I to 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 maze — that all people care about is money, the moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, can direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view why people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if were just trying to be happy, the moment they get to the top, they would say, “This was terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go up again. if you think about mountain climbing as an example, suggests all kinds of things. It 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 other things that motivate us to work or behave in kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started about this after a student came to visit me. was one of my students from a few years earlier, and came one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: said that for more than two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in big bank, and this was in preparation for a and acquisition. And he was working very hard on presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late 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 the merger is canceled.” the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they built with Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, we said, “Would you like to build another one, time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, so on, until at some point people said, “No more. It’s not it for me.” This was what we called the meaningful condition. built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, put them under 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 participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push same rock up a hill, and when he almost got the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have to again. And you can think about this as the essence of doing futile work. can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the back up and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and over over 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 three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do want to build another one for $2.70?” And if said yes, we gave them a new one, and as they were it, we took apart the one that they just finished. And when they finished that, said, “Would you like to build another one, this for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the one that they built we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened was people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point 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 knew that 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 of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just described them the situation, much as I am describing to you now, and we asked to predict what the result would be. What happened? People the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just the description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably 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 of we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people love Legos, and some people who don’t. And you speculate that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, 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 we found in the condition. There was a very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with this of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t you who they were, but they were a big in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that put in a different building, and they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company went that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I there in front of 200 of the most depressed I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, they said they felt like they had just been that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How of you now show up to work later than you used to?” everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t their hands, but they took me out to dinner showed me what they could do 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 said CEO could have asked them to present to the company about their 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 with parts of the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they work. But the thing is that any one of those would require effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the 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 in way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would out that it’s actually 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 sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet for little bit less, and so on and so forth. And had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to experimenter, the 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 write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. you take a piece, you just put it on the side. In the condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done so good work, because they realized people were just it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you 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 more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s news and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The news is that by simply looking at something that somebody done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you something about positive motivation. So there is a store the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of furniture that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t 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 enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of 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 take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, it, put it in the oven, and — voila — had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste was good? No, the taste was great. What they figured 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, it was somebody else’s cake, as you bought it in the store. It didn’t really feel like own. So what did they do? They took the and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now had to break the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to harder, they actually got them to love what they’re to a higher degree.
So how do we look at this experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We gave them instructions how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. these were all novices, and they built something that was really ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell to you. How much do you want to pay it?” And we measured how much they were willing pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had the people built it, and the people who did not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you say — if you were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, I know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of those two correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, thought that everybody would see the world in their view. They everybody else would love it more as well.
In next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave the same task. some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. when we looked at the easy origami, we saw same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all extra effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than the version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. people would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did have your kids. And one day you went to park and you met some kids. They were 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, 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 are 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 that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when look at the 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 Smith versus Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. gave 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 step one, and one person to do step two and step three and so on, can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation labor is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do one step 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 the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I the answer is no. I think that as we to situations in which people have to decide on their own how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are they thinking about labor on way to work, and in the shower and so on, all of a Marx has more things to say to us. So we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news that if we added all of those components and thought about — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, for the employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.