KEY POINTS:
John Allen's reputation as a good talker has preceded him, and when he arrives in his meeting room on the top floor of New Zealand Post's hulking headquarters overlooking Wellington Harbour, he doesn't disappoint.
Allen is an energetic yet methodical speaker, who stays "on message" with the tenacity of a seasoned politician. He tends to use the kind of corporate rhetoric to be found in the autobiographies of international business leaders which sit on the meeting room's bookshelf.
Above all, he's sturdily positive about the future of an organisation whose core business is seen by some as a "sunset industry".
While NZ Post may be more efficient now, like Telecom and the newspaper industry it faces a huge challenge from the internet. Letter volumes have fallen by an average of 1 per cent a year in the past few years. In the 12 months to June they dropped 2.3 per cent.
"The real challenge for us is the choice that the customer has to do something online or do it through the mail, and we've got to get increasingly crisp in understanding the value that using the mail delivers over the online options."
Despite the accelerating decline in letter volumes, he maintains that "getting and sending a letter is hot!"
"It enables you to create a real personal connection with the recipient of the item in the way that an email doesn't. It enables you to say 'I really care' in a way that an email doesn't."
While the number of letters individuals are sending is falling, NZ Post has increased the volume of "marketing communications".
"Not junk mail!" Allen says forcefully. "This is addressed, quality communication that people are using to actually cut through in an increasingly complex communication and broadcasting environment."
He accentuates his adjectives with sharp taps of his papers on the tabletop.
His defence of the letterbox-clogging marketing material most people regard as a nuisance is a good demonstration of his ability as a speaker.
Growing up in Hamilton, many of his contemporaries undoubtedly dreamed of rugby greatness but Allen's own sporting efforts were "strictly amateur and strictly limited". Early on he realised his future lay in a less physical but potentially just as bruising arena.
"It's like anybody, you've got to identify your skills; I turned out to have a skill in talking."
While to this day an avid Waikato and Chiefs supporter, his role was not al All Black but an ageing, cigar-smoking, claret-swilling London barrister depicted on television.
"I probably chose law as a career because I had this Rumpole of the Bailey view of what law was all about and I thought if you were reasonable at doing the talking thing, then law was probably a fair choice."
At school and university his verbal ability was further honed.
"I was lucky enough to find various teachers who were supportive of me in debating and then a wonderful group of friends, particularly at Victoria, who were extraordinarily skilled in that space and that extended myskills. In that context I representedthe university at various times."
Once qualified, he worked first in litigation but soon moved to commercial work, especially competition law.
By the mid-1980s he was a partner at NZ Post's legal advisers, Rudd, Watts & Stone, now Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.
There he was involved in litigation concerning the closure of post offices that followed the corporatisation of the Post Office in 1986.
"As a consequence of that I got to know the leadership team within the NZ Post group very well and progressively did more and more work for them until finally they asked me to lead the negotiations with the Crown around the deregulation of the letter market."
In 1994 former NZ Post chief executive Elmar Toime asked him to lead the letters business, "which I had no qualifications to do, of course, but which I decided was an interesting challenge".
His 12 years with the state-owned enterprise have given him a rare overview of "the challenges and opportunities the SOE structure has provided to businesses such as NZ Post".
"Certainly there's been huge change."
He believes the SOE model has been extraordinarily successful.
"If you look at the performance of state enterprises generally across New Zealand, you will see an improvement in service standards, an improvement in profitability, an improvement in the understanding of what is necessary to continue to grow and sustain them."
Some would argue that government should simply not be an owner of businesses operating in competitive markets.
"I don't see huge inconsistencies between the social requirements of state enterprise status and the commercial element," he says.
Economic Development Minister Trevor Mallard recently called on the SOEs to extend their areas of business. NZ Post has already been doing that.
In recent years it has established express courier, database management and ICT businesses as well as the sideline that attracts the most attention, Kiwibank.
While Allen was reluctant to say if he thought Kiwibank would eventually become NZ Post's largest business, he has in the past indicated it is likely.
Kiwibank's television advertising portrays it as a plucky little local outfit taking on rapacious, foreign-owned competitors, but that's a picture that doesn't sit entirely comfortably with Allen's view of transtasman relations.
"I get very frustrated with some of this jingoistic journalism that I see, that Australia's trying to rape and pillage New Zealand."
In fact, for the past six months he's been the New Zealand co-chairman of the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum, which meets once a year to discuss ways to build transtasman relationships and increase trade.
Describing Allen as an intensely private man might be overstating things a little, but when asked about his life outside work he groans and dodges the question.
Okay, how does he relax then?
"I work! I enjoy what I do, I love the work that I'm doing.
"I've got huge diversity of businesses that I can get involved in. I can do banking stuff one day and I'm doing data stuff another. I'm involved with this Australasian initiative which is ... taking me into a whole new world of foreign affairs and trade.
"I'm an enthusiast for the New Zealand arts and for New Zealand writing and doing what I can to support the activities of New Zealand artists, on the board of Te Papa.
"When I'm not doing that, I've got my 9-year-old son and my wife and we have a cool time together. They're wonderful, keep my feet on the ground and keep me honest. That pretty much sums up what I'm doing at the moment."
Allen has been in NZ Post's top job since 2003, when he reportedly beat off 90 other applicants to replace Elmar Toime, but still sounds surprised that he wound up at NZ Post at all.
"Leaving law, which is what I was trained to do, and leaping into NZ Post, which I had no experience in, didn't seem a big thing at the time, but now I look at it I think, 'My God! How did I make that change?'."
He believes he is "incredibly lucky" to have known his predecessors in the job, Harvey Parker and Toime, who were "incredibly supportive".
"They taught me and they had confidence in me to take leadership positions that, frankly, I had stuff-all qualification to take."
His decision to join NZ Post, was "the most fantastic thing I'd done, it was just an astonishing opportunity and it gives you the courage to leap again".
That's not likely to happen any time soon, he says, but he sounds as though he's already given some thought to what kind of job would combine his diverse interests.
"Somehow I've got to be a legal, artist, business, teaching type of person. It's an interesting hybrid but I'm sure it exists somewhere."
John Allen
Age: 45
Grew up in Hamilton
Married to Janey
One son
High School: St Paul's Collegiate
1983: LLB, Victoria University of Wellington
1984: Barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand
1984-89: Solicitor and senior associate, Rudd Watts & Stone
1989-96: Partner, Rudd Watts & Stone
1994-2003: Various senior management positions at NZ Post
2003-present: NZ Post chief executive
