In this special episode of Mailin’ It!, USPS’s new Postmaster General David Steiner sits down with hosts Karla Kirby and Jeff Marino. Steiner describes his career journey from law to logistics leadership, shares what drew him to the U.S. Postal Service, and outlines his vision for guiding the organization through a period of transformation. Steiner discusses the opportunities and challenges ahead for an organization now in its 250th year. Keep an eye out for more from PMG Steiner on the USPS Blog in the coming weeks!
The Postal Service is entering a new chapter under 76th Postmaster General David Steiner. In this conversation, he joins Mailin’ It! to talk about what lies ahead. Steiner discusses his background and path to becoming Postmaster General, the challenges and opportunities facing USPS, and why employee engagement and operational excellence will be key to long-term success.
Karla:
Hello and welcome to “Mailin’ It!”, the official podcast of the United States Postal Service.
I'm Karla Kirby.
Jeff:
And I'm Jeff Marino. Well, Karla, we've got a very special episode lined up for today. We're speaking with new Postmaster General David Steiner, who took on the Postal Service’s top job in July. And it's an interesting time as we're several years into a major transformation that touches just about every part of our network and every community we serve.
Karla:
That's right, Jeff. Luckily, the Postmaster General is no stranger to transforming large complex organizations, nor is he a stranger to the world of package delivery and logistics. Without any further delay, let's welcome him to the podcast. PMG David Steiner, thanks for joining us.
PMG Steiner:
Thank you so much for having me.
Jeff:
For the listeners who don't know you, can you briefly walk us through your journey that brought you here? You know, we know you grew up in New Orleans.
PMG Steiner:
Yeah, actually born in Oakland, California, and was the seventh of eight kids. And, you know, I never thought about it before but, you'll hear me talk a lot about people and teams. And when you're the seventh of eight kids, there's a lot of people, and you don't survive if you don't act as a team. So maybe it was in me at birth, but, born in Oakland, California. My dad pumped gas at a Chevron station to work his way through college, and then graduated with a chemical engineering degree, and then went to work for Chevron at a facility outside of Oakland. So, born in Oakland. My mother's family went out to California in the 1830s. So they were multi-generation California. When I was nine years old, my dad got transferred to New Orleans with Chevron.
PMG Steiner:
He ultimately retired with Chevron. And you know, when I look back on it, you know, when I was a young child, I loved American history. And when you look at American history, a lot of the figures in early history were lawyers. And so I always wanted to be a lawyer since I was five years old, I wanted to be a lawyer. So we moved to New Orleans. I went to LSU undergrad, went to UCLA law school, went back to New Orleans to practice law, met my wife. We got married, had three, wonderful boys. And then in 2000, got offered a job in Houston with Waste Management. Took that as Deputy General Counsel. Went from Deputy General Counsel, six months later became General Counsel. 16 months later became CFO. And then a year after that became CEO.
PMG Steiner:
So three and a half years from Deputy General Counsel to CEO. I tell everybody I'm the living, walking embodiment of better lucky than good because the company I turned down to go to Waste Management was Enron. And for those of you that don't know Enron, Enron was bankrupt a year after I started at Waste Management. So, uh, definitely better lucky than good. So served as CEO of Waste Management for about 14 years. In that time, joined the board of directors at FedEx, became the lead director at FedEx and, retired, happily retired in 2017. Continued on the FedEx board, another board of a company called Vulcan Materials. And thought I was happily retired till I got the call to come back here.
Karla:
So, you know, that move from deputy General Counsel to General Counsel to CEO is a significant transition. So what did you learn about yourself and about leadership during that time?
PMG Steiner:
Yeah, you know, everyone always said, you know, you were a lawyer and you became a CEO. That seems odd. And, and I don't think it's so odd when you think about it as a lawyer, you have to look at both sides of an issue, right? And so everything's gray, right? There is no black and white. Everything's gray because sometimes you might represent a plaintiff, sometimes you might represent a defendant. And so you see the world in shades of gray, and guess how business works? There is nothing black and white in business. It's all gray. And so you have to be able to understand how to live with ambiguity, right? And the second thing is, the first thing they teach you in law school is to take complicated issues and break them down into their constituent pieces, right? So you would have the facts, the law, and the conclusion, and you had to break things down.
