I want to a little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze — all people care about is money, and the moment give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can them to work another way. This is why we bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why work, and what the labor market looks like.
At same time, if you think about it, there’s all 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, do think that those books are full of moments of and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. if people were just trying to be happy, the they would get to the top, they would say, “This a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if you about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests that care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things 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 students from a few years earlier, and he came one day to campus. And he told me the following story: He said 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 very hard this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. the day before it was due, he sent his presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, the merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. at the moment when he was working, he was quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And 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 them another one, when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and on, until at some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we them under the table. And we told them that at the end the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we put them back in the boxes, and we will it for the next participant.
There was another condition. other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the rock up a hill, and when he almost got the end, the rock would roll over, and he would to start again. And you can think about this the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of something over and over and over that seems to particularly demotivating.
So in the second 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. we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we them a new one, and as they were building it, took apart the one that they just finished. And they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build another one, time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the one that they and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we point out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So was 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 in this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as I describing to you now, and we asked them to predict the result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not the magnitude. People who were just given the description of the experiment said that in meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. people understand that meaning is important, they just don’t the magnitude of the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There was one other of data we looked at. If you think about it, there some people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. And would speculate that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for money, because after all, they get more internal joy it. And the people who love Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that they from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There a very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed joy that they could get out of this activity. We eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell who they were, but they were a big company Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put a different building, and they asked them to innovate, and the next big product for this company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve talked to. And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said felt like they had just been through that experiment. I asked them, I said, “How many of you show up to work later than you used to?” And raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now go home earlier than you to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO done to make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to to the whole company about their journey over the last two and what 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, see how they would work. But the thing is any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. he would say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, and now 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 to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people care more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted do another for a little less money, the next for a little bit less, and so on and forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people their name on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the 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 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. the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it directly a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down 15 cents. At 15 cents 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 should point out, by the way, that the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could done not so good work, because they realized people just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, then you see nobody is really testing it, so you 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 into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in middle? It turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good news is that simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t to be so difficult. The bad news 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 next I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store kind of okay furniture that takes a long time assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s much effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they started mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it in a box, and would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, taste was great. What they figured out was that there was not effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here 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 they do? They took eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break eggs and add them, you had to measure the and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a 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 on 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, origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll it to you. How much do you want to pay it?” And we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. we had two types of people: We had the people built it, and the people who did not build it, and just looked it as external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were to pay five times more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. you could say — if you were a builder, you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I this 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, they that everybody would see the world in their view. They thought everybody else would love more as well.
In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder 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? in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, was more difficult. Now when we looked at the origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved it more, loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your memories associations and so on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you not have your kids. And one day you went to park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you with them for a few hours, and when you were 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 for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is our kids are so valuable, not just because of they are, but because of us, because they are connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, are and so on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their 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 Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He an 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 you get person to do 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, the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of is incredibly important in how people think about the connection what they are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you about the pin. But if you do one step every time, maybe 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 yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move situations in which people have to decide on their own how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the shower and so on, of a sudden Marx has more things to say us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The news is that if we added all of those components and thought them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.