I want to talk a little bit about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive we have is that 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. is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, what the 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 who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do 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 difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if were just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it all kinds of things. It suggests that we care about the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, about challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that us to work or behave 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 students from few years earlier, and he came one day back campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working very on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night day. And the day before it was due, he sent his presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the guy deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. night 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 fruits of labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in we gave people Legos, and we asked them to with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you 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 one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at some people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what called the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. they finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And we told them at the end of the experiment, we will take these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus punished by the gods to push the same rock a hill, and when he almost got to the end, the rock would over, and he would have to start again. And you can think this as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the back up and then dig again. There’s something about cyclical version of doing something over and over and over that seems be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build another 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 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what when you compare these two conditions? The first thing happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And the way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. People were not cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to the situation, much as I am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what result would be. What happened? People predicted the right but not the right magnitude. People who were just given the description the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So understand that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There was other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some who love Legos, and some people who don’t. And you would speculate that the people love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the who love Legos less would build less Legos because enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s 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, the was zero — there was no relationship between the of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed joy that they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This a group within the software company that was put in a different building, they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And week before I showed up, the CEO of this big company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had just been through experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work later you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How of you now go home earlier than you used to?” raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t their hands, but they took me out to dinner and me what they could do with expense reports. And I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to whole company about their journey over the last two years what they decided to do. He could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology fit with other 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 of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand importance of meaning. If the 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 in this way, now that I’m directing you in this way, everything 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 getting people to more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs letters that were identical next to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then asked if they wanted to do another for a little money, the next sheet for a little bit less, so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, wrote their name on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter looked it, took the 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, you just put it on side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is the 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 the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have 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 nobody really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. So fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. gets you a whole way out there. The good news is by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to you is something about positive motivation. So there is a 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, but 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 say I enjoy process. But when I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA of furniture more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the was great. What they figured out was that there not enough 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 like your own. what did they do? They took the eggs and milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had break the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the IKEA effect, getting people to 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 were all novices, and they built something that was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. How do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how they were willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: had the people who built it, and the people who not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And what found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were to pay five times more for them than the people 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 that nobody would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else will it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would the world in their view. They thought everybody else would love more as well.
In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We to make it more difficult. So for some people, we the same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At 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 way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when 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? Because the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something how 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. Most would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one you went to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you with them for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for now? Most people say not that much. And this because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, because of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of the time connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what the instructions that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which to tell you one more thing, which is, much like builders, when they look at the creature 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 Adam Smith Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if person does all 12 steps, production is very low. if you get one person to do step one, one person to do step two and step three so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if you do 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, now we’re in the knowledge 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 feel to it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to to us. So when we think about labor, we think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is we should probably add all kinds of things to — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good is that if we added all of those components 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 more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.