I want to talk a little bit today about 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, can direct them to work one way, we can direct to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At the same time, 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 books of people who mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of moments joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, circumstances. And if people were just trying to be happy, the moment would get to the top, they would say, “This a terrible 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 up again. And if you think about mountain climbing an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds other things that motivate us to work or behave all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came to me. This was one of my students from a few years earlier, he came one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for than two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. was working in a big bank, and this was preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him back 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, was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in we gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and built with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for $2.70?” If 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.” This was what we the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they every one of them, we put them under the table. And told them that at the end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. other condition was inspired by David, my student. And other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and he almost got to the end, the rock would over, and he would have to start again. And you can think this as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners to get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s something this cyclical version of doing something over and over over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition 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. Then asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” if they said yes, we gave them a new one, and as they were it, we took 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 they said yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. So this an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built many more — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But the small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not right magnitude. People who were just given the description the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people would build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, extent to which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we looked at. If think about it, there are some people who love Legos, and some people 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 love Legos less would build Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually we found in the meaningful condition. There was a nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t you who they were, but they were a big in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in a different building, they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them some of these experiments, and they said they felt like they had just been through that experiment. I asked them, I said, “How many of you now up to work later than you used to?” And raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now go earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” they didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out dinner and showed me what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, said, “What could the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” And came up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the could have asked them to present to the whole company about their journey the last two years and what they decided to do. He 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, see how they would work. But the thing is that any one of those would require effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, and now I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people care more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters were identical next to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if 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 conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile to them. In the second condition, people did not their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, the sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, and 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 it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is the result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — get them not to be as happy with what they’re doing. But I should out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because they realized people just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so you would do and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and more money, and put less effort into it. But what 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 bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good news is by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, we overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you something about positive motivation. So there is a store in U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of furniture that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t about you, but every time I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s much effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in wrong 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 other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes the ’40s, they would take this powder and they put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in 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 the was not good? No, the taste was great. What they out was that there was not enough effort involved. It so easy that nobody 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 did they do? They took the eggs and the milk of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to harder, they actually got them to love what they’re doing a higher degree.
So how 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 sheet of paper. these were all novices, and they built something that was really quite — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll you what, we’ll sell it to you. How much do you want to for it?” And we measured how much they were willing to for it. And we had two types of people: had the people who built it, and the people did not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. 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 you could say — if you a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that else would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and else will love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the not only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world their view. They thought everybody else would love it as well.
In the next version, we tried to do IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. for some people, we gave 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. So 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 — loved 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 into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells 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 so on. Most would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day you went the park and you met some kids. They were like your kids, and you played with them for a hours, and 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 would you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of the and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which to tell you one more thing, which is, much 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 say one last comment. If you think Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, if one person does 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, production can tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation labor is incredibly important in how people think about the to what they are doing. And if you do 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move to situations in people have to decide on their own about how effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are 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 about labor, we 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 news is that if we added of those components and thought about them — how do 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 very much.