PMG Steiner:
What is business? Taking complicated problems, breaking them down into their constituent parts and solving the problem. So, it's really not as unusual of a change, I think, as you would think. But, you know, I also tell folks that everybody, and I would say for everybody at USPS to think about, you know, as you move through your career, right? Why did I get chosen as a CEO? Well, I think a part of it is that I didn't think like a lawyer, right? I once had a client say, do you know you don't think like a lawyer? And I didn't know if that was an insult or a compliment. And he said, no, you think like a business person. You don't think like a lawyer. 'Cause you know, lawyers usually think you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this.
PMG Steiner:
And we all have specialties, right? And so engineers, you can be the best engineer in the company and you can run the engineering department, but you'll never run the company because you gotta think outside of the engineering department, you know, HR, law, accounting, you know, you can be the best accountant possible, but you've gotta think about the other parts of the business and learn about the other parts of the business if you wanna run the business, right? And so I always tell folks that, the lesson is do your job in your specialty and do it spectacularly well. But don't be afraid to step outside of your specialty and help people in other parts of the business learn about the business and get that well-rounded education so that you can run a business, not just a department.
Jeff:
So you were more or less retired for several years, and you were approached about an opportunity to be a Postmaster General leading the United States. What was your initial reaction and what was your family's reaction?
PMG Steiner:
PMG Steiner:
We've known each other a long time. Just do me the favor. Think about it, talk to your wife and your family about it, and I'll call you back. Okay? And so I talked to my wife and family about it, and we said, you know, I'm happily retired, right? And, and I would tell you that we were sort of leaning toward not doing it. We happened to be in France with friends for a friend's wife's 60th birthday. And we were in Normandy, you know, where we stormed the beaches for D-Day in World War II. And the last part of the tour, you're walking in the American Cemetery in Normandy, and I'm looking down this beautiful piece of land that runs into the water. And there are 20,000 headstones of young men, 18 to 22 years old, who gave their life.
PMG Steiner:
And as I'm looking at this, and you can't go there without welling up a little bit. As I'm looking at it, the phone rings and they say, we're calling back to see if you want to serve your country. And I thought, wow. You know, I'm looking at these headstones of these young men that gave their life for the country, and I'm not willing to give it a little bit of time. And I said, I'll talk to you. And so, we had a conversation. I didn't think there were many people up for the job. So, I thought, you know, I probably won't get it. I've been retired seven years. And three weeks later, we shook hands, and I took the job. And I will tell you; I haven't regretted it for a minute since.
Jeff:
Nice. Well, what appealed to you about the Postal Service? I mean, besides the service aspect of it, was there something, a challenge that you were looking forward to? Or is there something that really drew you to this?
PMG Steiner:
Well, you know, look, the first is service, right? And I do believe that, you know, look, I had a lot of success from poor beginnings, right? I mean, you know, sort of the American success story, right? I mean, if you'd have looked at me as a young child and, and how I grew up, you know, eight kids, my dad worked, my mom didn't, we didn't have a lot of money. You would say, wow, that's pretty amazing. And, and okay, I'll take a little bit of credit for that, and a lot of luck for that. But as I tell my kids every day, no matter what you think about your country every day, you should realize you're the luckiest person in the world to be born here, right? Think about how folks in the rest of the world have to live and think about how we live.
PMG Steiner:
And, and so, you know, this country gave a lot to all of us at every level, and certainly it gave a lot to me. And so, the first piece is service. And then, look, this is an iconic brand. You know, I would tell you, I told the recruiter, I’m not going back to work, don't want to go back to work. But the only reason I would do it if there would be an iconic brand, you know, that that would be a fun brand to help become a better brand. And I meant in the private sector, right? Is there any better brand, iconic brand? I mean, 250 years old, is there any more iconic brand than the United States Postal Service? And so, I thought that's a pretty cool way to put the end to a career, right? This will definitely be my last job.I've said it before, but I promised this one to my wife. This will definitely be my last job, but what better iconic brand to help succeed than the United States Postal Service?
Karla:
So, you've been the Postmaster General for about three months now. So during your tenure thus far, you've had an opportunity, I'm sure, to meet with various external stakeholders, namely our industry partners, union leadership, congressional committee members, and others. How have your expectations of the job met with reality? And have you had any surprises?
