I want to talk a little bit today labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the intuition we have is that people are like rats a maze — that all people care about is money, the moment we give them money, we can direct them work one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you 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 people who 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, challenging circumstances. And if 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 a somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things motivate us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking this after a student came to visit me. This was one of my students from a years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And told me the following story: He said that for more than weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger acquisition. And he was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed at night every day. And the day before it was due, he his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch 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 Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people yes, and they built with these Legos. And when finished, we took it, we put it under the table, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them another one, when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, at some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished one of them, we put them under the table. And we told them that at the end the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will them, we will put them back in the boxes, and will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, when he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, he would have to start again. And you can think this as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he the rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. asked people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” if they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a one, and as 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?” And if they said yes, we gave the one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you these two conditions? The first thing that happened was people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this was not meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were Bionicles 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 another of this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as I am to 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 the description of 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 magnitude of the importance, the extent which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we looked at. you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, and people who don’t. And you would speculate that the who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the who love Legos less would build less Legos because the that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually we found in 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 condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between love of Legos, and how much people built, which to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, basically crushed any joy that they could get out of activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t you who they were, but they were a big company Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in 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 software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled project. And I stood there in front of 200 of most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described to some of these Lego experiments, and they said they like they had just been through that experiment. And I them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work later than you to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now go home earlier than used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but they me out to dinner and showed me what they could do expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They the CEO could have asked them to present to the whole company about journey over the last two years and what they decided do. He could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit other parts of the organization. He could have asked them to 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 CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, will be okay.” But if you understood how important 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 a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That was the task. People the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do another for a less money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and 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, scan it top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it the pile next to them. In the second condition, did not write their name on it. The experimenter looked it, took the sheet of paper, did 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 put it directly a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them to be as happy with what they’re doing. But should point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the sheet you’d do good work, but then you see is really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. So fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. bad news is that ignoring the performance of people almost as bad 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 and saying “Uh huh,” that to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms of motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want show you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. 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 every 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. I can’t I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I seem to those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an story about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this and they would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the was not good? No, the 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 store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So did they do? They took the eggs and the out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit 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 people to build some origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog a crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell what, we’ll sell it to you. How much do want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were willing to for it. And we had 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 was the builders 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 could say — if were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I this origami, but I know that nobody else would it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else will it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the in their view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We to make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave the task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we just that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your memories and and so on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine you did not have your kids. And one day you went to park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, you played with 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 because our kids are so valuable, not just of who they are, but because of us, because they so connected to us, and because of the time and connection. the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what the instructions that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at 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 Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He an example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 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 step and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly 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 as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the is no. I think that as we move to situations in which have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected feel to it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and the shower and so on, all of a sudden has more things to say to us. So when we about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the is that we should probably add all kinds of things to — 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, 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.