leadership dot #1666: postal

Yesterday I wrote about the serious role that the postal service has played in America, but today I will share some fun facts about the mail.

> To service all its customers, including those who live in remote areas, the postal service delivers via planes, trains, boats, trucks and even mules.
> Today they deliver letters and packages, but in the early days, they also delivered children on occasion!
> Mailboxes were not all blue until the color was standardized in 1971.

I was also fascinated to learn that the USPS has a Remote Encoding Center (REC) whose job it is to decipher bad handwriting and partial addresses and see if they can somehow route the mail anyway. (I wonder what the qualifications are for that job, and what kind of success rate they have?!)

Think about more lessons for your organization from the USPS. Do you need to do some of your service delivery by mule rather than leaving out a segment of customers? Does your organization need a central encoding center to enhance your completion rate? Are there things you have done that you should stop doing?

The USPS often gets a bad rap, but when you really think about it, they are doing an amazing job of delivering on a very complex mission. Give them a stamp of approval and learn from them for your organization.

Thanks Meg!