I remember the day I met Moya Greene. She held a management conference at the Sheraton in Vancouver. I was standing out front with my "Stop Moya Greene; No More Bankers; Don’t Derail Canada Post" sign laughing and speaking with some of my former managers outside after it was over.
I asked where Moya Greene was and they laughed and said it was over and they whisked her out the back way. I’m told Ken Mooney had already stormed the meeting. Then one of them laughed and said, "Well if you stick around you might be able to see her because that is the parking lot she will be leaving from."
No sooner had he said those words then opportunity knocked. Moya Greene pulled up right beside us sitting in the back seat of her chauffeur driven car. We make eye contact, I smile and raise my sign for her to see. She squints, reads my sign and as her driver starts to pull away she tells her driver to wait as she rolls her window down and shouts out her response.
"Hey what do you have against bankers anyways?!" She yelled trying to embarrass me in front of the other managers. I step forward and respond with a question "What does not picking up mail on the weekend have to do with increasing business revenue?!" She thinks for a second, then motions her driver to drive on without any further comment. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
She caught me off guard and I thought her response was hilarious. That is why I posted a formal response as to what I have against bankers on this web site but lost it and will reiterate some of it here.
What do I have against bankers?
Nothing… much… as long as they stay in their field. That is they key. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has their specialty. Bankers do tend to be good at making a profit. Somewhat easier to do in that field with our poor handling of consumer debt.
However, two dangers we see about putting bankers out of their field is pride and arrogance. Moya Greene clearly stipulated in her mandate that "Managers in the public sector have to deal with the public interest, and therefore are more constrained." Having to deal with public interest - ain’t that a bitch. Especially when "The private sector is not open to be told anything by the public sector. It sees the public sector as incompetent in the areas of downsizing, implementing new technology, and strategic planning. There is a general belief in the private sector that public sector managers do not know anything."
That is the key right there. They think they know everything and everyone else is stupid even those who have been in that field all their lives. Take CN for example. What happens when you privatize CN and put a banker in charge? Banker gets a great idea, lets make the trains longer so we can make more money. Manager in the field says we can’t do that or the trains will derail around corners.
Banker disregards advice from manager in the field because the manager in the filed in stupid and bankers know everything. Banker gets a new idea, let’s lay off most of the maintenance staff to save on money. We’ll do a third of the maintenance and not do it so often because that is redundant. We’ll save tons more money. Manager in the field says you can’t do that or else the likelihood of a derailment would increase exponentially.
Banker disregards advice from manager in the field because the manager in the filed in stupid and bankers know everything. What is the result? The company does lay off large numbers of staff and greatly increase the workload on individuals left but trains derail at a record pace just like the stupid manager in the filed said they would. Only Banker doesn’t give a rat’s ass because they know everything and the public sector is incompetent. Even when it comes to dumping toxic waste over and over again. Instead of looking at the damage to lives and environment, brilliant banker weighs pros and cons to the financial costs of lawsuits verses money saved with shortcuts and proceeds unilaterally.
That is my concern with bankers. They are arrogant and do not listen when they leave their field of specialty. Any wise entrepreneur would seek out experienced specialists in the field that know the job not just how to destroy it to make a quick buck. A wise entrepreneur would heed their counsel not disregard it pretending they know more than someone who has spent years in that field.
How does a banker screw up Canada Post?
L
et me count the ways... First we had the closure of the Quebec City mail processing plant. Mail being sent across the street in Quebec city now goes to Montreal first to be processed then back to Quebec City which adds to the time it takes to deliver that mail. Claiming it doesn't take longer by manipulating the delivery standard is nonsense.Without question the Corporation has to weigh the feasibility of mail sortation plants. Every small town in the country can't have it's own sortation plant. However, redirecting massive amounts of mail from one city to another is counter productive. It's like our centralized decentralized mail redirection unit. Change of address mail use to be done in house. Then they got a great idea to ship it all to one central location, put the change of address label on it, then mail it again. In practice this added considerable time on to the delivery standard so the Corporation went back to doing it in house to satisfy the demands of customer service and thereby improve or repair delivery standards.
