First Woman PMG Pledges to Invest in the Future of the Postal Service
WASHINGTON — Megan J. Brennan officially became the 74th Postmaster General and CEO of the U.S. Postal Service yesterday, Feb. 1.
Outlining key themes in a letter to employees today, Postmaster General Brennan said she would seek to advance transformative strategies that invest in the future of the Postal Service and shape growth opportunities for the organization and the industries it serves. Among these strategies are better use of data and technology, speeding the pace of product and service innovations, continual process improvements throughout the organization, and fully engaging and leveraging the talents of its 600,000-employee workforce.
“We can reinvigorate the way we serve our customers and the public by constantly looking forward as an organization, anticipating the changing needs of our customers, and adapting as quickly as we can to a competitive and evolving marketplace,” said Brennan.
Brennan expressed gratitude and appreciation for the hard work, dedicated service and commitment of the Postal Service’s 600,000 employees, and the value they provide to the American people every day.
“As we collectively shape a brighter future for the organization, I am always mindful that the Postal Service is not merely defined by what it does, but rather by the many people who have dedicated their careers to serving the American public,” said Brennan. “Your commitment to our public service mission and to delivering for our customers defines who we are as an organization and is the bedrock of all of our successes.”
Appointed by the Governors of the Postal Service and announced in November, Brennan had been the Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of the Postal Service, and previously held roles as Vice President of both Eastern Area and Northeast Area Operations. Brennan began her 29-year Postal Service career as a mail carrier in Lancaster, PA.
Brennan earned a Master of Business Administration degree as a Sloan fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an alumna of Immaculata College in Pennsylvania. She will take the ceremonial oath of office at an installation event at Postal Service Headquarters next month.
Text of the new PMG’s letter to postal workers:
Dear Postal Colleagues:
As I begin my tenure as Postmaster General, I am deeply humbled by the opportunity to serve this organization and the American public.
Like many of us, I was attracted to a career with the Postal Service because I was inspired by friends and family members who served their communities as employees of the Postal Service. That inspiration has stayed with me every day since 1986-when I started as a Letter Carrier in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and is rekindled whenever I think of the dedication of postal employees everywhere who serve the public and our customers so well, and who have made the Postal Service such an amazing organization.
Despite all of the changes in the world since I began my career, the Postal Service continues to play an indispensable role in every American community-connecting people to each other, to businesses and their government, one doorstep and mailbox at a time.
I firmly believe that our future is filled with opportunity, not just through the prism of winning customers and growing our business, but also from the perspective of enhancing our brand and the value we provide to the American public. We can reinvigorate the way we serve our customers and the public by constantly looking forward as an organization, anticipating the changing needs of our customers, and adapting as quickly as we can to a competitive and evolving marketplace.
As the world’s greatest delivery organization, we are well-positioned to do so. The pace of change in the delivery business will accelerate in the coming years, and our long-term success depends on strategies that continually strengthen our core offerings. As we move forward, we will do the following :
- We will invest in the future of the Postal Service. Investing in our future means creating the best opportunities for long-term growth and profitability. It means investing in your training and development; in product and service innovations; in our systems and processes; and improving our use of data and technology. It also means making long overdue improvements to our infrastructure, including upgrading our vehicle fleet and deploying advanced package sortation equipment.
- We will speed the pace of innovation. The coming years will see greater focus on innovation, with pilot projects designed to test new delivery offerings, new tools to better meet the digital and mobile expectations of our customers, and new offerings designed for America’s small businesses. Our commitment to strategic product and service innovation will help drive our growth and the growth for the industries and businesses we serve.
- We will develop strategies to better engage and empower employees. As we fully leverage the potential of technology, we want to give you more flexibility and problem solving tools to deliver greater value for our customers. To best compete for customers, we will need to become more entrepreneurial at every level of the organization.
- We will also build the most efficient and productive network to support our growth products. We have made tremendous progress streamlining our operational footprint in recent years-allowing us to keep our products and services affordable.