PMG Steiner:
PMG Steiner:
And then I came here and realized I knew nothing, right? I mean, the scope and scale of what we do, I call it at Waste management, I called it this beautiful ballet, right? Because it's hard to imagine putting 650,000 people, 220,000 trucks, so many locations, you know, 34,000 post offices every single day. They're moving mail to every single point in the United States. And, you know, that's an unbelievable ballet, right? I mean, think about the steps that it takes to, to do that. And so the second big learning for me coming here was the people, right? That it is a great team, you know, and as I go out and visit places, you meet great teams, right? And when you think about it, you can't move that much material without a great team. And so, you know, we should be proud of our team. We should be proud that every single day, I mean, look, this is not like we get to take time off and, you know, hey, maybe next week's Christmas, we'll get back to it, right?
Karla:
I agree. So when you're talking to these different stakeholders, what do you listen for in those conversations?
PMG Steiner:
The first thing is, when I go out, you know, I'm going out to meet people, to have a conversation with people. But you know, really what I'm looking for is that team, right? And I’ll tell you a little story back at Waste Management. I had someone and I said, you know, when you go on these tours, you know, what do you do? And they said, I do one thing. I said, what's that? And they said, I look at the carpet outside of the manager's door. And I said, really? Why? Because he goes, because if it's clean, I know no one's going in to talk to him or her. If it's dirty and there's footsteps, I know everybody in that plant feels comfortable going and talking to them. And so you look for the team, right?
PMG Steiner:
Because look, you all know, when you go down to these facilities, if you're not working together as a team, it is not going to happen. And so you look at the teams. And then the other thing is that, you know, it still is amazing to me that anyone wants to meet me, right? I mean, it's like, I'm just David Steiner from Oakland, California. You know, why would anyone want to meet me? Why would anyone be excited to meet me? Right? And I realized when I was a kid, you know, if I had have met the CEO of a company, one time I met Baron Hilton. He was the CEO of Hilton Hotels. And I remember just being awestruck and going, wow. And so, if I can go out and make someone's day, make someone smile, by meeting me, you know, what better thing can I do?
PMG Steiner:
Right? And for me, it's, and I've had a lot of people, talk to me about this and tell me about this. To me, it's, if someone goes home and tells whoever's waiting for them at home, their family, their significant other, their kids say, you know, I got to meet the Postmaster General today. And he's just a normal guy. He's just like me, right? I mean, that to me, you know, if you make someone's day, what better use can I have of my time? Look, I get to go to a lot of meetings, read a lot of reports, and that's valuable. But making sure that you have people that are acting together as a team, and then me honoring them by giving them a little bit of my time. What more can I do?
Jeff:
So that's interesting. You, you, you love to tell these stories. Have you heard any interesting stories from our employees when you've been out on these tours?
PMG Steiner:
You know, it's interesting. And it's one thing that I've, this is a great opportunity to say this, and that is, for me to learn about things, I need people to be open with me, right? And I get it, you know, I'll go back to the meeting people. They don't want to meet me. They want to meet a title, right? They want to meet the Postmaster General. If I were Dave Steiner accountant, they'd say, hi, how you doing? And so, I totally get that. For me to do my job, I need to hear the real story from people. It's another reason why if you ever sit in a meeting with me, or if you ever see me at a town hall, I'm going to try to pull the information out of them. Because I get it. People are intimidated.
PMG Steiner:
Oh, I can't say that. He's the Postmaster General. Guess what? All I am is the quarterback of the team, right? And if you don't tell me you're open, or if you don't tell me what you need, even more importantly, you know, I can't do my job. And so, all I would ask of people I when I go out there, tell me the good, tell me the bad, you know? At Waste Management, I always had a saying, and I didn't use it a lot because I'm not crazy about it, but it is true. And the saying was, if you don't complain, don't whine. Right? And look, I tell everyone I spent more time on the, you know, on the shop floor than I did as the CEO, right? So, I've been at both levels of an organization. And so I totally get the fact that, you know, when you're out in the field, you look at corporate and you go, oh, they put another stupid regulation out today day so they understand what they're doing.
PMG Steiner:
They just told us to do X and that's silly to do X. Well, guess what? It's because sometimes we don't get that view down at that level, and not everything we do is going to make sense, right? So if it doesn't make sense, let me know. Right? So, complain to me, don't be afraid to complain to me. But I've spent time with other folks saying, you know, when I was down in, at those levels in an organization, you go to the water cooler and you say, did you see what they did today? And you complain to your coworkers, and you go, you know, and morale suffers because everyone thinks no one's listening, right? Well, guess what? If I don't hear your complaint, I cannot solve it. And so I always say, if you don't complain, don't whine. You know? And if you see something wrong, let us know about it. There's only one way we can fix it. And that's if we know about it.
