I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we about how people work, the naive intuition we have that people are like rats in a maze — all people care about is money, and the moment we them money, we can direct them to work one way, can direct them to work another way. This is why we give to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to 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, go down, and after they recover, they go up again. And you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all of things. It suggests that we care about reaching end, a peak. It suggests that we care about fight, about 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 my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day back campus. And he told me the following story: He that for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in for a merger and acquisition. And he was working hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night day. And the day before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the guy deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, he was quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it him 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 Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos 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 with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we it under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them another one, when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at some people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we called meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we put them the table. And we told them that at the end of the experiment, we take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them in the boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods push 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 about this as the essence of doing futile work. can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, least he would have some sense of progress. Also, you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the back up and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you like build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave a new one, and as they were building it, we took apart the one that they finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if said yes, we gave them the 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? first thing that happened was that people built many more — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the condition. And by the way, we should point out that this not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People building Bionicles 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 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 am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. who were just given the description of the experiment said in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So understand that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There one other piece of data we looked at. If you about it, there are some people who love Legos, and some who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less would less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it 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 correlation was — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, and much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of 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 finished running this experiment, I went to 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 group the software company that was put in a different building, and they asked them innovate, and create 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 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 had just been that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody raised hand. I said, “How many of you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised hand. I asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out to dinner showed me what they could do with expense reports. then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have to make you not as depressed?” And they came up all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have them to present to the whole company about their 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 of the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how would work. But the thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and in getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The next was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That the task. People did 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 on and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote name on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from top bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter the sheet of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not be as happy with what they’re doing. But I point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They have done not so good work, because they realized were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but then you see is really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. So in fact, in shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front 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 sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. this is all 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 IKEA is a store with kind of okay that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but time I assemble one of those, it takes me 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 when I it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would it in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — — you had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. did not want them, and they thought about all kinds reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in the store. didn’t really feel like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and the milk of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and add them, had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting to work harder, they actually got them to love what they’re to a higher degree.
So how do we look this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet paper. And these were all novices, and they built that was really quite ugly — nothing like a or 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 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 who built it, and the people who did not build it, and just looked at as external observers. And what we found was that the thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they willing to pay five times more for them than the people just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, love this origami, but I know that nobody else would it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only the origami more, they thought that everybody would see world in their view. They thought everybody else would love it as well.
In the next version, we tried to the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So some people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder by the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when looked at the easy origami, we saw the 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 more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even 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 kids for?” memories and associations and so on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day went to the park and you met some kids. were just like your kids, and you played with for a few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, the way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but because us, because they are so connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature of creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see things way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if get one person to do step one, and one to do step two and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. if 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, Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? think the answer is no. I think that as move to situations in which people have to decide on their own how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, they thinking about labor on the way to work, in the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has things to say to us. So when we think labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality that we should probably add all kinds of things it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if we added of those components and thought about them — how do we create own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to both more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.