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