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