I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, naive intuition we have is that people are like in a maze — that all people care about money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct to work one way, we can direct them to work another way. This why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, you think that those books are full of moments of joy happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. if people were just trying to be happy, the moment they would to the top, they would say, “This was a mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, go down, and after they recover, they go up again. if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It that we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us to work or in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about after a student came to visit me. This was one of my from a few years earlier, and he came one back to campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for more than weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was in a big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. he was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, the merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which we gave Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they built with Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we it under the table, and we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, at some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was we called the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle another. After they finished every one of them, we them under the table. And we told them that at the end of the experiment, we take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the to push the same rock up a hill, and when almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have to again. And you can think about this as the essence doing futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner finished, they ask him to fill the hole back and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical of doing something over and over and over that seems to be demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And they said yes, we gave them a new one, and as they building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the one they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. by the way, we should point out that this not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as I describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what the result be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. who were just given the description of the experiment said that in the condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, extent to which it’s important.
There was one other of data we looked at. If you think about it, are some people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. you would speculate that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, for less money, because after all, they get more internal from it. And the people who love Legos less would build less Legos the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There was very nice correlation between the love of Legos and amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between love of Legos, and how much people built, which to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity. We eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within the company that was put in a different building, and they asked them innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week I showed up, the CEO of this big software company to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had just through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t their hands, but they took me out to dinner showed me what they could do with expense reports. then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to whole company about their journey over the last two years and what decided to do. He could have asked them to think about which of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. the thing is that any one of those would some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. he would say, “At the moment I directed you this way, and now that I’m directing you in way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more about they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if wanted to do another for a little less money, next sheet for a little bit less, and so on so forth. And we had three conditions. In the condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, not look at it, did not scan it, and put it on the pile of pages. So you a piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, the got the sheet of paper, and put it directly into shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get not to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, the way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have not so good work, because they realized people were just it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, then you see nobody is really testing it, so would do more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or in the middle? It turns out it was almost like shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, might overdo it. So this is all in terms of motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want show you is something about positive motivation. So there is store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know you, but every time I assemble one of those, it me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, put things in the wrong way — I can’t say I those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would ask to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe taste was not good? No, the taste was great. they figured out was that there was not enough involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if bought it in the store. It didn’t really feel your own. So what did they do? They took the and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them to love what they’re to a higher degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? asked people to build some origami. We gave them instructions on to create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. And were all novices, and they built something that was really quite — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll you what, we’ll sell it to you. How much you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were willing to for it. And we had two types of people: We had the people who built it, and people who did not build it, and just looked it as external observers. And what we found was that builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and were willing to pay five times more for them than the who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you were builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” “I love this origami, and everybody else will love it well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that would see the world in their view. They thought everybody else would love it as well.
In the next version, we tried to do the effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved it more, loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How would you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations so on. Most people would say for a lot, lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
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But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if did not have your kids. And one day you to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you with them for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, just because of who they are, but because of us, they are so connected to us, and because of time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those are tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell you one thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see things our way.
Let say one last comment. If you think about Adam versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said have 12 different steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. if you get one person to do step one, one person to do step two and step three and on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for the Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the of labor is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if do one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we to situations in which people have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how they feel to it, are they thinking about labor on way to work, and in the shower and so on, all a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. So we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, the reality is that we should probably add all kinds things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if we added all of components and thought about them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do do it in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to both more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.