Kate Swann on verge of Royal appointment?

As speculation mounts on who will be Adam Crozier’s successor, is WH Smith’s Kate Swann the one for Royal Mail? As the working week drew to a premature end on Thursday, Royal Mail announced to the world that David Smith is to become the Group’s new managing director of the Post Office in the UK. Smith replaces Alan Cook, who announced his resignation on 7 January.

Replacing a senior executive is a long-winded and highly complex affair for any Board, so the bigwigs around Royal Mail’s top table must have been left downbeat once Adam Crozier made public his intentions to join ITV only three weeks later, on 21 January.

So with Smith’s promotion now rubber-stamped it’s a case of ‘one down, one to go’. The next appointment Group chairman Donald Brydon presides over will be huge. Not only will the candidate have to continue with the modernisation process Royal Mail is currently undertaking, but they will also have to contend with the consistent decline in mail volumes. That said the recent truce with the CWU will make the newcomer’s life that little bit easier.

There is no doubt that Crozier had his detractors, but when you consider he transformed a company that was losing £1m a day into a company that is making £1m a day, that seems a little unfair. Whoever is next to embrace the big leather chair inside the chief executive’s office at Royal Mail will not only have to contend with the expectations of the board in light of Crozier’s achievements, but will also have to appease the everyday postal worker, which Crozier failed to do- becoming some sort of hate figure in mail centres across the country for large parts of his tenure.

According to newspaper reports over the weekend, a potential candidate for the role is Kate Swann, WH Smith’s chief executive. The Mail on Sunday said that Swann was the preferred candidate of a shortlist of three suggested by Egon Zehnder, a head-hunting firm. Since joining the retail chain in 2003, Swann has transformed WH Smith by putting more emphasis on books and stationery, rather than trying to compete with companies such as HMV in the digital market.

I asked John Modd, director mail at Triangle Management Services, and previously managing director of Royal Mail International, what attributes the new chief executive will need in order to succeed at the postal operator. “He or she will need, above all, to be a good communicator who can create a feeling of belief in, and long term commitment to, the postal business. This was something that was lacking in the top leadership during the Leighton years. Royal Mail is more than just a macho managerial challenge. It’s also about merging heritage with technology; and inspiring trust in both customers and employees. It’s a difficult job make no mistake,” he said.

Swann is a highly respected individual, and has been linked to other chief executive jobs over recent years, including Marks & Spencer, so could she be the one to take Royal Mail into a new era?

Please post your thoughts below…