I want talk a little bit today about labor and work.
When we about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that are like rats in a maze — that all people care about is money, 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 to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why 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 about something mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were 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 on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and they recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests that care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for personally, I started thinking about this after a student came visit me. This was one of my students from a few years earlier, he came one day back to campus. And he me the following story: He said that for more two weeks, he 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 this — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is 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, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we with this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we asked them to with Legos. And for some people, we gave them and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people yes, and they built with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we it under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, gave them another one, and when they finished, we them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, at 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 finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And we told them at the end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, will disassemble them, we will put them back in boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and would have to start again. And you can think about this the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of 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 it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And they said 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 to build another one, this time for 30 less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the that they built and we broke. So this was endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when 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 point out that this was not big meaning. People not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for few 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, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as I describing to you now, and we asked them to predict the result would be. What happened? People predicted the direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just given the description of the experiment said 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 was other piece of data we looked at. If you about it, there are some people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. And you would speculate 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 the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what found in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between love of Legos and the amount 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, how much people built, which suggests to me that with manipulation of breaking 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 finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within software company that was put in a different building, and they them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the before I showed up, the CEO of this big company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. I described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had been through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How of you now show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody raised hand. I said, “How many of you now go earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How of you now add 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 then I asked them, I said, “What the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They the CEO could have asked them to present to whole company about their journey over the last two and what they decided to do. He could have asked to think about which aspect of their technology could with other parts of the organization. He could have asked them to some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. the thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I the CEO 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 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 is, then you would figure out that it’s actually to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more about they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet paper with random letters, and we asked people to find of letters that were identical next to each other. That was task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they to do another for a little less money, the next for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found all the of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on pile next to them. In the second condition, people not write their name on it. The experimenter looked it, took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, did scan it, and simply put it on the pile pages. So you take a piece, you just put it on the side. the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents sheet.
And this is basically the 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 the shredder condition, could have cheated. They could have done 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 is really testing it, so you would do more more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be sufficient to dramatically improve 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 about it carefully, might overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating motivation.
The next part I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So there is store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know you, but every time I assemble one of those, it me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much confusing, I put things in the wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. 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 old story about cake mixes. So when they started mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, — voila — you had cake. But it turns out they very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all of reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as you bought it in the store. It didn’t really feel your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and the milk of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them to what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we look at question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We gave them on how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet paper. And these were all novices, and they built something was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll it to you. How much do you want to pay for it?” we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And we had two types people: We had the people who built it, and people who did not build it, and just looked at as external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more for them the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that nobody else love it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody will love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? out the builders not only loved the origami more, thought that everybody would see the world in their view. thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In 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 by hiding the instructions. At 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 was uglier, it was difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. in reality, it 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 kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most people say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not your kids. And one day you went to the park and you met some kids. They were like your kids, and you played with them for 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 because 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, about 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 comes tell 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 our way.
Let me say last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one to do step one, and one person to do step and step three and 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 hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I the answer is no. I think that as we move to situations which people have to decide on their own about how effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are thinking about labor on the way to work, and the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to say us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The news is that if we added all of those components and thought about them — how we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, for the employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.