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