I want to talk a little bit today labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive we have is that people are like rats in maze — that all people care about is money, and the moment we give money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct them to another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this simplistic view of why people work, and what the labor looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds of strange in the world around us. Think about something like and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This was terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, go up again. And if you think about mountain as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. suggests that we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us to work or behave all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This was of my students from a few years earlier, and he came day back to campus. And he told me the story: He said that for more than two weeks, he working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in for a 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, his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of our labor. to start with, we created a little experiment in which gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, they built with these Legos. And when they finished, took it, we put it under the table, and said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If said yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at some people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we called the meaningful condition. built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one them, we put them under the table. And we told them that at the end of experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back the boxes, and we will use it for the participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was 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, 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. can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to 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 the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them new one, and as they were building it, we took apart the that they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if said yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now happens when you compare these two conditions? The first that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there not a real opportunity for big 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, 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 right direction but not the right magnitude. who 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 of the importance, the extent to it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we at. If you 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 build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, get more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less would build less Legos the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between the love Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This a group within the software company that was put in different building, and they asked them to innovate, and the next big product for this company. And the week before showed up, the CEO of this big software company went to group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they they felt like they had just been through that experiment. And I asked them, said, “How many of you now show up to later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How of you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised hand. I asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, said, “What could the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have them to present to the whole company about their journey the last two years and what they decided to do. He could have asked them to about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. the thing is that any one of those would require some effort motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand the of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. he would say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find 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 sheet for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And we had conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So you take piece, you just put it on the side. In third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in 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 down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to be as with what they’re doing. But I should point out, the way, that in the shredder condition, people could 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 see nobody is really testing it, so would do more and more and more. So in fact, in shredder condition, people 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 acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. good news is that by simply looking at something somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. the 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 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 a store with kind of okay furniture that takes long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much confusing, I put things in the wrong way — can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy process. But when I finish it, I seem to like IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some in it, mix it, put it in the oven, — 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 they figured out was that was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought in the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what did they do? They the eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break 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 bit like the IKEA effect, by people to work harder, they actually got them to love what they’re to a higher degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? asked people to build some origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, they built something that was really quite ugly — like a frog or a crane. But then we them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. How do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had the people who built it, the people who did not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And what we was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay 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 else would it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of two is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved origami more, they thought that everybody would see the in their view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In the next version, tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it difficult. So for some people, we gave the same task. For people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At the of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. 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 the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. one day you went to the park and you met kids. They were just like your kids, and you with them for a 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? Most people not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of they are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of the time connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, are and so on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see things way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said have 12 different steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, production very low. But if you get one person to do one, and one person to do step two and step three and so on, production increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the of labor is incredibly important in how people think the connection to what they are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, care about the pin. But if you do one step every time, maybe you don’t as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think answer is no. I think that as we move situations in which people have to decide on their about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are they 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. when we think about labor, we usually think about and payment as the same thing, but the reality 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 thought about them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do in our workplace, and for the employees — I we could get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.