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