I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition we is that people are like rats in a maze — that all people care about money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them work one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what the market looks like.
At the same time, if you about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And people were just trying to be happy, the moment they get to the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do 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 if think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This one of my students from a few years earlier, he came one day back to campus. And he told the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late night every 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 merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of fruits of our labor. And to start with, we a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they built these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, put it under the table, and we said, “Would like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” they said yes, we gave them another one, and 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, 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. This other condition was by David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, when he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have start again. And you can think about this as the essence of futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed rock on different hills, at least he would have some of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole up and then dig again. There’s something about this version of doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the condition of this 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 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 the one that they just finished. And when they that, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And they said yes, we gave them the one that they built we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you these two conditions? The 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 was not big meaning. People were not cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in 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. People who were given the description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people would build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, extent to which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we looked at. If you about it, there are some people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. you would speculate that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because all, they get more internal joy from it. And the who love Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the love of and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to talk a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. was a group within the software company that was put in a different building, and they them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week before 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 the most depressed people I’ve talked to. And I described to them some of these experiments, and they said they felt like they had just through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many you now show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody raised hand. I said, “How many of you now go home earlier you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher things your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but they took out to dinner and showed me what they could do with expense reports. And I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to you not as depressed?” And they came up with kinds of ideas.
They said the 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 could fit with other parts of the organization. He have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. the thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more about they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We a sheet of paper with random letters, and we people to find pairs of letters that were identical to each other. That was the task. People did first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do for a little less money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote name on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and it on the pile next to them. In the second condition, did not write their name on it. The experimenter at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, simply put it on the pile of pages. So take a piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got sheet of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 per 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 not 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. They could done not so good work, because they realized people were shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you see nobody is really testing it, so you do more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance people is almost as bad as shredding their effort front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole out there. The good news is that by simply at something that somebody has done, scanning it and “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms of motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store in U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble one those, it takes 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 when I it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it a box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. it 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 great. What they figured out was that there was not effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was else’s cake, as if you bought it in the store. It didn’t really like your own. So what did they do? They took eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them to love they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we at this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were novices, and they built something that was really quite ugly — 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 it you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And we two types of people: We had the people who built it, and the who did not build it, and just looked at it external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that these beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more them than the people who just evaluated them externally. you could say — if you were a builder, do think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know nobody else would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else will love as well?” Which one of those two is correct? out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that would see the world in their view. They thought everybody else would love it more well.
In the next version, we tried to do the effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an 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 instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations so on. Most people would say for a lot, lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And day you went to the park and you met some kids. They were like your kids, and you played with them for few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How would you pay for them now? Most people say that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just of who they are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, and because the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, course, are wonderful and so on. Which 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 comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one person to step one, and one person to do step two and step and 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 important in how think about the connection to what they are doing. And if you do 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in the Revolution, Adam 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 in 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 about how 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 more things say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about 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 we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we it in our workplace, and for the employees — think we could get people to be both more productive happier.
Thank you very much.