I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how work, the naive intuition we have is that people are rats in a maze — that all people care about is money, the moment we give them money, we can direct them work one way, we can direct them to work another way. is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, what the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. if people were just trying to be happy, the they would get to the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and they recover, they go up again. And if you think mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about 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 me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came to visit me. was one of my students from a few years earlier, and he one day back to campus. And he told me the story: He said that for more than two weeks, was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard on this — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the day before was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” And the guy was depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do experiment with this idea of the fruits of our labor. And start with, we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and 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 dollars for it.” people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And when they finished, we it, we put it 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 people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we called meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And told them that at the end of the experiment, will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we put them back in the boxes, and we will use for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other was inspired by David, my student. And this other we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story 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 over, and he would have to start again. And 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, sometimes the way that the guards torture the is to get them to dig a hole, and the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the back up and then dig again. There’s something about cyclical version of doing something over and over and over 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 build Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. we asked them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And they said yes, we gave them a new one, as they were building it, we took apart the that they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to build one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, we them the one that they built and we broke. So was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? 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 point out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real for big meaning. But even the small meaning made difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just described them the situation, much as I am describing to you now, and asked them to predict what the result would be. happened? People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just given 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 people who love Legos, some people who don’t. And you would speculate that the who love Legos would build more Legos, even for money, because after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the who love Legos less would build less Legos because enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, how much people built, which suggests to me that with this of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy they could get out 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 they were, but they were a big company Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in a different building, and asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed 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, said, “How many of you now show up to work later you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of now go 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, but they me out to dinner and showed me what they could with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to you not as depressed?” And they came up with kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO could have them to present to the whole company about their journey over the last two years what they decided to do. He could have asked them to about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked 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 not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, and effort in getting people to care more about they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a of paper with random letters, and we asked people find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. was the task. People did the first sheet, then asked if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on pile next to them. In the second condition, people did write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the pile pages. So you take a piece, you just put on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter 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 mean that people worked harder. They worked much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result we had before. shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to as happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, the way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not so work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, then you see nobody is really testing it, so you would more 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? turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring performance of people is almost as bad as shredding effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you whole 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 be quite sufficient to dramatically people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad is 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 eliminating motivation.
The next part I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So there a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with 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 longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put in the wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture than I like other ones.
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And there’s an old about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, they thought about all kinds of reasons 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 could serve cake to guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in the store. didn’t really feel like your own. So what did do? They took the eggs and the milk out of powder.
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Now you had to break the eggs and them, you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. everything was fine.
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(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually them to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So do we look at this question experimentally? We asked people build some origami. We gave them instructions on how create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. these were all novices, and they built something that was really ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll it to you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And we how much they were willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We the people who built it, and the people who not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. what we found was that 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, 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 two is correct? Turns the builders not only loved the origami more, they that everybody would see the world in their view. They thought else would love it more as well.
In the next version, tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. for some people, we gave the same task. For people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At the top the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than the version.
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Of course, this tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. I asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your memories and associations and on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot of money.
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On days.
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But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if did not have your kids. And one day you to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and played with them for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much you pay for them now? Most people say not much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but of us, because they are so connected to us, and because the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are 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 so on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don’t that other people don’t see things our way.
Let say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam 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 increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do one 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. You ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? think the answer is no. I think that as we move to situations in which have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and the shower and so on, all of a sudden has 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 that we should probably add all kinds of things it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good is that if we added all of those components thought about them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do do it in our workplace, and for the employees — think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.