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