I want to talk a little bit today about and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that are like rats in a maze — that all people about is money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them to one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what the labor market like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do think that those books are full of moments of joy happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s about frostbite and 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 think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all of other things that motivate us to work or in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This was one of my from a few years earlier, and he came one day back campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for than two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed at night every day. And the day before it was due, sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the of our labor. And to start with, we created little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would 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, took it, we put it under the table, and said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If said yes, we gave them another one, and when finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” was what we called the meaningful condition. People built one after another. After they 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, and we will use it for next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the rock up a hill, and when he almost got to the end, rock would roll over, and he would have to start again. And can think about this as the essence of doing futile work. You can that if he pushed the rock on different hills, 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 him to fill the hole up and then dig again. There’s something about this version of doing something over and over and over seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what did. We asked people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” if they said yes, they built it. Then we them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them new one, and as they were building it, we took 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 they said yes, we gave them the one that built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened was people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real for big meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of experiment. In this 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 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, would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, the extent which it’s important.
There was 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, after all, they get more internal joy from it. the people who love Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that they from it is lower. And that’s actually what we in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — there was relationship between the love of Legos, and how much built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This was group within the software company that was put in a building, and they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had just been through experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many you now show up to work later than you used to?” And raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now go 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 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 to make you not as depressed?” And they came with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present the whole company about their journey over the last two years what they decided to do. He could have asked them think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other of the organization. He could have asked them to build next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But the thing that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, and now I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to some time, energy and effort in getting people to care about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked to find pairs of letters that were identical next each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted do another for a little less money, the next for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile next to them. In the second condition, people not write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the of paper, did not look at it, did not it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So you a piece, you just put it on the side. In the condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to be happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not so work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d good work, but then you see nobody is really it, so you would do more and more and more. in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at 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 adding motivation doesn’t to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I 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 okay furniture that takes 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 I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy process. But when I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns out were very unpopular. People did not want them, and thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out that 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 somebody else’s cake, as if you bought in the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
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.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, actually got them to love what they’re doing to higher degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? We people 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 really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell to you. How much do you want to pay for it?” we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And had two types of people: We had the people who it, and the people who did not build it, just looked at it as external observers. And what found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more for them than the who just evaluated them 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, everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders only loved 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 some people, we gave the same task. For some people, made it harder by hiding the instructions. At the of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? They it even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than the version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your and associations and so on. Most people would say a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have 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 you were about to leave, parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for them now? people 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 the time and connection. By the way, if you IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that come kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. said pins have 12 different steps, and if one does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if get one person to do step one, and one to do step two and step three and so on, production can tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. if 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 Karl Marx. the 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 that as we move to in which people have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they to it, are they thinking about labor on the to work, and in the shower and so on, of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. So we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and 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 good news is that if we added all of components and thought about them — how do we create our meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people be both more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.