I want to talk a little today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition have is that people are like rats in a maze — all people care about is money, and the moment we them money, we can direct them to work one way, can direct 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 simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if you think about it, there’s all of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read 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 difficulty — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to be happy, the moment they 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, after they recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as 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, the challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things 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. This one of my students from a few years earlier, and came one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: He said for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working very on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed at night every day. And the day before it due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, his boss wrote him back 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 quite happy. Every he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to with, we created a little experiment in which we gave Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars for it.” And people 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 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. built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every of them, we put them under the table. And we told them that at end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, will put them back in the boxes, and we use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was by David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same rock a hill, and when he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have 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 prison movies, sometimes the 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 something about this cyclical of doing something over and over and over that seems to be 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 it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, gave them a new one, and as they were building it, we took apart the that they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And they said yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. this was an endless cycle of them building, and destroying in front of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these conditions? The first thing that happened was that people many more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this was big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity big meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to them the situation, much I am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict the result would be. What happened? People predicted the direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just the description of the experiment said that 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 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, some people who don’t. And you would speculate that people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because all, they get more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less build less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive it is lower. And that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There a very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In condition, the correlation was zero — there was no between the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy they could get out of this activity. We basically it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I to talk to a big software company in Seattle. can’t tell you who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group the software 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 I 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 to. And I described to them some of these experiments, and they said they felt like they had just 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 go home earlier than used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How of 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. And then asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?” they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They the CEO could have asked them to present to the whole company about their journey over last two years and what they decided to do. He could asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other 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 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 say, “At the moment I directed you in this way, now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you 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 sheet of with random letters, and we asked people to find of letters that were identical next to each other. That was the task. People the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the sheet 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 of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and it on the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, 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 got the sheet of paper, and put it directly a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And 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. I should point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the sheet you’d do good work, but then you see is really testing it, so you would do more more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The news is that ignoring the performance of people is as bad as shredding their effort in front of eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good is that by simply looking at something that somebody done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the 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. So this all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind okay furniture that takes a long time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t about you, but every time I assemble one of those, it me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much confusing, I put things in the wrong way — I can’t say I enjoy pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story 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 it in the oven, — voila — you had cake. But it turns out were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all 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 easy that could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is cake.” No, it 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 break eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it 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 them to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we look this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we 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 origami really belongs to us. worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. How much you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much were willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had the people who it, and the people who did not build it, and just looked at it as observers. And what we found was that the builders thought these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they willing to pay five times more for them than 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 that nobody would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and else will love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? Turns out builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world their view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
In next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make more difficult. So for some people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. some people, we 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 same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells something about how we evaluate things.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot 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 park and you met kids. They were just like your kids, and you played them for a few hours, and when you were about leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before you leave, you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is our kids are so valuable, not just because of who are, but because of us, because they are so to us, and because of the time and connection. the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, about the instructions that come with kids, those are tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell you one thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, don’t see that other people don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If think about 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 all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get person to do step one, and one person to do step two and step three and on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation labor is incredibly important in how people think about connection to what they are doing. And if you all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that we move to situations in which people have to decide on own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the shower so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably all kinds of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The news is that if we added all of those components and thought about them — how do we our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we it in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.