I want to talk a bit today about labor and work.
When we think about people work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze — all people care about is money, and the moment we give money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct them to another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of people work, and what the labor market looks like.
At the time, if you think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors the world around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, 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 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 me on a 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, it suggests kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, about challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started about this after a student came to visit me. This one of my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day to campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for than two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working a big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He late at night every day. And the day before was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him and said, “Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled.” the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he was his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So 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 which we gave Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and built with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they said yes, gave them another one, and when they finished, we them, “Do you want to build another one?” for $2.40, $2.10, and on, until at some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it me.” This was what we called the meaningful condition. People one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we them under the table. And we told them that at the of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we will use it 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 about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and he almost got to the end, the rock would over, and he would have to start again. And you can think about this the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that he pushed the rock 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 to get to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask him fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s something this cyclical version of doing something over and over and that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you to build one 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 them a new one, and as they were building it, we apart the one that they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you to build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? first thing that happened was that people built many Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the condition. And by the way, we should point out this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now we another version of this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in situation, we just described to them the situation, much I am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction not the right magnitude. People who were just given description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people 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 data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people who Legos, and some people who don’t. And you would speculate that the people who love would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal from 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 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 the love Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that with manipulation of breaking things in front of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any that they could get out of this activity. We basically it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This was a within the software company that was put in a different building, they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product this company. And the week before I showed up, the of this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve talked to. And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said felt like they had just been through that experiment. And I them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work later than you used to?” And raised their hand. I said, “How many of you now go earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, “How of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?” they didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out dinner and showed me what they could do with expense reports. And then asked them, I said, “What could the CEO have done to make not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They said the CEO have asked them to present to the whole company about their journey over the two years and what they decided to do. He could have asked to think about which aspect of their technology could fit other parts of the organization. He could have asked to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But the thing is any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. he would say, “At the moment I directed you this way, and now that I’m directing you in way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and in getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We a sheet of paper with random letters, and we people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. was the task. People did the first sheet, then we if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet for a bit less, and so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people their name on the sheet, found all the pairs letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would at it, scan it from top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and it on the pile next to them. In the condition, people did not write their name on it. experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, not look at it, did not scan it, and simply it on the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened 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 for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to be as with what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So the first sheet you’d do good work, but then you see is really testing it, so you would do more and and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But about the ignored condition? Would the ignored 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 that ignoring performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets 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 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 might it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or negative motivation.
The next part I want to show you is about positive motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I put things in the wrong — I can’t say I enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. when I finish it, I seem to like those pieces of furniture more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take powder and they would put it in a box, they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you had cake. it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the was great. What they figured out was that there was not effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, if you bought it in the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. what did they do? They took the eggs and milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had break the eggs and add them, you had to the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting 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 gave them instructions on to create origami, and we gave them a sheet paper. And these were all novices, and they built something was really quite ugly — nothing like a frog a crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami 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 for it?” we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And had two types of people: We had the people who built it, and the who did not build it, and just looked at it external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that these were pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing pay five times more for them than the people just evaluated them externally. Now you could say — if you were a builder, you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” Which one those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved 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 the IKEA effect. We tried make it more difficult. So for some people, we the same task. For some people, we made it by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now 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 builders it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your kids for?” 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 if you did have your kids. And one day you went to the park and met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played with them for few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, just before leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because kids are so valuable, not just because of who are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, because of the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those are tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes tell you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look the creature of their creation, we don’t see that people don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said have 12 different steps, and if one person does 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one person to step one, and one person to do step two and step three and on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how think about the connection to what they are doing. And if do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I the answer is no. I think that as we move to situations in people have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, connected they feel to it, are they thinking about labor the way to work, and in the shower and on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. when we think about labor, we usually think about and payment as the same thing, but the reality is we should probably add all kinds of things to — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The news is that if we added all of those components and thought them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how we do it in our workplace, and for the employees — I think we get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you much.