I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we think how people work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like rats in a — that all people care about is money, and the moment we give them money, can direct them to work one way, we can them to work another way. This is why we bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly view of why people work, and what the labor market like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, 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 frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if were just trying to be happy, the moment they would to the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, go down, and after they recover, they go up again. if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it all kinds of things. It suggests that we care reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of things that motivate us to work or behave in all kinds ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came visit me. This was one 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 bank, and this was in preparation for a merger acquisition. And he was working very hard on this — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night day. And the day before it was due, he his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, was actually quite happy. Every night he 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 this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a little in which we gave people Legos, and we asked to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” people said yes, and they built with these Legos. when they finished, we took it, we put it under table, and we said, “Would you like to build another one, this for $2.70?” If they said yes, we 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, 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. they finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And told them that at the end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and will use it for the next participant.
There was condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. And other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods push the same rock up a hill, and when almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he have to start again. And you can think about this as the essence of doing futile work. can imagine that if he pushed the rock on 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 is finished, they ask to fill 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 in the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly we did. We asked people, “Would you like to one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do want to build another one for $2.70?” And if said yes, we gave them a new one, and as they were building it, we apart 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?” And if they said yes, we them the one that they built and we broke. So was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this was big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. not only that, everybody 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 in this situation, we just described to them the situation, as I am describing to you now, and we them to predict what the result would be. What happened? People the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who were given the description of the experiment said that in meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, the to which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we looked at. you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, and people who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who love would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy from it. the people who love Legos less would build 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 the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with this 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 I finished running this experiment, I went to talk a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they were a company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in a building, and they asked them to innovate, and create the big product for this company. And the week before I up, the CEO of this big software company went that 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 said they felt like they had just been through experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of now show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. said, “How many of you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. 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, said, “What could the CEO have done to make you not depressed?” And they came up with all kinds 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 asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit other parts of the organization. He could have asked to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they work. But the thing is that any one of those would require some and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance 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 this way, and now that I’m directing you in way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then would figure out that it’s actually important to spend time, energy and effort in getting people to care about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked they wanted to do another for a little less money, next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And we three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the next to them. In the second condition, people did write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did look at it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. you take a piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, 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 pay people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get 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 have done not so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you see 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 condition be more like the acknowledged or more like shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be 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 overdo it. So this is in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The part I want to show you is something about motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay that takes a 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 — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, it in the oven, and — 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. Maybe taste was not good? No, the taste was great. they figured out was that there was not enough involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in the store. It didn’t really like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you had measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, think a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? asked people to build some origami. We gave them on how to create origami, and we gave them a of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something that was quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it you. How much do you want to pay for it?” we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And had two types of 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 origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you were builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love origami, and everybody 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 everybody else would love it more as well.
In next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. for some people, we gave the same task. For some people, we it harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because reality, it was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your for?” Your 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 and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played with for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How would you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And is because our kids are so valuable, not just of who they are, but because of us, because they are so to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions not good, what 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 to tell you one thing, which is, much like our builders, when they at the creature of their creation, we don’t see that other don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He an example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if one person all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you one person to do step one, and one person to do step two and step and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in people think about the connection to what they are doing. if 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 in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think as we move to situations in which people have to decide on their own how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are they thinking about on the way to work, and in the shower and so on, all of a Marx has more things to say to us. So when think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the is that we should probably add all kinds of things to — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that we added all of those components and thought about them — how do we create own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, and for employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.