I want to a little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, naive intuition we have is that people are like in a maze — that all people care about is money, and moment we give them money, we can direct them to one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of of joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after recover, they go up again. And if you think about climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of things that motivate us to work or behave in kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking this after a student came to visit me. This was of my students from a few years earlier, and he one 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 working in a big bank, and this was in preparation a merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard on presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night day. And the day before it was due, he sent PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him back said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And guy was 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 would watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a little in which we gave people Legos, and we asked to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and said, “Hey, would you 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 we said, “Would like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” they 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 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 of them, put them under the table. And we told them at the end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will them, we will put them back in the boxes, and will use it for the next participant.
There was condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to the same rock up a hill, and when he got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have to again. And you can think about this as the essence doing futile work. You can imagine that if he the rock on different hills, at least he would have some of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them dig 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 cyclical 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 dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you to build another one for $2.70?” And if they yes, we gave them a new one, and as they building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. when they finished that, we said, “Would you like build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, gave them the one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. by the way, we should point out that this was not meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the would be destroyed 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, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, as I am describing to you now, and we asked them predict what the result would be. What happened? People the right direction 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 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 was one other 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 that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy from it. the people 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 very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests me that with 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 it.
Soon after 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 Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in a different building, and asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week I showed up, the CEO of this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever to. And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they like they had just been through that experiment. And I asked them, said, “How many of you now show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody their hand. I said, “How many of you now go earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise hands, but 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 have done to you not as depressed?” And they came up with kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to whole company about their journey over the last two years and what they decided to do. could have asked them to think about which aspect their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked them build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But the thing is that one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the I directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing in this way, everything will be okay.” But if understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting 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 that were identical next to each other. That was task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do for a little less money, the next sheet for a little less, and so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, not look at it, did not scan it, and simply put on the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you put it on the side. In the third condition, experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it directly a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get not to be as happy with what they’re doing. I should point out, by the way, that in shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the 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 more and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s news and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. good news is that by simply looking at something that has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you something about positive motivation. So there is a store the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with of okay furniture that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things the wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder they would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives basically pour it in, stir some water in it, it, put it in the oven, and — voila — had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they out was that there was not enough effort involved. was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what did they do? They took the 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 a little bit like the effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do look at this question experimentally? We asked people to build origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and 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. You worked us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. much do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were willing pay for it. And we had two types of people: We the people who built it, and the people who not build it, and just looked at it as observers. And what we found was that the builders 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 — if you were a builder, you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, I know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of those is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that would see the world in their view. They thought else would love it more as well.
In the next version, tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders it even more.
(Laughter)
They put 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 about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you not have your kids. And one day you went the park and you met some kids. They were just your kids, and you played with them for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the 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? Most people not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of they are, but because of us, because they are so to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, if think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions 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 you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see things way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But you get one person to do step one, and one person to do step two and three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the of labor is incredibly important in how people think the connection to what they are doing. And if you all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do one step every time, maybe don’t care as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the is 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, they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to to us. So when we think about labor, we usually about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we probably add all kinds of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good is that if we added all of those components and thought about them — how do create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we it in our workplace, and for the employees — think we could get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank very much.