We have a lot of momentum as an organization today-despite our financial challenges. We continue to take prudent steps to bring our costs and revenues into better alignment. However, the way we are structured today and the way we serve the public today will not be adequate to fully meet the demands of tomorrow’s marketplace. To be successful in the future, we will continually reorient our business strategies to better connect with our customers and redefine the ways we serve the American public.
As we collectively shape a brighter future for the organization, I am always mindful that the Postal Service is not merely defined by what it does, but rather by the many people who have dedicated their careers to serving the American public. Your commitment to our public service mission and to delivering for our customers defines who we are as an organization and is the bedrock of all of our successes.
Thank you for keeping your eyes focused on the future and for serving the public so well. I look forward to working with you.
Sincerely,
Megan J. Brennan
Looks like she’s had a makeover and a facelift since we last saw her with Donawhore two months ago being introduced as the next PMG with her usual angry look on her face.
I read that Ms. Brennan had Donahoe as a Postmaster, carried mail for only nine months and decided she couldn’t hack it physically. Well, not everybody can, I suppose. One friend who is a clerk now started as a carrier but blew his knees out quickly because of his time in the Service. I have had three surgeries since 2008, and all had to do with carrying mail. First, in addition to some stomach surgery for acid reflux and a bad gall bladder, I had a hiatal hernia to be repaired. Then in 2010 my shoulder had a bunch of calcium deposits that caused horrible pain and had surgery for that, and last fall, guess what, an inguinal hernia.
Plus a bad back with bulged disks and the fatigue that goes with 30+ years of being a pack mule. But I’m a true blue city carrier and wouldn’t have crossed over to the management side for anything. Sure, I could use the extra money, with a disabled wife, but it wasn’t worth the abuse I know supervisors receive, nor was it worth being a suck up and snitch to get somewhere in the good old boy network. I would have lost all my friends and respect to go to the dark side, something I wasn’t willing to do.
Brennan worked with Donahoe from day one, and rode his coattails her whole career. This occupational nepotism is rampant, incestuous and the main reason for having such incompetent management in the highest levels. That’s not just the USPS, either.
Sometimes though people become their own bosses and actually do well. President Chester Arthur for example was a product of the New York Tammany Hall crowd, and used that connection to get to the White House, and promptly went after his own political buddies and effectively wiped out the whole corrupt New York machine. It was political suicide for him, but he had sworn to serve only one term, was deeply admired by the public and tragically died a year out of office of cancer.
Granted, we’re not talking about presidents, but it could happen, and it needs to. Get out behind Donahoe’s shadow if you hope to do well in the eyes of the public and your workforce, Ms. Brennan.
If you like her or do not like her should be your opinion and kept to yourself. I’ve actually worked for the women and she was/is a no nonense give me a good day’s work for your pay and I’ll try and keep your pay coming as long as you help and do it with me. She believes in the fact that service is the main focal of what the USPS sells and she expects 100% from the craft to the District Manager etc.. And of course our Carriers and Window Clerks are the fore front faces of the folks who represent what provides all of us a decent living with benefits. And let me tell you as an insider what I see on a day-to-day basis are people who have jobs want the money to do as least as possible who are protected and do not care. I’ve been in long enough to appreciate the difference. I Hope if all she gets done is to regain the repect within she will form respect on the outside because all sides are broken. And for many reasons. We can all B… but what can you do to make it just 10% better on your part? Shame on the person who feels the need to physically comment on MB, it is what it is. As is the same with you. The women gives the service 110% of herself all the time and doesn’t make herself #1. Just saying…. Someone who cares from the old Springfield, MA Districit – CT/MA and ??? now
You failed the class.
The more things change the more they stay the same. I have seen Postmaster Generals come and go for over 30 years. I don’t expect any manager to effectuate fundamental change that would not occur anyway.
There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity and vexation for the spirit. [I got a way with words, don’t I. Feel free to quote me.]
The Postal Service will continue to treat it’s employees like dirt. Notice how the new cca’s have a 60 % quitting rate! Just more empty words. What will happen when a carrier misses a scan? Discipline will be their fate.
