I want to talk a little today about labor and work.
When we think about people work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like rats in 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 why we give bonuses bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and the labor market looks like.
At the same time, you think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in world around us. Think about 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 moments joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. if 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 do again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” instead, people go down, and after they recover, they up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as example, it suggests all 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 suggests that there’s kinds of other things that motivate us to work or behave in all of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came to visit me. was one of my students from a few years earlier, he came one day back to campus. And he told the following story: He said that for more than weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He working in a big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. stayed late at night every day. And the day before it due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at 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 ever it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment which we gave people Legos, and we asked them build with Legos. And for some people, we gave Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to 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 it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at some point said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, put them under the table. And we told them that at the of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and would have to start again. And you can think about as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they him to fill the hole back up and then again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over over 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 like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. we asked them, “Do you want to build another one $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a new one, as they were building it, we took apart the that they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And they said yes, we gave them the one that they built we broke. So this was an endless cycle of building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare two conditions? The first thing that happened was that built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to them situation, much as I am describing to you now, and asked them to predict what the result would be. What happened? People the right direction but not the right magnitude. People were just given the description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There was other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, 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 money, because after all, they get more internal joy it. And the people who love Legos less would less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship the love of Legos, and how much people built, suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon I 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 software company that was put in a different building, they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week before 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 the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had just through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now up to work later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How 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 dinner showed me what they could do with expense reports. And I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have to make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present the whole company about their journey over the last years and what they decided to do. He could have asked them think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could 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 think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then [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, 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 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 letters that were identical next each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then asked if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. we had three conditions. In the first condition, people their name on the sheet, found all the pairs letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” put it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, and put it on the pile of pages. So you 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 showing you at what rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, — you get them not to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, the way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not so work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So the first sheet you’d do good work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so you do more and more and more. So in fact, the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was almost the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets 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 to be quite 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 motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want show you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I the process. But when I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this and 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 — you had cake. But it turns they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste was good? No, the taste was great. What they figured was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, if you bought it in the store. It didn’t really like your own. So what did they do? They took eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now had to break the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they got them to love what they’re doing to a degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? asked people to build some origami. We gave them instructions how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and built something that was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll it to you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had the who built it, and the people who did not build it, and looked at it as external observers. And what we found that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they willing to pay five times more for them than the people who just evaluated externally. Now you could say — if you were a builder, you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that nobody would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and else will love it as well?” Which one of those is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in their view. They thought 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 little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now this tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked 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 it even less. Because reality, it was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. people would say for a lot, a lot of money.
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On good days.
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But imagine was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have kids. And one day you went to the park and met some kids. They were just like your kids, you played with them for a few hours, and you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, the way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you for them now? Most people say not that much. this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because who they are, but because of us, because they so connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, if think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. comes to tell you one more thing, which is, like our builders, when they look at the creature their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very notion of efficiency. He 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. But if you get one 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 example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if you do 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do one step 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 that we’ve switched, now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move situations in which people have to decide on their own about much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, they 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 payment 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 do we our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, for the employees — I think we could get people to both more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.