I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like in a maze — that all people care about is money, the moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can 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 world around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they are of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And people were just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people down, and after they recover, they go up again. And you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started about this after a student came to visit me. This was one of students from a few 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 a big bank, and this was in preparation for merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late night every day. And the day before it was due, sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he staying late, he was perfecting 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. to start with, we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and built with these Legos. And when they finished, we it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them another one, and when finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” $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. we told them that at the end of the experiment, will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, will put them back in the boxes, and we use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to the same rock up a hill, and when he almost got to the end, the rock roll over, and he would have to start again. And you can think about this as essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he the rock on different hills, at least he would some sense of progress. Also, if you look at movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and then again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and over and that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the 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 build another for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a one, and as they were building it, we took apart one that they just finished. And when they finished that, said, “Would you like to build another one, this time 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we them the one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now 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 the way, we should out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer building bridges. People were building Bionicles 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 another version of this experiment. In this other version the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict the result would be. What happened? People predicted the right but not the right magnitude. People who were just given the of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, 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, there are people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. And would speculate that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less would less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what found in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice between the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed joy that they could get out of this activity. basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they a big company in Seattle. This was a group within software company that was put in a different building, they asked them to innovate, and create the next product for this company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of big software company went 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 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 than you used 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 to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but took me out to dinner and showed me what they could with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” 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 to do. He have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could with other parts of the organization. He could have asked 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 basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you in way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet of with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters that were next to each other. That was the task. People did first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do another for a little money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on so forth. And we had three conditions. In the condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found all pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile next to them. In second condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, and simply put it on pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result we 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 way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. could have done not so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So the first sheet you’d do good work, but then see nobody is really testing it, so you would do more more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten money, and put less effort into it. But what about the condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want show you is something about positive motivation. So there a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long time assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble one of those, it me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, put things in the wrong way — I can’t say I those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder they would put it in a box, and they ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — voila — had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really 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 your cake. Now was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the IKEA effect, getting people to work harder, they actually got them to love what they’re to a higher degree.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? We asked people to some origami. We gave them instructions on how to origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they something that was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But 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 want to pay for it?” And we measured how they were willing 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 external observers. And what we found was the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you 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 love it as well?” one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in view. They thought everybody else would love it more well.
In the next version, we tried to do IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So some people, we gave the same task. For some people, we it harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the 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 even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most people say for a lot, a lot of money.
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On good days.
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But imagine this was slightly different. if you did not have your kids. And one you went to the park and you met some kids. They just like your kids, and you played with them a few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How would you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. this is because our kids are so valuable, not just of who they are, but because of us, because they are connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, if you IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that come kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. comes to tell you one more thing, which is, like our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don’t that other people don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said pins 12 different steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, is very low. But if you get one person do step one, and one person to do step two step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the 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 all 12 steps, care about the pin. But if you do one every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move situations in which people 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 in shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if added all 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 — I think we could get people to be both more productive happier.
Thank you very much.