Karla:
Absolutely. So, as we mentioned, you know, when you came into the Postal Service, you took over an organization that was already deep into a multi-year transformation. So what are your impressions thus far, and how are you evaluating what is and isn't working? So, I understand that if nobody tells you they don't know, but from what you've gotten thus far.
PMG Steiner:
Yeah. Well, you know, a few things. First, you know, we put DFA in place and DFA is logistics 101, right? Anyone that would come in and look at a logistics issue, that's what they would do. And so, it's the right plan, right? And, but I always tell folks that you can have the best plan or the best strategy in the world, but if you can't execute it, you know, it's not a very good plan. It's not a very good strategy. So, we need to get better at executing, right? And I think we're getting there. And look, part of it is that we've underinvested in this organization for so long that people don't have the tools right, to succeed. And, and so, you know, to me it's getting them the tools to succeed and putting them in a position to succeed.
PMG Steiner:
And by that, I mean assets, training and people, right? But the other part of it is that we can't cost cut our way into profitability, right? We can get part of the way there, but we aren't going to get the whole way there. So we have to grow, we have to grow volume. And when we grow volume, we're growing in the package industry. I mean, the package segment, because, you know, there isn't as much growth in the market dominant side. And so, we have to grow the package segment. And what's crucial to that, just like it is in everything's service, right? I mean, in that segment, we're competing against some people that have been doing it a lot longer than we have, and that have a lot more money to spend on capital than we have.
PMG Steiner:
And so we've got to win in service, right? And so, you know, as I look forward to the future, it's, let's make sure we execute on the DFA plan, but let's also make sure we grow so that we can become a more viable entity. And guess what happens with growth? You get to reinvest, right? You know, it's interesting, coming to the public sector, I was thinking, wow, I don't have shareholders. You know, that's great. I don't have shareholders. Because when you have shareholders in a public company, you got to think about giving money back to the shareholders, right? They put their money into the business, they want their money back. I don't have that. And so every dollar we make, we can reinvest in the company. Reinvest in what I was talking about, assets and people.
Jeff:
So, if we could dig into that just a little bit more, you've talked quite a bit about the need for the Postal Service to operate in a financially self-sustaining manner. What do you see the biggest challenges to that?
PMG Steiner:
You know, again, to me it's pretty simple. It's execution and growth, right? Those are the two words, right? Execution and growth. And, you know, service is the umbrella that's over all of that. Because you can't grow if you don't have service. And look, we all hear the stories. Although, you know, I will tell you, you know, running Waste Management, I got the same thing. A lot of people that would call and I would always tell them, let me ask you a question. I said, when you go home at night and you flick a switch and the light comes on, do you pick up the phone and call the electric company and go, this is a miracle! This is a miracle! My light came on and I have no idea how it happens, but it happens.
PMG Steiner:
And thank you for the miracle. And they go, no, we don't do that. I said, of course you don't do that. You call when there's a failure, right? But 99% of the time the light comes on, you should be thankful for the 99%. You know, when you look at how complicated it is, what we do, you know, people should thank us. And I'm not saying they shouldn't complain when there's a complaint, but when you're handling 110 billion pieces every year, there's going to be some problems, right? Just like when you're picking up waste or you're running an electric utility, there are going to be problems. Hopefully the problem, the thing is, if the problem persists, then it's an issue, right? So I'm not saying let's be perfect. I'm saying let's make sure that when we fail, we recover. Right? And if you look at it, studies will tell you that the most loyal customers are when someone failed and then they were surprised by how well they recovered. So when we fail, let's make sure that our customer service folks and everyone in the organization makes it a good experience to recover from the failure rather than a bad experience.
Jeff:
Yeah. I've often heard that, uh, the mark of how good a company is, is not when things are going well, but how they react when things go wrong.
PMG Steiner:
Yeah, exactly right.
Jeff:
Dave, the Postal Service obviously touches every American practically every day. And it's probably the most visible and present interaction with a government entity that most people have. Yet it's really a business that competes for customers. In your view, what does the brand represent to the American public? And do you have any thoughts about how the brand might evolve?
