I want talk a little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive we have is that people are like rats in a maze — all people care about is money, and the moment we give them money, can direct them to work one way, we can direct to work another way. This is why we give to bankers 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 think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and they recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us to or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about after a student came to visit me. This was one my students from a few years earlier, and he one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: said that for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working hard 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 boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. at the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in we gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three for it.” And people said yes, and they built these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, put it under the table, and we said, “Would 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 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 after another. After they 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, we put them back in the boxes, and we will it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was 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 have to start again. And you can think about as the essence of doing futile work. You can that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole up and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical of doing something over and over and over that seems to be demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build Bionicle 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 they said yes, we gave them a new one, and they were building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. And they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we them the one that they built and we broke. So this was endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. by the way, we should point out that this was big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to the situation, much as I am describing to you now, and asked them to predict what the result would be. happened? People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just the description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There was one other of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, and some who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who love would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, get more internal joy from it. And the people love Legos less would build less Legos because the that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. was a very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of 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 front people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get of this 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 in Seattle. This was a within the software company that was put in a different building, and asked them to innovate, and create the next big product this company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they just been through that experiment. And I asked them, said, “How many of you now show up to work later than you to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many you now go home earlier than you used to?” raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” And they came with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have them to present to the whole company about their journey the last two years and what they decided to do. He could have asked them to think about which of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked them to some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment I you in this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, you would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people 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 letters that were identical next to other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, we asked if they wanted to do another for a less money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and on and so forth. And we had three conditions. the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, experimenter would look at it, scan it from top bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the 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 look 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, 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 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, basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 per sheet.
And this is basically the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you them not to be as happy with what they’re doing. I should point out, by the way, that in shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have not so good work, because they realized people were shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you see nobody is really testing it, so you would more and more and more. So in fact, in shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and we don’t think 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 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 more confusing, I things in the wrong way — I can’t say enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I seem to like IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take powder and they would put it in a box, and would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns out they 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 effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as you bought it in the store. It didn’t really like your own. So what did they do? They took eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now had to break the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we look this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We gave instructions on how to create origami, and we gave a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something that was really ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And we how much they were willing to pay for it. we had two types of people: We had the people built it, and the people who did not build it, and looked at it as external observers. And what we found was that builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times for them than 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 love this origami, and else will love it as well?” Which one of those two correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see world in their view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In the version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. for some people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made it by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, saw the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the 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, this tells you something about we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
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But imagine was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day you went to the and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and played with them for a few hours, and when you were about to leave, parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before you leave, 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 who they are, but because of us, they are so connected to us, and because of the time connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about instructions that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if one person does 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one to do step one, and one person to do step two and step three so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But you do one step every time, maybe you don’t as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that we move to situations in which people have to decide on own 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 Marx has more things to say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think motivation and 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 news is if we added all of those components and thought about them — how do we create our meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to be more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.