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