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