I want talk a little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the intuition we have is that people are like rats a maze — that all people care about is money, and the moment we give them money, can direct them to work one way, we can direct them work another way. This is why we give bonuses bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do think that those books are full of moments of joy happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And people were just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and they recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, about the challenge. It that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And me personally, I started thinking about this after a came to visit me. This was one of my from a few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was working a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger acquisition. And he was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at every day. And the day before it was due, he his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them and we said, “Hey, would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And when finished, we took it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and on, until at some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what called the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished one of them, we put them under the table. And we told them that at the of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, 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 condition was by David, my student. And this other condition we called the 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 roll over, and he would have to start again. And you think about this as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and over over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s what we did. We asked people, “Would you like build one 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?” if they said yes, we gave them a new one, as they were building it, we took apart the one they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave the one that they built and we broke. So this an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? first thing that happened was that people built many Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the condition. And by the way, we should point out that was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building for a few cents. And not only that, everybody that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity for meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now we another version of this experiment. In this other version the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we described to them the situation, much as I am describing you now, and we asked them to 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 one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, just don’t understand 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 people who 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 after all, get more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less would less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it lower. And that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There a 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 people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they 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, but they were big company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that put in a different building, and they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of big software 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 some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like had just been through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many you now show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody their hand. I said, “How many of you now go home earlier than you to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of you add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the have done to make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them present to the whole company about their journey over the last two years and what decided to do. He could have asked them to about which aspect of their technology could fit with parts of the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see 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 the of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment I you in this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would 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 different. We took a sheet of paper with random letters, we asked people to find pairs of letters that 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 for a little bit 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 look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, simply put it on the pile of pages. So take a piece, you just put it on the side. In the condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this basically the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I should out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe first sheet you’d do good work, but then you nobody is really testing it, so you would do and more and more. So in fact, in the condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was almost like shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The news is that ignoring the performance of people is as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole out there. The good news is that by simply at something that somebody has done, scanning it and “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, if we don’t think about it carefully, we might it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So is a store 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 I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they started mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would it in a box, and they would ask housewives to pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, it in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns out they were unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe taste was not good? No, the taste was great. they figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you it in the store. It didn’t really feel like own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to the eggs and add them, you had to measure the and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, actually got them to love what they’re doing to higher degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? We asked people to build origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a of 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. You for us, but I’ll tell 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 it. And we had two types of people: We had people who built it, and the people who did not build it, and just 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 origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that would see the world in their view. They thought everybody would love it more as well.
In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little of how you fold origami. For some people, we eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put this extra effort into it. And evaluators? They loved even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier 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 you your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most people would for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day went to the park and you met some kids. were just like your kids, and you played with them a few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of time and connection. By the way, if you think instructions are not good, what about the instructions that with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, if one person does all 12 steps, production is low. But if you get one person to do step one, and person to do step two and step three and on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that 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 much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as move to situations in which people have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, connected they feel to it, are they thinking about labor the way to work, and in the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more to say to us. So when we think about labor, we think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but reality is that 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 and thought them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in workplace, and for the employees — I think we get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.