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