I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze — that all people about is money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we direct them to work another way. This is why give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have incredibly simplistic view of why 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 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 and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And 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 about mountain climbing as an example, suggests all kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of things that motivate us to work or behave in kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking this after a student came to visit me. This was one of my from a few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And told me the following story: He said that for more two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed at night every day. And the day before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but the is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. Now the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him depressed.
So I started thinking 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 Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people said yes, they built with these Legos. And when they finished, took it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, we gave them another one, when they finished, we asked them, “Do you want to another 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 called the meaningful condition. built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every of them, we put them under the table. And we told that at the end of the experiment, we will take these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back in boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when he got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he have to start again. And you can think about this as essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if pushed the rock on different hills, at least he have some sense of progress. Also, if you look prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the is to get them to dig a hole, and when the is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back and then dig again. There’s something about this cyclical of doing something over and over and over that seems to particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s what we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build 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?” And if they said yes, we gave a new one, and as they were building it, we took apart the one that they finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would like to build another one, this time for 30 less?” And if they said yes, we gave them one that they built and we broke. So this an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And the way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. People were not cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small made a 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 to 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. who were just given the description of the experiment said that in meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, the extent which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data we at. If you think about it, there are some 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 from it. the people who love Legos less would build less Legos 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 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, which suggests 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 basically it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to talk a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within software company 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 I up, the CEO of this big software company went to group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I there in front of 200 of the most 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. I asked them, I said, “How many of you now show up to later than you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of you go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How many you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” And they didn’t their hands, but they took me out to dinner showed me what they could do with expense reports. then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all of ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to to the whole company about their journey over the last two and what they decided to do. He could have them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit other parts of the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see they would work. But the thing is that any one of would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of 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 figure out that it’s actually to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a 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, the next sheet for a little bit less, so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, experimenter would look at it, scan it from top bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not at it, did not scan it, and simply put it the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you put it on the side. In the third condition, the got the sheet of paper, and put it directly into shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this I’m showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all 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 basically the result had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to as happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the sheet you’d do good work, but then you see nobody really testing it, so you would do more and and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the condition? Would the 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 news and 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 you a whole way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, if we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you is 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 time assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every 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 old story about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, would take this powder and they would put it in box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour in, stir 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 them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons 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 somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So what they do? They took the eggs and the milk out of powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like the effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we at this question experimentally? We asked people to build origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something that was quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But then told 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 pay it?” And we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And we two types of people: We had the people who built it, the people who did not build it, and just looked at it as observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that these were pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay five times more for them the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could — if you were a builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know nobody else would love it?” Or “I love this origami, everybody else will love it as well?” Which one of those two correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would the world in their view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you origami. For some people, we just 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 — builders it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. in reality, it was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about how we things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” Your and associations and so on. Most people would say for lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have kids. And one day you went to the park and you some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played with for a few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for them now? 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 are so to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those are tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell you one thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature their creation, we don’t see that other people don’t things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He pins have 12 different steps, and if one person does 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one to do step one, and one person to do step two step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people think the connection to what they are doing. And if you all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But you do one step every time, maybe you don’t as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam was more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. think that as we move to situations in which people have to decide on own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are 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 think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that we added all of those components and thought about them — how do create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, and for employees — I think we could get people to be more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.