I want to talk a 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 — 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 is why we give bonuses bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view why people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read 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 frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were trying to be happy, the moment they would get the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after recover, they go up again. And if you think 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 about the fight, about challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things motivate us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, started thinking about this after a student came to 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 said for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in preparation a merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard on presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at every day. And the day before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we them to build with Legos. And for some people, gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and built with these Legos. And when they finished, we it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, gave them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to build one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” was what we called the meaningful condition. People built Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we put them the table. And we told them that at the end of the experiment, will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, will put them back in the boxes, and we use 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 about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when he got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have start again. And you can think about this as essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes way that the guards torture the prisoners is to them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical of doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we them a new one, and as they were building it, we apart the one that they just finished. And when they finished that, said, “Would you like to build another one, this time 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave the one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version 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 predict 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 in the meaningful condition, people would probably 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 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 less would build less because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found in meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the love of and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished this experiment, I went to talk to a big company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they were big company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was in a different building, and they asked them to innovate, and create next big product for this company. And the week before showed up, the CEO of this big software company went to group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most people 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 show up to work later than you used to?” And everybody 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 not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, but they took out to dinner and showed me what they could do expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” And they up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have them to present to the whole company about their journey over the last years and what they decided to do. He could asked them to think about which aspect of their technology fit with other parts of the organization. He could asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they work. But the thing is that any one of those would some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance 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 I directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything 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. We took a of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters that identical next to each other. That was the task. People did first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to another for a little less money, the next sheet for little bit less, and so on and so forth. we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found all the of 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 second condition, people did not 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 pile of pages. So you take piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter the sheet of paper, and put it directly into shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They for much longer. In 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 cents sheet.
And this is basically the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get not to be as happy with what they’re doing. I should point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. could have done not so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So the first sheet you’d do good work, but then see nobody is really testing it, so you would do and more and 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 the ignored condition more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The news is that by simply looking at something that has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to 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, we might it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part want to show you is something about positive motivation. there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, every time I assemble one of those, it takes much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in the way — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I seem like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in ’40s, they would take this powder and they would it in a box, and they would ask housewives 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 taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to the eggs and add them, you had to measure the and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting to work harder, they actually got them to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So do 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 built that was really quite ugly — nothing like a or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami really to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell to you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And we two types of people: We had the people who built it, the people who did not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times for them 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 this origami, I know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody will love it as well?” Which one of those is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the more, they thought that everybody would see the world in their view. They everybody else would love it more as well.
In 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 by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now was tougher. What happened? Well 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, the effect larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and on. Most people would say for a lot, a of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day went to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you with them for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before you leave, you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not because of who they are, but because of us, because they are connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these 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, don’t see that other people don’t see things our way.
Let me one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. said pins have 12 different steps, and if one does all 12 steps, production is very low. But you get one person to do step one, and one person to step two and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people about the connection to what they are doing. And if you all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is still 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 about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected feel to it, are they thinking about labor on the to work, and in the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx more things to say to us. So when we about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is if we added all of those components and thought about them — do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.