I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition we is that people are like rats in a maze — that all care about is money, and the moment we give them money, can direct them to work one way, we can direct them to work way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At same time, if you think about it, there’s all of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read 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. In fact, it’s all about and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just 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 on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if you think mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests that care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds other things that motivate us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, started thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This one of my students from a few years earlier, and he one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for than two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. was working in a big bank, and this was in preparation for merger and acquisition. And he 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 him and 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. Every he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started about how do we experiment 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 for some people, we them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three for it.” And people said yes, and they built these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, put it under the table, and we said, “Would like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, so on, until at some point people said, “No more. It’s not 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 that at the end of the experiment, will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we put them back in the boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we called the 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, the would roll over, and he would have to start again. And you can think about this the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask him fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s about this cyclical version of doing something over and and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, gave them a new one, and as they were building it, we apart the one that they just finished. And when they finished that, said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” if they said yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. So this was endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front 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. And by the way, we point out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another of 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 the result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but the right magnitude. People who were just given the description of the said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude 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 speculate that people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because all, they get more internal joy from it. And people who love Legos less would build less Legos because the 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 of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation zero — there was no relationship between the love Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any that they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. can’t tell you who they were, but they were a company in Seattle. This was 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. the week before I showed up, the CEO of this big company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. I stood there in front of 200 of the depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them some of Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they 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 raised hand. I said, “How many of you now go home earlier than you used to?” raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out to and showed me what they could do with expense reports. And then asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds 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 which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and how they would work. But the thing is that any one of would require some effort and 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. And he say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then would figure out that it’s actually important to spend time, energy and effort in getting people to care about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We a sheet of paper with random letters, and we people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. was the task. People did the first sheet, then we if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their 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 them. In the second condition, people did not write their 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 take a piece, you just put on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it directly a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result we 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 way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first you’d do good work, but then you see nobody really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. So in fact, in the condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or in the middle? It turns out it was almost like shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody 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 so difficult. The 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 all terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The part I want to show 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, every time I assemble one of those, it takes much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put in the wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say enjoy the 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 would take this powder and they put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically it in, stir some water in it, mix it, it in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns 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 figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out of powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do look at this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they something that was really quite ugly — nothing like frog or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami really 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?” And we measured much they were willing to pay for it. And had two types of people: We had the people who built it, and the people who did build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay times more for them than the people who just them externally. Now you could say — if you were builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” “I love this origami, and everybody else will love it well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In the version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried make it more difficult. So for some people, we the same task. For some people, we made it by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked the easy origami, we saw the same thing — loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” memories and associations and so on. Most people would say for lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if did not have your kids. And one day you to 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 leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our kids so valuable, not just because of who they are, but because of us, they are so connected to us, and because of the time connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, about the instructions that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell one more 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 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. gave an example of a pin factory. He said pins 12 different steps, and if one 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 and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is important in how people think about the connection to what they doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you about the pin. But if you do one step every time, you don’t care as much.
I think that in Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think answer is no. I think that as we move to situations in 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 way to work, and in the shower so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. So when we think labor, we usually think 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 news is that if we added all of those components and thought them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and do we do it in our workplace, and for the — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.