I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like rats a maze — that all people care about is money, and the moment give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what the labor looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds of behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you that those books are full of moments of joy happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to be happy, moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This was a 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 go up again. And you think about mountain climbing as an example, it all kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It 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 all kinds of ways.
And me personally, I started thinking about this after a came to visit me. This was one of my students from a years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: He 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 stayed late at 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 the is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the of our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in we gave people Legos, and we asked them to with Legos. And for some people, we gave them and we said, “Hey, would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and built with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put it under table, and we said, “Would you 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 point said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” was what we called the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle another. After they finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And told them that at the end of the experiment, we will take these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put back in the boxes, and we will use it for next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was 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 same rock up a hill, and when he almost got to end, the rock would roll over, and he would to start again. And you can think about this as the essence of doing work. You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the is to get them to dig a hole, and when prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s about this cyclical version of doing something over and over over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. 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 were building it, we apart 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 if they yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real for big meaning. But even the small meaning made difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, as I am describing to you now, and we asked them to what the result would be. What happened? People predicted right direction but not the right magnitude. People who just given the description of the experiment said that the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data 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 who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos would build less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what found in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation the love of Legos and the amount of Legos built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — there no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests 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. basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in different building, and they asked them to innovate, and the next big product for this company. And the week before I showed up, the of this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they like they had just been through that experiment. And I them, I said, “How many of you now show up work later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How of you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody their hand. I asked them, “How many of you now not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but took me out to dinner and showed me what they could do with reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make you not depressed?” And they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO have asked them to present to the whole company about their journey the last two years and what they decided to do. could have asked them to think about which aspect of their could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they work. But the thing is that any one of those require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in people to care more about what they’re doing.
The experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with 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 they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet for a little less, and so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the 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,” put it on the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So take a piece, you just put it on the side. the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and 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 worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents sheet.
And this is basically the result we had before. You people’s efforts, output — you get them not to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because they realized 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, the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and news here. The bad news is that ignoring the of people is almost as bad as shredding their in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody has 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 motivation doesn’t seem to be difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I seem to 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 mixes in the ’40s, they take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste not good? No, the taste was great. What they out was that there was not enough effort involved. was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests 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 break eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and 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, actually got them to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So do we look at this question experimentally? We asked to build some origami. We gave them instructions on 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 a frog 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 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 had two types people: We had the people who built it, and the people who did not build it, and just at it as external observers. And what we found that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more for them the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you were builder, do you 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 it well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns the builders not only loved the origami more, they that everybody would see the world in their view. They thought 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, gave the same task. For some people, we made harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier the first 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. Most people would for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day went to the park and you met some kids. were just like your kids, and you played with for a 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 sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for them now? people say not that much. And this is because kids are so valuable, not just because of who are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, because of the time and connection. By the way, you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions 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 you one thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the of their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see our way.
Let me say one last comment. If think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, if one person does all 12 steps, production is low. But if you get one person to do step one, and person to do step two and step three and so on, can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if you do 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if do one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in the Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more than 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 to it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx more things to say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if we added all those components and thought about them — how do we 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 and happier.
Thank you very much.