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