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