I want to talk a little bit today labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that are like rats in a maze — that all people care about money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them to one way, we can direct them to work another way. This why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view why people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, would say, “This was a terrible 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 think mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests we care about 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 to visit me. This one of my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day back campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for more two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. was working in a big bank, and this was in 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 due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, he actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I thinking about how do we experiment with this idea the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which we people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” people said yes, and they built 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 so on, until some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth for me.” This was what we called the meaningful condition. People built Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we them under the table. And we told them that at the end of experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them in the boxes, and we will use it for next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. this 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 he almost got the end, the rock would roll over, and he would 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 you look at prison movies, sometimes the way the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s something about this version of doing something over and over and over that seems be particularly demotivating.
So in 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. we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And if they yes, we gave them a new one, and as they building it, we took apart the one that they finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the one they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, should point out that this was not big meaning. were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real for big meaning. But even the small meaning made difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as I am describing to now, and we asked them to predict what the result would be. What happened? predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just given the description of the said that in the 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 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 Legos would build 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 was a nice correlation between the love of Legos and the 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 me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy they could get out of this activity. We basically it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, they were a big company in Seattle. This was group within the software company that was put in a different building, and they asked to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week I showed up, the CEO of this big software company to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. I stood there in front of 200 of the most people I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them some of Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had been through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now up to work later than you used to?” And everybody their hand. I said, “How many of you now home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise hands, but they took me out to dinner and me what they could do with expense reports. And then asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make you as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to whole company about their journey over the last two years what they decided to do. He could have asked them to think about aspect of 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 of those would some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he would 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 how important meaning is, then you would figure out it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort 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 asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet for little bit less, and so on and so forth. And had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote name on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile next them. In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. you take a piece, you just put it on side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet paper, and put it 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 mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this basically the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, — you get them not to be as happy what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have not so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So the 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 have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. gets you a whole way out there. The good news is by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to incredibly easy, and 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 next part want to show you is something about positive motivation. So is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, every time I 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 finish it, I to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they started mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it a box, and they would ask housewives to basically it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — — you had cake. But it turns out they were unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out was there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was 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 had measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they got them to love what they’re doing to a degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? We asked people build some origami. We gave them instructions on how create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. these were all novices, and they built something that was really quite ugly — nothing like a or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll it to 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 built it, and the people who did not build it, just looked at it as 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 than the people who just evaluated them externally. you could say — if you were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, love this origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” “I love this origami, and everybody else will love as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody 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 it more difficult. So for some people, we gave same task. For some people, we made it harder hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all extra effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. I asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your and associations and so on. Most people would say for lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
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But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you not have your kids. And one day you went to the park and you some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played with them for a few hours, and you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you for them now? Most people say not that much. And this because our kids are so valuable, not just because of they are, but because of us, because they are connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what the instructions that 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 more thing, is, much like our 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 comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, if one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But you get one person to do step one, and one person to do step and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. if you do one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the 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 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, connected they feel to it, are they thinking about labor on way to work, and in the shower and so on, all a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The news is that if we added all of those and thought about them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and do we do it in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.