I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition have is that people are like rats in a maze — that all care about is money, and the moment we give money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct them to work another way. is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what the labor market 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 mountaineering mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they are of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just to be happy, the moment they would get to top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, go down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if you think about climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. suggests that we 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 us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for personally, I started thinking about this after a student to visit me. This was one of my students a few years earlier, and he came one day back campus. And he told me the following story: He said that more than two weeks, he was working on a presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in preparation a merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard on this — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the day before it was due, sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, the merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, he 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 it made quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with idea of the fruits of our labor. And to with, we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If said yes, we gave them another one, and when finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and on, until at some point people said, “No more. It’s worth it for me.” This was what we called meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they every one of them, we put them under the table. And we them that at the end of the experiment, we take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired David, my student. And this other condition we called the condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, was punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when he got to the end, the rock would roll over, and would have to start again. And you can think about this as the essence of futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed the on different hills, at least he would have some sense progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, ask him to fill the hole back up and then 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 of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then we them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And they said yes, we gave them a new one, and they were building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. And 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 and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in of their eyes.
Now what happens when you 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 should out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning made difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in situation, we just described to them the situation, much I am describing to you now, and we asked to predict what the result would be. What happened? People predicted the 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 that is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, the extent which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, are some people who love Legos, and some people don’t. And you would speculate that the people who love Legos would more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more joy from it. And the people who love Legos would build less Legos because the enjoyment that they from it is lower. And that’s actually what we in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the 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, and how much built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically any joy that they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they were big company in Seattle. This was a group within the software that was put in a different building, and they asked to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And stood there in 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 that experiment. And I them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work later than used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed me what they could do with reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to you not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to the whole company their journey over the last two years and what decided to do. He could have asked them to think which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and how they would work. But the thing is that any of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And would say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and in getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That was the task. 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. we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found all pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” put it on the 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, not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So you a piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, the got the sheet of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically result 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 have cheated. They could have done so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d good work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so you do more and more and more. So in fact, in shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten money, and put less effort into it. But what the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or like the 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 is that the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole out there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations to be incredibly easy, and 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 motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long time assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble one of those, takes me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much confusing, I put things in the wrong way — I can’t say enjoy those pieces. I can’t say 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 about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and would put it in a box, and they would ask to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But turns out 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 figured out was that there was not enough effort 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 feel like your own. So what did they do? took the eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now had to break the eggs and add them, you to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them to love they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do look at this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something that really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or crane. But 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?” And measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And we two types of people: We had the people who it, and the 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 pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to five times more for them than the people who just them externally. Now you could say — if you were a builder, you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love this origami, everybody else will love it as well?” Which one those two is correct? Turns out the builders not loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in their view. They everybody else would love it more as well.
In the next version, we tried do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, 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 it less. you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about how we things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and on. Most people would say for a lot, a of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. 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 are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but of us, because they are so connected to us, and because the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA are not good, what about the instructions that come 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, which is, much like builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don’t see other people don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He 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, is a great example, and the reason for the Revolution and efficiency. Karl 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 all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if do one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in the Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still important than meaning? I think the answer is no. think that as we move to situations in which people have decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the shower and so on, 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 add all kinds of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good 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 in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to be more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.