I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we about how people work, the naive intuition we have is people are like rats in a maze — that all people care about is money, and moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers and in all kinds of ways. And we really have incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what labor market looks like.
At the same time, if think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you 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 walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if were just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, me sit on a beach somewhere 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 that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It that we care about the fight, about the challenge. It that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for personally, I started thinking about this after a student to visit me. This was one of my students from few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And he told me following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, this was in 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 before it 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 deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And for people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would you like build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put 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, 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 it me.” This was what we called the 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, will put them back in the boxes, and we will use it the next participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired 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 rock 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 about this as the essence of doing futile work. can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, least he would have some sense of progress. Also, you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There’s about this cyclical version of doing something over and over over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you 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 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. So this was endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in of their eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The first that happened was that people built many more Bionicles — eleven the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that was not 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 would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people this situation, we just described to them the situation, much I am describing to you now, and we 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 the meaningful condition, people would build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There was one other piece of we looked at. If you think about it, there are people who love 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 all, they get more internal joy from it. And the who love Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we found the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship the love of Legos, and how much people built, suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I to talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, 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, CEO 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 people I’ve ever 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 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 now go home than you 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 raise hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed what they could do with expense reports. And then I them, I said, “What could the CEO have done make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to to the whole company about their journey over the last two years and what they to do. He could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could with 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 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 would say, “At the I directed you in this way, and now that I’m you in this way, everything will be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then would figure out that it’s actually important to spend some time, energy effort in getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was different. We took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That the 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 had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found all pairs 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 write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, and simply put it on pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it on the side. the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at 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 stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically the result we before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not to be happy with what they’re doing. But I should point out, by the way, that in the condition, people could have cheated. They could have done so good work, because they realized people were just it. So maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you see nobody is really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was almost the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. The bad is that ignoring the performance of people is almost bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a way out there. The good news is that by looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, might overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
The next I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store 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 about you, but time I assemble one of those, it takes me longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I things 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 more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they take this powder and they would put it in a box, and would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns out were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they 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, was somebody else’s cake, as if you bought it in store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you to break the eggs and add them, you had measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they got them to love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do look at this question experimentally? We asked people to 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 quite ugly — nothing like a frog or a crane. But we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much they were willing 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. And what found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing to pay times more for them than the people who just them externally. Now you could say — if you were builder, do you think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that else would love it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else love it as well?” Which one of those two is correct? out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought everybody would see the world in their view. They everybody else would love it more as well.
In the next version, we tried do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave the task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing — builders it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, effect 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. Because reality, it was even uglier than the first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. people would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But imagine was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And day you went to the park and you met some kids. They were just your kids, and you played with them for a 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 would you pay for them now? Most say not that much. And this is because our kids are 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 instructions are not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at creature of their creation, we don’t see that other 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 of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get person to do step one, and one person to step two and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in people think about the connection to what they are doing. if you 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 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 than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think as we move to situations in which people have decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, connected they feel to it, are they thinking about on the way to work, and in the shower and so on, all of a sudden has more things to say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should add all kinds of things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if added all of those components and thought about them — do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and do we do it in our workplace, and for the — I think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.