Please! Make no mistake about this, "I enjoy working the U.S. Mail" but I do not like the lack of dignity and respect handed out by the people on the front lines of this business. I go to work everyday with aspirations to do the best job I can and achieve the best results possible. If I raise a concern I expect someone in a leadership position to not only listen but to respond to my concern. I bring a whole different set of skills to the table as a person that has been on many teams. Just like many others I have served this great country honorably for more than twenty years as a volunteer military leader and sacrificed time away from my family to ensure freedom and democracy for all. Military veterans and their families know that the American flag is heavy and holding it up is not easy! I don't want anything extra as I continue government service, just the basic courtesies that any citizen would want. Military service has made me a bigger and more complete human being and I am trying hard to carry that over to the Postal Service. What inspired you to write your manuscripts? I feel that we do mail well, but we do our own people poorly. I think that the organization gets so caught up in chasing daily numbers that we forget about the people who deliver the numbers. For me there has been no outlet for communication with feedback. Supervisors say "I'm not here to argue" or "That's your perception." Managers are too busy listening to one side of the communication loop to believe that one of their own could possibly be wrong. Union officials are poor communicators who believe that seniority is the sole indicator of a persons worth, and labor relations folks come from management and are more concerned with their own careers and not solving problems in a win-win manner. Basically, I am inspired by wanting a better working environment that treats people as an asset and not like a thing. What are you looking for as an employee? Regardless of where I work I'm looking for success with significance, opportunity for growth, challenging assignments, and the chance to be engaged mentally as well as physically. Most importantly to be treated with dignity and respect. Do your leaders do a good job of communicating with employees? No! I believe there is a lot of business knowledge to be had through the Internet, Intranet and Extranet, information about new services, postal rate hikes, postal reform, and day-to-day operations. If you don't have computer access or your boss is lacking in computer skills your team will be excluded. It appears that the higher level leaders are too busy counting numbers to come out from behind the desks and discuss operations with the general population of workers and receive feedback from the front line. What do you think about todays workforce? I think that yesterday employees didn't need a whole lot of skills to manually process mail, but in the information age where automation is available it takes a lot more skill to operate and monitor the technology at our fingertips. The leaders as well as the operators must be up to speed and focus on input and output then possess the training and or educational ability to interpret the data. Are you treated with dignity and respect? No! My last name is frequently spelled wrong and I believe intentionally. If supervisors don't like you they won't acknowledge you, requests for time off for unscheduled events are denied for those that are not liked, there are different standards for different groups of people, supervisors power-trip by denying scheduled vacation times sighting old rules that they have never followed as a way to retaliate against employees who posses confidence in themselves. What do you dislike about the job? I dislike managers and supervisors without people skills, the lack of forums for adult discussion and the need to ignore issues with hopes that they will go away. There are too many chiefs and not enough trust in the Indians. I dislike the fact the processes are poorly managed, there is no teamwork, recognition is based on recognizing the same individuals over and over again. Particularly in the area I work it is based on who has the most years in service or worked closest to 80 hours a week. No emphasis on any kind of on the job continuing education or training. Leaders reading long documents verbatim to adults and stumbling across the words in the process. Supervisors bragging about how they got employees fired and always talking about "A good way to lose your job." What do you like about the job? I enjoy the opportunity for continuous government employment, the available and updated technology, doing an important job that impacts every citizen of this country, many great coworkers, the diversity of national origin in the workforce, the availability of people programs, and the fact that there is no opportunity to be sedentary in a fast-paced industrial environment. If you were in charge for one day, one week or one month what would you do differently? (laugh) The first thing I would do is flip the script for a minute! I would find an operation big enough to house the front line supervisors and managers then treat them like they treat us. Tell them to get to work & stop talking! I would conduct a few award ceremonies and recognize the same individual in this team environment over and over each time. I would show favoritism toward some of them, I would only talk to the managers and supervisors that I like, I would stand over the managers and supervisors with my arms crossed in a threatening posture and gawk at them all day. I would bend my coworkers and the bosses ear and paint an ugly picture of certain individuals. Then I would periodically growl at these leaders and tell them "if you don't like it here, BID OUT or quit and go work somewhere else." If they are lucky enough to hit their production goal for the day I will use their 30 minute lunch time to offer them pizza. At the end of that day, week or month I would reverse the script and treat them with dignity and respect by seeking their input on day-to-day operations, I would share business knowledge with them, I would attempt to build a relationship with each team member and I would offer an open door policy just like keeping an open mind for all ideas. Then we will discuss which style yields the best results while we are enjoying pizza on company time as a reward for doing a great job. I would let employees know that their time on the clock is just as important to me as their time off the clock including their 30 minute lunch. That would be a great wake-up call for starters. What does teamwork mean to you? Teamwork means if I got fifty people I got fifty personalities to mesh together to create the newest generation of people I'm going to call teammennials. Teamwork means all the players have to put away the signs and thinking patterns that imply head honcho, big dog, top dog, big kahuna, large and in charge, boss etc, and stop living "the sin of the desert" knowing where the water is but not telling others." Teamwork means focusing on resetting the table, revisiting old ideas, and recalibrating accordingly. We must bring the best out of every player on the team regardless of skill level to achieve the common goal. As a Navy Corpsman I worked on many teams and one significant team was the emergency room team where each individual must understand their role. Doctors, nurses, corpsman, and residents must all speak the same medical language in order to save lives. I have friends who were on police swat teams and they always talked about how every officer had to be proficient in weapons and tactics to communicate with others because lives depended on it. Well, in the mail business craft employees, managers and union officials must speak the same postal language or else the mail won't get delivered and we know every household and business in America is counting on us. Teams make money! Just like inscribed on our money E. Pluribus Unum, meaning out of many, ONE. We know you like to write, what are some of the recent books you've read? Yes I like to write and I also like to read in between time. So far this year I've read: Zig Ziglar "See You at the Top" John Kotter "Our Iceberg is Melting" Joseph A. Michelli " The Starbucks Experience" Jeffrey Gitomer "Little Green Book, Little Black Book, and Little Gold Book" All very motivating, encouraging and business oriented books to inspire greatness in all of us. Is your immediate working environment safe? My immediate answer is no! I work with automated machinery in a busy working area and there are always safety discrepancies. Safety is everybody's job! I identified no less than a dozen written safety hazards in the past year which most were corrected in a timely manner. Hazards that could have resulted injuries to one or more employees. But unfortunately, the front line leaders let their emotions and personal feelings get in the way of leadership resulting in zero acknowledgement to people they don't like making decisions personal and not business. What is your experience with local unions? I am a dues paying union member even though I get nothing in return from local leadership. It is my opinion that the individuals appointed are poorly trained and are in office to get out of work. Instead of communicating with the masses they feel comfortable communicating with their own culture and I don't mean postal culture. They spend a great deal of time talking, laughing and giggling with the management and discussing private information about other employees on the floor and they pick and choose which written complaints they will respond to. To answer your question directly, they do not exude confidence, trust or credibility. Have you ever considered getting into union leadership or management? Yes! But you'll have to read my manuscripts to find out why I will yield to the individuals who solely want a bigger paycheck. Any final words? Read my manuscripts! They are full of real workforce scenarios that others may have experienced or never want to experience. They make great case studies, off-site discussions, ethics training, and great topics as a springboard to bigger discussions. |
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| AUTHOR: Ronald Williams, Jr. |
| Deep Inside LiteBlue Thinking Inside the LiteBlue Box |