I guess it’s not fair to criticize someone before they do anything to be criticized for, but maybe I’ve worked for the P.O. for too long. Donahoe mastered the art of telling his workers how great they were doing and how much he appreciated the hard work they’d done; at the same time he was trying to figure out new ways to stab them in the back. I want to think that the new PMG will back up all the words about growing the USPS instead of trying to eliminate it altogether. I also want to think that she can’t be as bad as the other clowns that were running the USPS, but she worked for the other clowns, and everyone knows that the USPS has no shortage of idiots in high places anyway, so why should one be better than the other? The best I can hope for is that she doesn’t tear down the USPS before I can retire and get out of there. I wonder if those people in high management know how much their own workers hate them.
Seeing as our “new” PMG was behind the poison- pill Bill from 2006 that has us paying for 75 years of “future” retirees I do not forsee good things ahead! Hold onto your hats kids we are in for a bumpy ride!
all her business experience has been at the Post Office, hitched herself to Donehoe’s wagon. Marvin “Carvin Marvin” Runyon was the best we have had, Preston Tisch was second best. these inbred types like brennen do not have the “right stuff” and will be not be a “top gun”. there is a difference between a bureaucrat and a manager. When the VA hit the rails ogonghit hired a retired business executive from procter & gamble…………he started cleaning house by firing a hospital administrator at one of the worst run VA facilities…………think this one will do that at the PO?
Meet the new boss… Same as the old boss.
I won’t get fooled again…………
Yep ole salty one the moose lodge runs thick in management.
Pass me some taters.
To translate what she is saying is “Hi, I am the new Post Master General and I will carry on forgetting that the USPS is a service setup for the people by the people and instead will carry on destroying it like the last fool did.
That isn’t/ain’t what she looks like today, that’s her photo maybe from 29 yrs ago or some real fancy photoshop.
Us over 29 yrs service know you be looking more like a battle wore WW1 tank like the rest of us.
We don’t need no ole mules faces, we need young Tayler Swift type faces, then you can do whatever you want?
2 day delivery, no health care/pensions or unions all PSE/CCA employees whatever you like.
In return lets us wear are headphones be on our cell phones with a drink in our hands all the time.
My name is Forrest, Forrest Gump.
Run Megan, Run.
Okay, you have your chance now, Ms. Brennan. I’m not going to drag you over the coals just yet, in the interest of fairness, but I hope you are perceptive enough to understand the hatred your workforce except for some higher up management harbored against Donahoe and his destructive suicidal reign as the worst PMG in the history of the written and delivered word, all the way back to messengers who ran on foot to relay news of battle outcomes and other stuff they could get executed for if the news was bad. I wonder what the Romans would have thought if those couriers had carried junk mail. “Stop by Crazy Julius’ pre-owned chariot shop and we’ll give you a gift certificate for less floggings or to be allowed to be drunk before you get thrown to the lions.”
Well, I am not a professional comedian. Good luck, and try actually listening to us instead of being obstinate and totally indifferent to our suggestions and workroom environments like Donahoe was. He left you in a helluva jam and will probably never have to answer for the cyber attacks from last fall. Good luck – you’ll need it.
Really, more of the same old crap. Sounds like more contracting out of work, less employees doing more work, longer lines at post offices, more signs telling customers to go elsewhere. Its another sad day for postal employees across the country.
Welcome class to SOS 101.
Today we have a great opportunity. As noted above there is a new postmaster. If you notice were in the age of first this first that. But as time will show it’ll be the same ole $hit.
There is nothing new under the sun. As God himself tells us this.
So get out your iPads cell phones,pens,pencil magic markers, bring it all on an let’s explore! Watch were you step, lots of do do mine fields in SOS 101.
Good luck to the new PMG!
Team work is the key, one man can not do it alone.
I’m glad to have a woman postmaster. Congrats! Is there going to be a new buyout retirement package for postal bargaining units. Thank you.
Ron Stroman,the Deputy PMG and not fron the ranks would have been a better choice if he were given a mandate to cut the bloated management,which Megan will not do,and Donahoe did not do,but the 4 members on the BOG would never appoint a black man or women to PMG.
What next?
A black woman of course………………..or Latina.