In a not to distant past the US Postal Service (USPS) was the cats meow. Everything from letters to family, pen pals & bills were sent daily. USPS was so big & popular, they even sponsored a Tour de France winning cycling team. But since this new fad called the internet & email caught on, USPS has been struggling to find stable footing & constantly making, not fully thought out, changes with little success.
Currently USPS is surviving off of SPAM letters & proper etiquette. When it becomes socially acceptable to email wedding invites & thank you cards, people will cancel their mail boxes faster then they are ditching land-lines.
So where to go from here? Cancel Saturday service, rate hike, or private sector? Who knows but there is a lesson here for every business to learn from and prepare for in the digital age. It all goes back to Aesop’s fable of the “Tortoise & the Hare”, where slow & steady wins the race. But in reality the hare kicks the tortoise’s tail often. For those that want it spelled out, USPS is the tortoise & the internet/email is the hare.
I’m not suggesting people go crazy and make ill informed decisions on the internet. Once you post it live on the internet, there is no taking it back, it lives on FOREVER……Mwahahahaahhaha. The trick is to constantly look for that next step/technology and mold it into your companies needs. So remember standing still will leave you like the once mighty USPS, swimming in the middle of the ocean with no clear direction to swim.
Post By: Darrell Williams