PMG Steiner:
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. You know, when you think of a brand, you think of the golden arches, or you think of that iconic mail truck going through your neighborhood, right? But the brand isn't that golden arch, right? The brand isn't that mail truck. The brand is the faces of the people in the company, right? I mean, you think about it. You know, I worked at a law firm for a long time and we used to say that our receptionist was our brand, right? Because that's the first person people met. And if they had a good experience, they came in with a positive feeling about the brand. And if they had a bad experience, they came in with a bad attitude about the brand. And so, you know, I think we all need to realize that we are the brand, right?
PMG Steiner:
There is no quote unquote brand of the United States Postal Service outside of its people. So, you know, every time that a carrier interacts with a customer, every time that a clerk interacts with a customer, every time I interact with anybody in the world, we are the brand. And so let's make sure that people have a good experience with our brand because the brand is the personal interaction of every one of us with our customers. So let's think about that and think that every time we have an interaction with a customer, we represent the brand. And let's make sure they walk away with a good feeling about the brand.
Jeff:
We've asked a lot of our, of our guests, um, what keeps 'em up at night. Is there anything keeping you up at night these days?
PMG Steiner:
PMG Steiner:
We didn't get into the package business as early as our competition. We were still doing mail. And so, we need to really, really, really understand how we can best compete and then how we go about doing that. You know, I think the way we can best compete is we have a natural advantage in the last mile and in the first mile, right? And, you know, I talked about brand earlier. When you think about our brand, the other piece of our brand are those 34,000 plus post offices, right? And so how can we become more attractive in those? How can we make those places where people want to go, want to interact with the brand.
Karla:
So, before we let you go, what does it mean to you to come in and lead this organization right as we celebrate 250 years in existence?
PMG Steiner:
You know, I keep coming back to that 250 years, right? And what were they doing 250 years ago? What's changed in 250 years? So think about it. This organization, there's no other organization, by the way, like this in the United States, because of our age, this organization saw a revolution, right? This organization saw a civil war. This organization saw the Great Depression. This organization saw two world wars. This organization saw a technological revolution like nothing else. And I look back on it and I go, you know, when the Revolution was occurring, when the Civil War, when the World Wars occurred, do you think there were challenges? You know, there were challenges, right? And, and probably some challenges that not only were financial, but you know, the Civil War tour the country apart, right? The Revolution created the country. There were huge challenges. And guess what this organization did, you know, overcame those challenges. It stayed the course and overcame those challenges. And so when I look at it, I keep thinking, you know what? We've got some challenges, right? But our forefathers faced bigger challenges. And so what are we going to do? You know, what we're going to do? We're going to do what we've done for 250 years. We're going to overcome those challenges.
Jeff:
Well, Dave, this has been a real pleasure chatting with you. Great insights. I want to thank you for spending time with us.
PMG Steiner:
Well, thank you.
Karla:
And we're gonna have you back.
Okay. We've got a special, “Did You Know?” for this episode in keeping with our conversation with the new PMG and the Postal Service’s 250th Anniversary.
Jeff:
What do you have in mind, Karla?
Karla:
We're going back to the beginning, Jeff.
Jeff:
Here we go. Let me guess. Ben Franklin?
Karla:
You got it. The US Postal Service’s first Postmaster General.
Jeff:
Mr. Franklin shows up a lot in what we talk about, especially related to Postal Service history.
Karla:
It's true. We've talked about him a lot over the years on the podcast, but I think I've got something that'll be new to most people.
Jeff:
Fire away.
Karla:
Ben Franklin is well known for surveying and measuring post roads to improve postal routes in the American colonies. But did you know, he was also very interested in why it took some ships longer than others to cross the Atlantic to the colonies. He was so interested that he worked with a cousin who was the captain of a merchant ship to sketch out the approximate path of the faster routes. Franklin first published his chart in 1769 to help improve mail delivery times by showing ships how to navigate the current we now refer to as the Gulf Stream. Franklin originally called it a “river in the ocean,” and working with his cousin completed the first scientific study of the Gulf Stream around 1775 by taking water temperature measurements during the Atlantic crossings to track the stream's position.
Jeff:
That's pretty amazing, considering all the other things Ben Franklin's known for. You're right, I did not know about that one.
Karla:
Now, you know.
Karla:
So great conversation with the PMG.
Jeff:
Indeed. I just think it was great that he shared so much insight about his, past history, which shapes how he views the leadership in the current Postal Service.
Karla:
And let me tell you, I'm looking at the carpet in every office I go into from now on