I want to talk little 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 — all people care about is money, and the moment give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct them work another way. This is why we give bonuses to and pay in all 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 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 those books are full of moments of joy happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were trying to be happy, the moment they would get to top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, about the challenge. It that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for personally, I started thinking about this after a student came visit me. This was 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 was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He 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 merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting PowerPoint 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 fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars it.” And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And when they finished, took it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like to another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want build another 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 the meaningful condition. People one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we them under the table. And we told them that at end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we will use it the next participant.
There was another condition. This other 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 have to start again. And you can think this as the essence of doing futile work. You imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, ask him to fill the hole back up and dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And they said yes, we gave them a new one, and as they building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we point out that this was not big meaning. People not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In this other version the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, just described to them the situation, much as I describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what the result would be. happened? People predicted the right direction but not the magnitude. People who were just given the description of the said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably build more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, extent to which it’s important.
There was one other of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, some people who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who love Legos build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the who love Legos less would build less Legos because the that they derive from it is lower. And that’s what we found in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the love Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, correlation was zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, basically crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within software company that was put in a different building, and they them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And week before I showed up, the CEO of this software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And described to them some of these Lego experiments, and said they felt like they had just been through experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work later than used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher things to your 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 asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done make you not as depressed?” And they came up with kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have them to present to the whole company about their journey over last two years and what they decided to do. He have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit other parts 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. I think the CEO basically did not understand the of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And 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 meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care 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 each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to another for a little less money, the next sheet 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 of letters, gave it to experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. experimenter looked 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 you take a piece, you just put it on side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it directly a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m you at what pay rate people stopped. So low mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In 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 not to as happy with what they’re doing. But I should 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 nobody is testing it, so you would do more and more more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people have submitted more work and gotten more money, and less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring you a whole way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that has done, scanning it and saying “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 to be incredibly easy, if we don’t think about it carefully, we might it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want show you is something about positive motivation. So there a store in 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 know you, but every time I assemble one of those, takes me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in the wrong — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s old story about cake mixes. So when they started cake in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some 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 thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out was 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 it in the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what did they do? They the eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the and add them, you had to measure the milk add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So do we look at this question experimentally? We asked people to some origami. We gave them instructions on how to origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. these were all novices, and they built something that really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. How much do want to pay for it?” And we measured how they were willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We the people who built it, and the people who did not build it, and looked at it as external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more for than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now could say — if you were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” “I love this origami, and everybody else will love it well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out builders not only loved the origami more, they thought everybody would see the world in their view. They everybody else would love it more as well.
In the next version, we to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, we the same 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. now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators 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. And evaluators? They loved it less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not your kids. And one day you went to the and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, you played with them for a few hours, and 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 would you pay for them now? Most people say that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not because of who they are, but because of us, they are so connected to us, and because of time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, about the instructions that come with kids, those are tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell you one thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t things our way.
Let me say one last comment. you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, is very low. But if you get one person do step one, and one person to do step two and step three and so on, production can tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. if you do one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we to situations in which people have to decide on own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more to say to us. So when we think about labor, usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that should probably add all kinds of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good is that if we added all of those components and thought them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and do we do it in our workplace, and for the employees — think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.