The Santa System: North Pole Strategies for Organizational Success

Unlock the secrets of Santa’s workshop and transform your organization! Imagine an organization that serves billions of children all over the world. The man in charge must know which of those children are nice and which toys each nice child wants. And, he must deliver the right toys, to the right child, in the right home, in just one night. From a business perspective, the leadership, employees, processes, and organizational effectiveness required for such success boggles the mind.

Though it may seem too good to be true, that organization exists. It’s Santa’s Workshop, and Lenn Millbower, The Mouse Man™ and former Disney training leader, visited it at the North Pole. Santa’s team, led by Merri Claus, gave him an eye-opening, behind-the-scenes look at the methodology that delivers Santa’s success. In this session, Lenn will unwrap those secret strategies so you can deliver your own organizational magic.

This presentation – ideal for leaders, influencers, contributors, and specialists at all organizational levels – is a fun ride and a good time. As explained by Dr. Karl Albrecht in the forward to Lenn’s new book, The Santa System: Ten Leader Lessons from the North Pole, Lenn draws on his long experience with the legendary Disney culture and a career in show business and adds his own creative twists. Lenn will present a fresh, entertaining, and useful perspective for thinking about the challenges of leadership, management, employee engagement, and organizational effectiveness. His Santa Claus metaphor and model, while fun to work with, are also surprisingly durable, with room for the spectrum of concepts, principles, and practices that shape the practical realities of running a successful enterprise.

Lenn will focus on five critical areas that give Santa success:

1. PURPOSE – Gaining a deeper understanding of how harnessing emotion motivates and inspires team members to soar to new heights
2. PRIORITIES – Avoiding the naughty and embracing the nice through effective decision-making filters that align with organizational purpose and values
3. PEOPLE – Uncovering the true North Pole behaviors expected of leaders and team members to create an organizational culture of excellence and accountability
4. PERFORMANCE – Learning how to protect the organization’s image and align it, and its team members, with public perception
5. PROCESS – Helping transform the organization into a lean, efficient, and ever-improving machine through continuous improvement methodology

This session is, obviously, an analogy, but analogies give a fanciful gift. They illuminate key truths without the baggage of reality. This analogy will deliver practical tools and tips to illustrate key concepts. Among other gifts, it will share the detailed process for the annual roof run, how the NaNe (naughty/nice) list works, and, just for fun, the surprising secrets about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. So, join Lenn on a happy holiday of discovery and give the gift of organizational effectiveness to you and your organization.