I want to talk a little bit today 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 direct them to work one way, we can direct them to work 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 market like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, mountains, do you think that those books are full 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 be happy, moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of things that motivate us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for personally, I started thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This one of my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. he told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger acquisition. And he was working very hard on this — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night day. And the day before it was due, he sent his presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the when he was working, he was actually quite happy. night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we them to build with Legos. And for some people, we them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people yes, and they built with these Legos. And when finished, we took it, we put it under the table, we said, “Would you like to build another one, this for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, asked them, “Do you want to build another one?” $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 called the condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we them under the table. And we told them that at the of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put 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 the about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same 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 futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get to 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 and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do want to 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 another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we gave them the one they built and we broke. So this was an endless of them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should out 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 that the Bionicles 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. In this other version the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, just described to them the situation, much as I describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what the would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction not the right magnitude. People who were just given the description 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 magnitude the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There one other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are people 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 all, they get more internal joy from it. And people who love Legos less would build less Legos the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There was a very correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — was no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed joy that they could get out of this activity. We eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This a group within the software company that was put in a different building, and they asked to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week before showed up, the CEO of this big software company to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there in of 200 of 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 add not-so-kosher 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 expense reports. then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO done to make you not as depressed?” And they up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the could have asked them to present to the whole company about their over the last two years and what they decided do. He could have asked them to think about which of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked them to build next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But the thing is that any one of those require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment I directed you in way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you 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 slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with letters, and we asked people to find pairs of that were identical next to each other. That was 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 and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. The looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not at it, did not scan it, and simply put it on pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it on side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to be as happy what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have not so good work, because they realized people were shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so you do more and more and more. So in fact, the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere the middle? It turns out it was almost like shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole out there. The good news is that by simply looking at something somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t to be so 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 of motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you is something positive motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know you, but every time I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in the wrong way — can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take powder and they would put it in a box, they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, some water in it, mix it, put it in oven, and — voila — you had cake. But turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. they figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so that nobody could 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. 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 break the eggs and add them, had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them to what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how we look at this question experimentally? We asked people build some origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and gave them a sheet of paper. And these were novices, and they built something 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 what, we’ll sell it to you. How much do want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they willing to pay for it. And we had two of people: We had the people who built it, and the people who not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And what found was that the builders thought that these were pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay times more for them than the people who just them externally. Now you could say — if you were builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, I know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only the origami more, they thought that everybody would see world in their view. They thought everybody else would it more as 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 harder by hiding the instructions. the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of 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 more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because reality, it was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” memories and associations and so on. Most people would say a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you not have your kids. And one day you went to the and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and played with them for a few hours, and when you were to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before you leave, you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our kids are valuable, not just because of who they are, but because of us, because they so connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA are not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell you more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam versus 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 if you one person to do step one, and one person to do step and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. indeed, this is a great example, and the reason the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people about the connection to what they are doing. And you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do one 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, now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important meaning? I think the answer is no. I think as we move to situations in which people have decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the shower and so on, of a sudden Marx has more things to say us. So when we think about labor, we usually 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 all of components and thought about them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, how do we do it in our workplace, and the employees — I think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.