I want to talk a little bit today labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition have is that people are like rats in a maze — that all people about is money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct to work one way, we can direct them to work another way. This why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, what the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like mountaineering and climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are of moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to happy, the moment they would get to the top, would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, after they recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it all 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 suggests there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came 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: 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. he was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at every day. And the day before it was due, sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which we people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” people said yes, and they built with these Legos. when they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this time $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, at some point people said, “No more. It’s not it for me.” This was what we called the condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, put them under the table. And we told them that at the end 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 participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same up a hill, and when he almost got to the end, the rock would over, and he would have to start again. And you can think about this as essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed the rock different hills, at least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards the prisoners is to get them 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 and over and 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 build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, built it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” if they said yes, we gave them a new one, and they were building it, we took apart the one they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if said yes, we gave them the one that they built and broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? first thing that happened was that people built many Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed soon. So there was not a real opportunity for meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now had another version of this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, we didn’t people in this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as 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 were just given the description of the said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. people understand that 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 we looked at. 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 would more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy from it. And 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 was very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the was zero — there was no relationship between the of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running experiment, I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. can’t tell you who they were, but they were big company in Seattle. This was a group within software company that was put in a different building, and they asked to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company went to 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 Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had been through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. said, “How many of you now go home earlier than used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” they didn’t raise their hands, but they took me to dinner and showed me what they could do with expense reports. then I asked them, I said, “What could the have done to make you not as depressed?” And they came with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present the whole 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 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 any one of those require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. 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 in way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy effort in getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters were identical next to each other. That was the task. People did the sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do for a little less money, the next sheet for a bit less, and so on and so forth. And we had conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the next to them. In the second condition, people did write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, the sheet of paper, did not look at it, not scan it, and simply put it on the of pages. So you take a piece, you just it on the side. In the third condition, the got the sheet of paper, and put it directly into shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 per sheet.
And this is basically the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, — you get them not to be as happy with they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that in shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the sheet you’d do good work, but then you see nobody really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s news and bad news 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 way there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be 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 to show you is something about positive motivation. So there is a in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture takes 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 more effortful, it’s 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, I seem to like 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 would take powder and they would put it in a box, and would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out was that was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what they do? They took the eggs and the milk 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 like the IKEA effect, by people to work harder, they actually got them to love they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do look at this question experimentally? We asked people to some origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, we gave them a sheet of paper. And these all novices, and they built something that was really ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell what, we’ll sell it to you. How much do you to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had people who built it, and the people who did not it, and just looked at it as external observers. And we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to five times more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you say — if you were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I this origami, but I know that nobody else would 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 everybody would see the world in their view. They everybody else would love it more as well.
In the next version, we tried to the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave the task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now this tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most people would for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine you did not have your kids. And one day went to the park and you met some kids. They were just like kids, and you played with them for a few hours, when you were about 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 them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our are so valuable, not just because of who they are, 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 that with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. comes to tell you one more thing, which is, like our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don’t see that people don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if one person all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you one person to do step one, and one person do step two and step three and so on, can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on other hand, said that the alienation of labor is important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But you do one step every time, maybe you don’t as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think 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 and so on, all of sudden Marx has more things to say to us. So when we think labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good is that if we added all of those components and thought about — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it our workplace, and for the employees — I think could get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.