I want to a little bit today about labor and work.
When we about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that people like rats in a maze — that all people care about is money, the moment we give them money, we can direct to work one way, we can direct them to another way. This is why we give 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 the time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think those 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 terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, suggests all kinds of things. It suggests that we about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all of other things that 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 my students from a few earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And he told the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard on presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the day it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he was his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to with, we created a little experiment in which we people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three for it.” And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And when they finished, took it, we put it under the table, and said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” they said yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, we them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, 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 put under the table. And we told them that at end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, will put them back in the boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, 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 hill, and when he almost got to the end, rock would roll over, and he would have to start again. And can think about this as the essence of doing futile work. You imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least would have some sense 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, 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 condition of experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they 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 it, we took apart the one that they just finished. when 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 built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front 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 cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning 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 am describing to you now, and we asked them predict what the result would be. What happened? People predicted the direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just given the of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the of the 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 who love Legos, and some people who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they more internal joy from it. And the people who Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive it is lower. And that’s actually what we found in meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. can’t tell you who they were, but they were a company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that put in a different building, and they asked them innovate, and create the next big product for this company. the week before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they they felt like they had just been through that experiment. I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How of you now add 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 expense 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 could have asked them present to the whole company about their journey over the last two years and what decided to do. He could have asked them to think about which aspect their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and how they would work. But the thing is that one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, and that I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was different. We took a sheet of paper with random letters, and asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do another for a less money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on pile next to them. In the second condition, people not write 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. So you a piece, you just put it on the side. the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people harder. They 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 condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents sheet.
And this is basically the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, — you get them not to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I should out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people could cheated. They could have done not so good work, because they people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d good work, but then you see nobody is really it, so you would do more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what about ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of is almost as bad as shredding their effort in 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 to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, might overdo it. So this is all in terms negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to show 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 a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but time I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s much effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in the wrong way — I can’t say I those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they started cake in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it a box, and they would ask housewives to basically it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People not want them, and they thought about all kinds of for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, taste was great. What they figured out was that there was enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody serve cake to their 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 feel like your own. So did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you 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 IKEA effect, getting people to work harder, they actually got them love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how we look at this question experimentally? We asked people to build origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a of paper. And these were all novices, and they something that was really quite ugly — nothing like frog or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs 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 we how much they were willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: had the people who built it, and the people who did not build it, just looked at it as external observers. And what we found was that builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see 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, we the same task. For some people, we made it by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little of how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put this extra effort into it. And evaluators? They loved even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than 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. people would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if did not have 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 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 pay for them now? people say not that much. And this is because our kids so valuable, not just because of who they are, because of us, because 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 more thing, which is, much like our builders, when look at the creature of their creation, we don’t that other people don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if one person all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one person to do one, and one person to do step two and step and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the of labor is incredibly important in how people think about connection to what they are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you care the pin. But if you do one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move to in which people have to decide on their own how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are they about labor on the way to work, and in the shower so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things say to us. So when we think about labor, we think about motivation and payment as the same thing, 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 create own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, and for the — I think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.