I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, naive intuition we have is that people are like rats in a — that all people care about is money, and moment we give them money, we can direct them work one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if 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 books of people who mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books 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 if people were trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, go down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if you about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And me personally, I started thinking about this after a came to visit me. This was one of my students from a few years earlier, he came one day back to campus. And he me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working very on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed at night every day. And the day before it due, he sent his 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. at the moment when 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 knowing that would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we with this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to with, we created a little experiment in which we gave Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and built with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, and 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 Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And told them that at the end of the experiment, will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put back in the boxes, and we will use it for the participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, was punished by the gods to push the same up a hill, and when he almost got to the end, rock would roll over, and he would have to start again. And you can think this as the essence of doing futile work. You imagine that 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 the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when the is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s something this cyclical version of doing something over and over over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build another one $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a new one, as they were building it, we took apart the one that they finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would like to build another one, this time for 30 less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the that they built and 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 thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning made difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we described to them the situation, much as I am describing you now, and we asked them to predict what the result would be. What happened? predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who just given the description of the experiment said that in the condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, the to 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, and people who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy it. And the people who love Legos less would build Legos because 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 the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I running this experiment, I went to talk to a software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they a 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 big product for this company. And the week before I 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. And described to them some of these Lego experiments, and said they felt like they had just been through that experiment. I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How of you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, they took me out to dinner and showed me what they could do with reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO done to make you not as depressed?” And they up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to the company about 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 have asked 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 the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. he would say, “At the moment I directed you this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” But you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The next was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. was the task. People did the first sheet, then asked if they wanted to do another for a less money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, wrote their name on the sheet, found all the of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put on the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, not look at it, did not scan it, and 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, put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, basically 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 — you get them not to as happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that in shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you see nobody is really testing it, so you would more and more and more. So in fact, in shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and more money, and put less effort into it. But what the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole out there. The good news is that by simply at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be 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 seems to be incredibly easy, and if don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part want to show you is something about positive motivation. So is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble one those, it takes me much 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 say I enjoy the process. But I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than like other ones.
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And there’s an old story about mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. it turns out they were very unpopular. People did want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out was that there was not effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, if you bought it in the store. It didn’t really like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and milk out of the powder.
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Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it your cake. Now everything was fine.
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(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like 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 people to some origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, they built something that was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs 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 measured how much they were willing to pay for it. we had two types of people: We had the who built it, and the people who did not build it, and just looked at it external observers. And what we found was that the builders that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they willing to pay five times more for them than the people who just evaluated externally. Now you could say — if you were a builder, do think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” “I love this origami, and everybody else will love as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that would see the world in their view. They thought everybody would love it more as well.
In the next version, tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to it more difficult. So for some people, we gave the same task. For people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even than the first version.
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Of course, this tells you something about we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. people would say for a lot, a lot of money.
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On days.
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But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. one day you went to the park and you some kids. They were just like your kids, and played with them for a few hours, and when were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
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How would you pay for them now? Most people say not much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but because us, because they are 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 and so on. comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the of their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you one person to do step one, and one person do step two and step three and so on, can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people think about connection to what they are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you care about pin. But if 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. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think as we move to situations in which people have to decide on own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things 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 news is that if we added all of those components and thought about them — how we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do do it in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.