trucks). As the Postal Service’s own data showed, service performance began to deteriorate, but that was papered over by press releases highlighting carefully-curated, homogenized figures.
Unfortunately for DeJoy, the Postal Service is required to submit service data to the Postal Regulatory Commission, which they post publicly. Despite how DeJoy’s loyalists tried to mitigate the numbers, such as by exclusions to measurement, declining service couldn’t be obscured.
Reductio ad absurdum
According to Wikipedia, the term reductio ad absurdum “is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that following the logic of a proposition or argument would lead to absurdity or contradiction.”
As DeJoy approached the network, he believed consolidation of facilities and transportation was a desirable and necessary effort. However, if reducing from 400 facilities to 200 was good, or to 60 RPDCs, would reducing to 30 be better? Should there be a single mega-plant in the middle of Illinois through which all mail moves and from which all transportation radiates? Such an over-consolidation would be absurd, true reductio ad absurdum, but it validates the possibility that consolidating the processing of mail farther from where it originates and destinates – for the purposes of more “efficient” processing and transportation (full trucks) – may have been both overdone and pursued at the expense of service.
Similarly, his notion of an “integrated network” might have cut duplicative trips and optimized truck loads, but it blurred product differentiation – customers won’t pay top dollar for priority services only to have their shipments move on the same trucks and at the same speed as bulk mail.
Arguably, the combination of escalating prices and declining service worsened the ongoing diversion of hard-copy mail to electronic media, and fueled shipper dissatisfaction with USPS expedited services. Even if the defenders of the DeJoy network don’t agree, the numbers speak for themselves.
Rethinking
With a new PMG at the helm, there’s an opportunity to rethink how DeJoy revised the network – if he can get an objective assessment. DeJoy is gone but his team is still there, and they’re not likely to volunteer how the plans DeJoy formulated and they executed might have been imperfect.
More, not fewer, processing nodes in a denser processing network; dedicated transportation designed to meet the different levels of service the USPS offers and customers pay for; turning around local mail at the first point of processing; retaining service to all post offices; and establishing a culture of doing what’s needed to meet service standards, not finding ways to reduce them – all might be worthwhile elements of any rethinking of what DeJoy had implemented.
True, any level of service can be provided if customers want to pay for it, but the inverse is what’s being seen now. Customers – volume mailers, parcel shippers, or retail customers – are not willing to pay for the service they’re now getting, so the message seems to be clear: “efficiency” and service need to be rebalanced if the USPS hopes to retain business.