About The Santa System: Ten Leader Lessons from the North Pole
Unwrap Santa’s secrets. Ccelebrate your success.
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 book, Lenn will unwrap those secret strategies so you can deliver your own organizational magic.
The Santa System: Ten Leader Lessons from the North Pole is ideal for leaders, influencers, contributors, and specialists at all organizational levels. As Dr. Karl Albrecht writes in the foreword, it “is a fun ride and a good time. Drawing on his long experince with the legendary Disney culture, and a career in show business, and adding his own creative twists, Lenn deliverst 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.”
Among the topics covered in The Santa System, Lenn shares five critical areas that deliver Santa’s success:
PURPOSE – Gaining a deeper understanding of how harnessing emotion motivates and inspires team members to soar to new heights.
PRIORITIES – Avoiding the naughty and embracing the nice through effective decision-making filters that align with organizational purpose and values.
PEOPLE – Uncovering the true North Pole behaviors expected of leaders and team members to create an organizational culture of excellence and accountability.
PERFORMANCE – Learning how to protect the organization’s image and align it, and its team members, with public perception.
PROCESS – Helping transform the organization into a lean, efficient, and ever-improving machine through continuous improvement methodology.
The Santa System 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 success to yourself and your organization. You’ll learn Santa’s secrets and love your success.
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Author Bio:
Lenn Millbower consults, keynotes, and coaches Walt Disney inspired culture, customer service, leadership, innovation, and presentation skills methodologies so that organizations and professionals can rediscover their own unique business pixie-dust.
Everything Walt Disney touched seemed magical. It wasn’t magic. It was method. Learn the method and you can create your own business magic.
Lenn saw that method up close. He spent 25 years at Walt Disney World, starting in Operations at Epcot, stage managing shows at Disney-MGM Studios, opening Disney’s Animal Kingdom, writing training programs for employees at the Disney University, designing performance improvement programs for business professionals at the Disney Institute, leading training for Walt Disney Entertainment and managing the training function for Walt Disney World Learning Solutions.
Initiatives that Lenn was involved in include leadership, customer service, customer loyalty, customer service recovery, and innovation and orientation programs. He wrote training programs for housekeeping, food and beverage, custodial, merchandise, guest relations, characters and firework technicians.
On the opening team for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Lenn was responsible for establishing the Entertainment training department and on-boarding and training new cast members and their leaders. In recognition of this achievement, Lenn was honored with Disney’s exclusive Partners in Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award.
Clients booking Lenn quickly discover that his varied background at Walt Disney World allows him to align his strategies and tactics to any industry.
Offbeat consulting delivers innovative solutions to real organizational issues. Lenn and his team—with over 100 year of collective Walt Disney World experience—helps clients discover their own unique pixie-dust and reconnect their organization with their own special magic. Past clients have included health care, financial services, utilitites, transportation, grocery, retail, waste management and governmental and military agency professionals. All walk away with real-life Walt Disney inspired strategies and actual tactics applicable to their specific needs.
Mouse Man™ keynotes and workshops are also highly engaging. Prior to Disney, Lenn was a professional magician-musician performing throughout the United States and providing warm up entertainment for acts as diverse as the Bee Gees, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Victor Borge, Mac Davis, Ann Murray and a performance at the White House for President Gerald R. Ford. He applies his entertainment industry background to deliver fact-focused information wrapped in a fun-filled package.
Post Disney, Lenn is a five-time published author, a frequent keynote speaker and workshop leader and a Disney culture makeover consultant to major organizations. The Mouse Man™ will inspire your attendees to create their own magical worlds of customer service, leadership, innovation and presentation skills.
Lenn’s published works include The Santa system (2024), Care Like a Mouse (2018), The Learnertainment® Pocket Tip Book (2012), ASTD InfoLine: Music as a Training Tool (2004), Game Show Themes for Trainers CD (2002), Show Biz Training (2002), Cartoons for Trainers (2001), Training and with a Beat (2000).
Give it a shake and watch your own magic take!