Crozier has to stamp his authority on Royal Mail

If you were thinking about becoming the Royal Mail's new chief executive, there are two ways to look at the job. It's either a marvellous opportunity to reinvigorate a sleeping giant, establish yourself as a management titan and win a gong at the Palace; or it's a political, financial and regulatory monster with a voracious appetite for destroying those who try to change it. Adam Crozier, who signed up for the task last week, is a former advertising executive and therefore a congenital optimist. Like most graduates of that flaky profession, he instinctively believes that with smoke, mirrors and a slick line in patter you can get away with murder. Which is just as well, because he'll need to kill a few of the Royal Mail's nastier habits if he's going to deliver a nationwide operation that's both efficient and profitable. Crozier's most recent position was chief executive at the Football Association. So if nothing else, he's experienced at wrestling with an intransigent institution. At the FA, he earned plaudits for jazzing up the marketing of the England team and showing an eye for a winner when he brought in Sven Goran Eriksson as coach. But, quite frankly, the standard of management in professional football is generally so miserable that you need only to sit the right way round on a lavatory seat for the sport's insiders to hail you as genius. The evidence so far is that Crozier is competent but no rocket scientist. He certainly wasn't clever enough to outmanoeuvre the Premier League's heavy mob who booted him off the pitch after it emerged he had encroached on their commercial interests. If Crozier thinks he encountered rough treatment at the FA, he ain't seen nothin' yet. In addition to his expensively tailored suits, I recommend he turns up for his first day at the Royal Mail with shin pads, a cricketer's box and gum shield. And that's just to get past the tea ladies. When he meets the unions, a full suit of armour may be required. The Royal Mail has more quick strikers than a warehouse of Swan Vesta. In bad years, working days lost due to industrial action by postal unions have accounted for more than half the British total. I know managers who would rather chew broken glass than negotiate with the Communication Workers Union's Billy Hayes. Yet, to be fair to the company's 200,000 staff, they are far from being the only problem. Over many years, the Royal Mail was plundered by the Treasury for "special dividends". Tory and Labour governments simply stuck their hands in the company's till and waltzed off with money that should have been used to modernise machinery and fund better transport facilities. And though new Allan Leighton, the chairman, has now clawed back some of that cash, the damage done by investment starvation remains a blight on the postal service. One of Crozier's first tasks will be to reduce drastically the number of mailed items either lost or delayed, currently running at about 500,000 a week. That's 25m a year. I wonder where they all go? It seems that somewhere in the system there is a postal version of the Bermuda Triangle. Cards, letters and packages pour into it and vanish. Crozier won't want his career to follow them. As if improving customer service was not a big enough challenge, the Royal Mail is also facing the threat of an increasingly competitive market (its monopoly will be gone by 2006) and heavy-handed interference from Postcomm, the mail regulator.

As low-cost competitors cherry-pick the juiciest bits of Royal Mail's business, in the same way that budget airlines have attacked British Airways, Crozier will need to demonstrate promotional skills that can shore up his new employer's franchise. He does razzle-dazzle rather well and I think we can expect some innovative rebranding of postal services. Dealing with the regulator will be much less fun, as will handling the company's sole shareholder – the Government. Crozier showed little aptitude for manipulating football's "blazerati" and will need a crash course in diplomacy before he can be let loose on the faceless mandarins at the Department of Trade and Industry. When it comes to stuffing difficult businessmen, DTI officials know more tricks than an award-winning taxidermist. Much fuss has been made over Crozier's pounds 500,000 salary. But if he can lead a team that tames truculent unions, clears out feeble middle management, appeases a bolshy regulator, satisfies duplicitous politicians and delivers a world-class postal service for Britain that doesn't need drip-feeding by the taxpayer, he'll be worth every penny.