I want to talk a little bit about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, naive intuition we have is that people are like in a maze — that all people care about money, and the moment we give them money, we can 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 this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and the labor 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 you read books people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of moments of joy happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. if people were just trying to be happy, the they would get to the top, they would say, “This a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about this after student came to visit me. This was one of my students from a years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And he told the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. he was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He late at night every day. And the day before it due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he was his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the of our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And for people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, you 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 they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If said yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to 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 one Bionicle another. After they finished every one of them, we put them under table. And we told them that at the end of the experiment, we will take all Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we will use for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the to push the same rock up a hill, and he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have 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 at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill hole back up and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if 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 they were building it, we apart the one that they just finished. And when finished that, we said, “Would you like to build another one, time for 30 cents less?” And if they 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 front of eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the 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 for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity big meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, as I am describing to you now, and we asked them to what the result would be. What happened? People predicted the direction but not the 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 people that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the of the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There one other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people love Legos, and some people who don’t. And you would speculate that people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because all, they get more internal joy from it. And the people who Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between love 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 of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests me that with this manipulation of breaking things in of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they were a company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in different building, and they asked them to innovate, and the next big product for this company. And the week I showed up, the CEO of this big software went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve 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 you now show up to work later than you to?” And 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 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 I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have to make you not as depressed?” And they came with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to whole company about their journey over the last two years and what they decided to do. He could asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they work. But the thing is that any one of those require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO did not understand the importance of meaning. If the 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 understood how meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to spend time, energy and effort in getting people to care more 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 letters that identical next to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked they wanted to do another for a little less money, next sheet for a 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, gave it to experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the of pages. So you take a piece, you just put on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to as happy with what they’re doing. But I should out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people have cheated. They could have done not so good work, they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so you would more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out 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 bad as shredding their effort front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good news that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. this is all in terms 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 is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble of those, it takes me much longer, it’s much effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in the wrong — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I the process. But when I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of more than 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 they would put it in a box, and they would housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of for that. Maybe 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 their guests say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and them, you had to measure the milk and add it, it. Now it was 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 love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how we look at this question experimentally? We asked people build some origami. We gave them instructions on how to origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were novices, and they built something that was really quite — nothing like a frog or a crane. But we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. How do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We the people who built it, and the people who not build it, and just looked at it as observers. And what we found was that the builders 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 could say — you were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of those two correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought everybody would see the world in their view. They thought everybody else would it more as well.
In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, gave the 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 people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? now the builders 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, tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. I asked you, “How much would you sell your for?” Your 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 not have your kids. one day you went to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, you played with them for a few hours, and when 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 pay them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but because us, because they are so connected to us, and 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 and on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don’t see that other don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. said pins have 12 different steps, and if one does all 12 steps, production 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, can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in people think about the connection to what they are doing. And 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 that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that we move to situations in which people have to decide on their own about much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, they thinking about labor on the way to work, and the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that we added all of those components and thought about them — how do we create own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, and for employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.