December Is Finally Here!

Happy December 1st!

My schedule was a little lighter today. Mondays are always easier as there are typically no parade or media appearances on Mondays and there are significantly fewer mall appearances. As a result, I can spend more time here at the North Pole. I used the time today to conduct 1x1 meetings with all of my senior staff. Today's focus was on reviewing and updating their annual individual and team performance goals. We run our performance management year from February 1 to January 31st. Obviously, we have performance discussions through out the year; however, there are 4 formal review periods: Goal Setting in February, Mid-Year Reviews at the end of the summer (Aug-Sept timeframe), Pre-Christmas Review at the first of December, and the year-end review in late January/early February. The pre-Christmas Reviews that I conducted today are just to ensure that we are fully aligned and prepared for the most critical portion of our year leading up to the Christmas Eve operation. I am happy to say that everyone is performing very well. I could not be more proud of my team. I am extremely confident this is going to be a great Christmas!

I did have a couple of tree lightings though, including the North Pole Christmas Tree Lighting! What fun it was! The best thing about the North Pole Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony is that Mrs. Claus gets the lighting honors. I can just be myself and enjoy the ceremony as a participant. It was quite the event.... of course, as usual, the thing I remember most is the food.... Hot chocolate, roasted chestnuts, hot apple cider, ginger bread cookies, etc. There were strolling carolers prior to the start of the ceremony. Beyonce opened with a few modern Christmas carols. She was followed by Michael W. Smith, who sang more traditional carols such as Hark The Herald Angels and Silent Night. It was also a great chance to catch-up with old friends that I had not had the opportunity to see since they had returned last week. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

Mrs. Claus is calling me to join her for a late night snack so I better get going. It was a good day! I hope you are enjoying this Christmas season as much as I am.