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