Think about it for a minute: Has any CEO ever delivered better for longer than Santa? Had a more satisfied customer base? Had a more motivated workforce? Had a more famous, iconic world headquarters? Been more synonymous with his brand?
Santa Claus is the Platinum Standard in CEOs. And he is all by himself in that category. Now before you dismiss this as unrealistic, consider these CEOs who did manage to emulate some of Santa's virtues:
- Steve Jobs, Apple
- Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines
- Fred Smith, FedEx
- Dave Thomas, Wendy's
None of these executives is in Santa's class (then again, who is?), but they've all done a very good job of emulating Santa in at least a few of the ways mentioned above. So it is absolutely possible to model yourself on Santa as you lead your organization.
What are Santa's keys to success?
- Focus. Santa has done one thing and one thing only for a very long time. Your company may not need to be as tightly focused as Mr. Claus's, but staying focused is a very, very good thing.
- Quality Assurance & Quality Control. Santa has a comprehensive list of his customers, and he checks it twice. Heck, he's so famous for his thorough devotion to quality that they wrote a song about it.
- Belief in what the organization does. If Santa doesn't believe, how the heck does he motivate those elves to work the way they do? You can't effectively communicate what you don't believe.
- Commitment to the customer. Lots of organization's talk about this, but does anyone do this better than Santa? The guy literally goes to the ends of the earth and works on Christmas for crying out loud. That's commitment.
You can fall well short of Santa's standard and be a huge success – after all the guy's an honest-to-goodness saint. But if you use his keys to success, things could be very merry indeed for your company.
One last piece of Santa advice: Don't try the dress code or the “Ho Ho Ho!” unless you're sure you can pull it off (and you can't).
* From the New York Sun's editorial in response to a letter from eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon in 1897.
