I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive we have is that people are like rats in a — that all people care about is money, and moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can them to work another way. This is why we bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds of behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like and mountain climbing. If you read books of people climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of moments of and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people down, and after they recover, they go up again. if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. suggests that we care about the fight, about the challenge. suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us to work or behave all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started about this after a student came to visit me. This was of my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late night every day. And the day before it was due, he sent his presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment which we gave people Legos, and we asked them to build Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, they 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, we gave another one, and when they finished, we asked them, “Do want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it me.” This was what we called the meaningful condition. built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every of them, we put them under the table. And told them that at the end of the experiment, we take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will them back in the boxes, and we will use it for next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus punished 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. you can think about this as the essence of doing work. You can imagine that if he pushed the on different hills, at least he would have some of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, the way that the guards torture the prisoners is get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner finished, they ask him to fill the hole back and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then asked them, “Do you want to build another one $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them new one, and as they were building it, we apart the one that they just finished. And when finished that, we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if said yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. So was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In this version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just to them the situation, much as I am describing to you now, and we asked to predict what the result would be. What happened? People the right direction but not the right magnitude. People were just given the description of the experiment said in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, they don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, the extent to it’s important.
There was one other piece of data looked at. If you think about it, there are people who love Legos, and some people who don’t. you would speculate that the people who love Legos build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy it. And the people who love Legos less would build less because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s what we found in the meaningful condition. There was a nice correlation between the love of Legos and the of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no between the love of Legos, and how much people built, which to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I running this experiment, I went to talk to a software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within the software that was put in a different building, and they asked them to innovate, and create the 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 in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described to them of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt they had just been through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of you now up to work later than you used to?” And everybody their hand. I said, “How many of you now home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. asked them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher to your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, they took me out to dinner and showed me they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” And they came up all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked to present to the whole company about their journey the last two years and what they decided to do. He could have asked to think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and how they would work. But the thing is that any one of would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At moment I directed you in this way, and now I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to some time, energy and effort in getting people to care about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked they wanted to do another for a little less money, next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would at it, scan it from top 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 simply put on the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it on side. In 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 pay rate people stopped. So numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them to be as happy with what they’re doing. But should point out, by the way, that in the condition, people could have cheated. They could have done so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d good 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 more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere the middle? It turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. this is all in terms of negative motivation, or negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you something about positive motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a with kind of okay furniture that takes a long to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble of those, it takes me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things the 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 ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this and they would put it in a box, and they would housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — — you had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. the 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 could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in the store. It didn’t really like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to the eggs and add them, you had to measure milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. everything 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 we at this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them sheet 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 really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell to you. How much do you want to pay it?” And we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. we had two types of people: We had the people who it, and the people who did not build it, just looked at it as external observers. And what we found was the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and were willing to pay five times more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. you could say — if you were a builder, do you [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?” “I love this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in their view. They thought everybody else love it more as well.
In the next version, we tried to do IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders loved more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about 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 was slightly different. Imagine if you did have your kids. And one day you went to the park you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played them for a few hours, and when you were about to leave, 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. this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, because of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of the time connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those really 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 they look at the creature of creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see things way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said pins 12 different steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. if you get one person to do step one, and one person to do step two and 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, on the hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly in how people think about the connection to what are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But you do one step every time, maybe you don’t care much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, happens in a knowledge 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 it, are they thinking about labor on the way 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, but reality is that we should probably add all kinds of to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The news is that if we added all of those components and thought about them — do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and do we do it in our workplace, and for the — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.