I to talk a little bit today about labor and work.
When think about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that are like rats in a maze — that all people about is money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we direct them to work another way. This is why we bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly view of why people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like mountaineering mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, you think that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people down, and after they recover, they go up again. if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. suggests that 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 a student came to visit me. This was one of my students from a few earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. stayed late at night every day. And the day before was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how we experiment with this idea of the fruits of labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. when they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, we them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it me.” This was what we called the meaningful condition. People built one after another. After they finished every one of them, we put them the table. And we told them that at the of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will them back in the boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when he got to the end, the rock would roll over, he would have to start again. And you can about this as the essence of doing futile work. You can that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes 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 hole back up 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 the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would like 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 they said yes, we gave them new one, and as they were building it, we took apart one that they just 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 them one that they built and we broke. So this was endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The thing that happened was that people built many more — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to them the situation, as I am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what the would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not right magnitude. People who were just given the description 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 the importance, the extent which it’s important.
There was one other piece of we looked at. If you think about it, there some people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. you would speculate that the people who love Legos build more 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 enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what found in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I running this experiment, I went to talk to a big company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within the company that was put in a different building, and asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them some of these experiments, and they said they felt like they had just been through that experiment. And asked them, I said, “How many of you now up to work later than you used to?” And raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher things to your reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out to and showed me what they could do with expense reports. then I asked them, I said, “What could the have done to make you not as depressed?” And came up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked to present to the whole company about their journey the last two years and what they decided to do. could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and how they would 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 the CEO, just like our participants, the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the I directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you 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 next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of that were identical next to each other. That was task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted do another for a little 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, all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, not look at it, did not scan it, and put it on the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it on side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, was twice as 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, people could have cheated. could have done not so good work, because they people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d good work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so would do more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, could 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 out it almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and news here. The bad news is that ignoring the of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The part I want to show you is something about positive motivation. there 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, but every time I assemble one of those, it me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put in the wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, would take this powder and they would put it in box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour in, stir some water in it, mix it, put in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought all kinds of reasons for 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 so easy that nobody could cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. what did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out of powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and them, you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now was your cake. Now everything 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 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, we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and built something that was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog a crane. But then 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 much you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had people who built it, and the people who did build it, and just looked at it as external observers. what we found was that the builders thought that were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now could say — if you were a builder, do think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders not 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 tried to make it more difficult. So some people, we gave the same task. For some people, made it harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little of how you fold origami. For some people, we eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about how we 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 days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And day you went to the park and you met some kids. were just like your kids, and you played with them for a few hours, and you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, the way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for them now? Most say not that much. And this is because our kids so valuable, not just because of who they are, but because of us, because they so connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when look at the creature of their creation, we don’t that other people don’t see things our way.
Let me say last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He an example of a pin factory. He said pins 12 different steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, production very low. But if you get one person to do step one, one person to do step two and step three so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if you all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you 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. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move to situations which people have to decide on their own about much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are thinking about labor on the 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 the 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 if added all of those components and thought about them — do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.