If you decorate for the holidays, you know how time consuming it can be. Now imagine you have 890 Christmas trees (including the giant one at the Wilderness Lodge snapped above), 100,000 poinsettias, 1350 wreaths, 7.5 miles of garland and 8.5 million individual lights to set up. That’s the task that challenges Walt Disney World every year.

A full time, year-round crew, stationed in a 54,000 square-feet building call Holiday Services is responsible for the installation. And, the entire installation must be done within a compressed time period. For guests who visit a park two days in a row, it seems magical. One day, no Christmas tree; the next, fully decorated tree.

This time lapse video, courtesy Walt Disney World Shutterbug on YouTube, demonstrates what it takes to set up the tree inside the Grand Floridian Resort.

The Holiday Services team clearly knows what they are doing. Like most everything else at Disney, what they do is process driven. The process starts while one season is ending as the team collects success and failure information for next year. That information often includes the mundane and the big picture: what lights, fixtures, etc. needs replacing; what technologies worked and what didn’t; what items need refurbishment; how the installs went and what could be improved next time; and what new, and better display ideas emerged.

Once the decorations are taken down (usually early in January), the process of update, repair, replace, and enhance begins. All the lights are checked; the garlands mended; the trees repainted (they are artificial); the updates made. This refurbishment work continues all year long, interspersed with the maintenance, setup and teardown of other holiday—Halloween for example—decorations.

All this is possible because of process. People think that Disney makes magic. What Disney really makes is refined processes relentlessly pursued, documented and followed. It’s how they deliver holiday magic year after year.

This video, courtesy of Travelocity on YouTube, shares insights into how Disney preps for the holidays each year.

What about your business? Do you notice, document and fix process failures? Is the next time always a refinement of the last time? Do you have enough personnel to devote adequate time to prepping for anticipated future needs? Or, is each situation a scramble? Are your people always overworked? Are repeat situations often started over from scratch? If so, you need to focus on process.

Establish what the military calls an AAR (After Action Review). Document what worked and what did not. Ask how things could have gone more smoothly. Then, put the identified processes in place. And, the next time the situation arises, insist your people follow the process. You can, in this way, make your own magic.