Adam Crozier - Diplomat with a ruthless streak

Compared with the challenges of Crozier's day job - turning Royal Mail from an institution making a daily loss of £1.5m into a profitable business, while dealing with the postal workers' union and deregulation of the market - marshalling a bunch of direct marketers must seem like a cakewalk.

Crozier is bang in the middle of Royal Mail's turnaround and yet another postal workers strike, ostensibly over a 2.5 per cent pay offer to workers, but more about the increased productivity requirements that are tied to the deal. Unless it automates its processes, Royal Mail says, it cannot compete with newer players such as TNT Post.

Now that he has helped Royal Mail move into the black - the company made record profits of nearly £600m in 2005-6, up 10 per cent on the previous year - Crozier's biggest headache is transforming its labour-intensive working practices. The Communication Workers Union says the proposed introduction of technology to handle mail could result in 40,000 job losses.

"There is an inevitability about greater automation in Royal Mail - you only have to look to Europe to see how the machinability of mail is growing," says David Robottom, former director of postal affairs at the DMA and now a consultant. "Direct mail will happen, with or without Royal Mail, now that it has competitors."

Although Crozier's priorities are of a wider nature than keeping the DM industry happy, he appreciates the value of direct mail to the company's bottom line. "Direct mail is key to Royal Mail's survival," says Robottom. "Adam's an astute enough businessman to recognise that."

DMA managing director James Kelly has so far been impressed with Crozier. Two years ago Kelly invited Crozier to speak to the chief executives of DMA member mail order companies and hear their grievances about Royal Mail. "In front of firms such as JD Williams and Littlewoods, Adam outlined the strategy for Royal Mail and then he listened to them. Whenever we phone him to give our views on industrial action, he always takes our calls."

The fact there is a ruthless streak underneath the affability is not in doubt. "Cool as a cucumber," is how one colleague describes him. Born on the Forth and raised in Ayr, Falkirk and Edinburgh, his footballing skills helped him thrive at his tough comprehensive school. Armed with a BA in business organisation, Crozier took jobs with Mars and the Telegraph newspaper group, joining Saatchi & Saatchi in 1988. He became managing director after just six years.

And yet his appointment to Royal Mail in 2002 was greeted with open-mouths - shock that Royal Mail's single shareholder, the Government, had gone outside the postal business gene pool for a new leader. Surprise too because Crozier's post-Saatchi tenure as Football Association (FA) chief was not judged a success after he resigned from the post, having tried to drag English football's governing body into the 21st century. Having fallen out with the FA's management and the Premiership's club chairmen, how would Crozier cope with the politics that is Royal Mail?

Four years on, Crozier has defied the sceptics who expected him to bolt after the first signs of trouble. When he was hired, it was to work alongside former chief executive of New Zealand Post Elmar Toime, who joined as executive deputy chairman to run Royal Mail's letters business. Eighteen months later, Crozier had assumed the running of this part of the company too, after Toime's early exit in 2004.

"When Adam started, we all thought that he would be the front-of-house man and do the creative stuff - that was his background after all - and that Toime would head operations," one former Royal Mail executive recalls. "But Adam's the one who survived and has taken over the rest of the business."

From Saatchi & Saatchi to the FA and then to Royal Mail - Crozier's career has encompassed vastly different businesses. An 2003 article in Management Today magazine classed him as a job hopper - a new breed of generalist business managers that can make swift, easy transitions from one industry to another.

Crozier's love of change puts him at odds with the workforce he must now cajole into new working practices. The strike is over for 'a period of calm' until 4 September while both union and Royal Mail consider their options. In the meantime, Crozier's proven coolness under fire should stand him in good stead.

CROZIER'S CHALLENGES
- To automate Royal Mail's labour-intensive mail handling
- To maintain Royal Mail's dominance of UK postal services
- To grow profits to provide funds for infrastructure investment.