The fact that every small town can't have it's own mail processing plant is an example of how deregulating Canada Post puts the consumer at a disadvantage. New companies take the big cities and forget about the rural areas. Skimming profits off the top by only picking up and delivering in large city centres might make a quick buck but it will not help Canadian over all service.
Closing the Quebec Post office without consultation not only violated the collective agreement but it was just plain bad business. When you are in a serviced based industry, if you cut all your services you will reduce your business revenue. It's that simple. Bankers like to cut cut cut. If you're in a restaurant and you cut out everything from your menu but three items, you will lose business.
The duty to consult is not just a formality where the Corporation has to give the Union notice before it screws things up by slashing and burning the company. It is the Corporations opportunity to get feedback from the workfloor about how some changes could affect the over all business.
That brings us to her great idea of not picking up mail on the weekends. The competitors pick up mail on the weekend. When we don't we lose business to the competitor. When we had Saturday mail pick up a customer could mail an expresspost on a Saturday and know it would arrive on the Monday. When the Corporation stopped picking up mail on Saturdays, that delivery standard was changed.
Crying about how parcels are our future then not picking up parcels on weekends is counter productive. Revenue is lost. Countering that with money saved in labour costs we still see a decrease in profit. If we provide better customer service we will increase our revenue. Unfortunately, that isn't the banker’s way. Except for TD. Look how TD reversed the trend by having their wickets open later than the competitor. As a result, they got much more business. Now that is supply and demand.
How does a banker screw up Canada Post? Wait 'till I tell ya another one. Remember Doug and the Slugs? That was another great idea from another brilliant baker. "Junk Mail is our future!" they cry. So what do they do? After delaying the first class mail and changing the delivery standard by closing down several sortation plants and not picking mail up on the weekends, they decide to elevate the delivery standard of junk mail with the clean floor policy. On the surface it almost made sense but when you saw what they did you just had to shake your head and hope and pray for a brighter day at Canada Post.
The clean floor policy meant everything had to go. Letter carriers had to wait until all the junk mail was sorted before they could leave in the morning. Get this, they were going to delay the start times of the letter carriers just so they could sort the whole weeks junk mail and get it out right away which further delayed the first class mail and totally elevated the junk mail delivery standard. Let’s see now. What do the Inside Assistants do if all the junk mail is sorted for them before their shift starts? Why would a business use first class mail when they get the same delivery standard from bulk mail? It seemed as though their sky is falling threats about eroding first class mail volumes was being sabotaged by the very banker sent to help save the day. Wasn't that ironic?
Speaking of bulk mail, lets talk about flyers. Now they tell us that Flyers are our Future. Remember when they tried to get White Rock to deliver telephone books? What a joke that was. It wasn't worth it. Back to the flyers. Now we have a brilliant banker insist we deliver junk mail according to the A, B and C day schedules as part of the route measurement system. Letter carriers who dare sort flyers into their case to save time will be disciplined accordingly. Brilliant. Have any of you brain surgeons who come up with these ideas ever delivered mail? Ever read about the part of route measurement system that says we do not get paid to deliver 100% coverage? Kinda contradicts your A, B, C day rule doesn't it?
I think our banker should have used the Preparation H I gave to Roger McConchie and left well enough alone. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Bulk mail is not the future. Customers hate bulk mail and if you flood them with more bulk mail you will only piss them off. Customers are our future. First Class mail and Parcels are our future. Increase services and you will increase revenue. Keep cutting services and you will lose revenue and profit. It's that simple. When it comes to a service based industry, Moya Greene is clearly out of her field.
However, Moya Greene does have a specialty. She may not have been good at Bombardier or CN but she was good at banking. Why not follow France and New Zealand's example and create a Canada Post bank? Increase services and you will increase revenue. What a concept.
Don't derail Canada Post!
