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Make It Happen—Get It Done!

Make It Happen—Get It Done!
By Ivan D. Butts
NAPS National President

I write this column as I attend the 101st California State Convention in Emeryville, CA. We have just completed day one of the convention and have heard from various Postal Service leaders. There was great engagement with John DiPeri, director, Pacific Northwest Division, Western Region Processing, and his team and NAPS delegates.

I had the opportunity to meet Sunil Chanan, Postmaster of Oakland, CA. He offered great words of encouragement regarding maintaining one’s integrity as an EAS employee. Chanan also has the distinction of being Postmaster of Memphis, TN, in 2021 when tragedy stuck the families of two of our members. NAPS Headquarters will forever honor on a memorial plaque displayed at NAPS Headquarters these and all other EAS employees who tragically have fallen from violence in the workplace.

“Make It Happen” and “Get It Done” are two decisive, motivating phrases that help push individuals to go beyond their normal levels of accomplishment to a higher level of achievement. This usually is something beyond what a person believes they are capable of achieving.

Unfortunately, these phrases have a different meaning in the United States Postal Service; they need to be erased from postal leaders’ vocabulary. In the USPS lexicon, these phrases refer to devaluing and dismissing one’s integrity to make a manager look good by not being on a “failure” report.

Calling it a failure report may be the problem. Maybe we should be calling it the “reality” report. Staffing in some areas continues to be horrid, with zero movements from agency leadership to fix the significant cause of our staffing issues: the failed onboarding process. USPS leadership has been stubbornly holding on to the process, assuming one day it will start to work to the benefit of America’s Postal Service.

Make it happen/get it done in the USPS means compromising your integrity to make a superior look good. The problem is when you get called to the carpet, you will be standing alone with your NAPS advocate (if you are a member) because the person who forced and coerced you to compromise your integrity will not admit to it. Most likely, they will be the most-shocked person in the world to hear about your integrity issue and more than willing to take the harshest adverse action against you for following their instructions.

Make it happen/get it done statements usually are a close companion to “by close of the day” or “prior to you leaving.” This ties surrendering your integrity directly to your ability to go home. I have outlined in past columns the need for EAS employees to be directed in this manner to ensure they have clarifying documentation that supports the “Obedience to Order.” Blindly allowing poor leaders to push you to and over the cliff for their benefit never should have been acceptable.

Recently, we have been hearing a lot of conversations at USPS and NAPS events about integrity by postal leadership. The USPS has acknowledged the fact there are “leaders” out there coercing and forcing EAS employees to compromise their integrity. While it may sound good to hear such an acknowledgment, it’s certainly a sad commentary.

In solidarity…