Page 263 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

WHAT DELIGHTS ME? (CIVILITY AND HAPPINESS)

leaders make room for employees to experience both big
C and little c creativity, enjoy little pleasures, find work
conducive to a sense of humor and playfulness, and prac-
tice civility, employee satisfaction can turn into customer
satisfaction.
You may not be able to afford a fancy gym or day-care
center for your employees, but a yoga class or a Ping-Pong
table might fly. Salaries may be frozen, but someone could
still thaw out the cookie dough. Delight doesn’t have to
mean expensive artwork or fancy furniture, and it is not
something people have to wait for management to provide—
as long as thoughtful leaders are opening up the windows to
let a little delight blow through.

An Unexpected Lesson in Delight

When the Khmer Rouge, a totalitarian Communist regime,
took over Cambodia in the late 1970s, they emptied the
capital city of Phnom Penh of its 2 million inhabitants
in a matter of hours, sending everyone to the country to
work in rice fields and on farms in makeshift huts and with
no training or provisions. An estimated 1.5 million of the
7.1-million-person population died from torture, starvation,
disease, and forced labor during the five years of Khmer
Rouge rule, probably half from execution, making it the
most lethal government of the 20th century. Schools, hos-
pitals, banks, communication systems, and industry all
came to a complete halt, with intellectuals, professionals,
the educated, those with leadership skill, and city dwell-
ers among the most suspect and the first to be executed.
Children were separated from parents and trained in

239