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 — that people care about is money, and the moment we them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can them to work another way. This is why we bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, what the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in the around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they 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 be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This was terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and after they recover, go up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s all of other things that motivate us to work or in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking about this a student came to visit me. This was one my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was working on PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in preparation for merger and acquisition. And he 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 his boss, and his boss 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, he actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody ever watch it made him quite depressed.
So I thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the of our labor. And to start with, we created little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay three dollars for it.” And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, and said, “Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they yes, we 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 for me.” This was what called the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished one of them, we put them under the table. And we told them that at the of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will them back in the boxes, and we will use it for the participant.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. And other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, when he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would to start again. And you can think about this as the of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on hills, at least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and then again. There’s something about this cyclical version of doing something over and and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So in the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly we did. We asked people, “Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they yes, they built it. Then we asked them, “Do you want to build another for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a new one, as they were building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. when they finished that, we said, “Would you like build another one, this time for 30 cents less?” if they said yes, we gave them the one that built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
Now happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built more Bionicles — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the condition. And by 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 few cents. And not only that, everybody that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even small meaning made a difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In this other version the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as am describing to you now, and we asked them to what the result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not the magnitude. People who were just given the description of the experiment said that in the condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude the importance, the extent to which it’s important.
There one other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people who Legos, and some people who don’t. And you would that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the people love Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the 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, which suggests me that with this manipulation of breaking things in of people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company 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 building, and they asked them to innovate, and create next big product for this company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. 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 I them, I said, “How many of you now show up to work later you used to?” And everybody raised their hand. I said, “How of you now go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised their hand. I them, “How many of you now add not-so-kosher things your expense reports?” And they didn’t raise their hands, they took me out to dinner and showed me what could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could 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 company about their journey over the last two years and what they decided to do. could have asked them to think about which aspect their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked them 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 CEO basically not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then [wouldn’t] care. And 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 important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters were identical next to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet a little bit less, and so on and so forth. we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it on the pile next them. In the second condition, people did not write their name it. The 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, just put it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got sheet of paper, and put it directly into a 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 people harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. the shredder condition, it was twice as much — 30 cents per sheet.
And this is basically result we had before. You shred people’s efforts, output — you get them not be as 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 not so work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first you’d do good work, but then you see nobody is testing it, so you would do more and more and more. So fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten money, and put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was almost like 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 their eyes. Ignoring gets a whole way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the good news is 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 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 is a in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store kind of okay furniture that takes a long time assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble one those, it takes me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much confusing, I put things in the wrong way — I can’t say I those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But when I it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of more than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when they cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this powder and they would put it a box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and — voila — you cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out was there was not enough effort involved. It was so that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, “Here is cake.” No, it was somebody else’s cake, as if you it in the store. It didn’t really feel like own. So what did they do? They took the eggs the milk out of the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had break the eggs and add them, you had to measure milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, think a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting to work harder, they actually got them to love what they’re doing to a degree.
So how do we look 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. then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs to us. You for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. How do you want to pay for it?” And we measured how much were willing to pay for it. And we had two of people: We had the people who built it, and the who did not build it, and just looked at as external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that these were pieces of 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, I know that nobody else would love it?” Or “I love origami, and everybody else will love it as well?” one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in view. They thought everybody else would love it more well.
In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. some people, we just eliminated that. So now this tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami was 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 at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than first version.
(Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most would say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
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But this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not your kids. And one day you went to the park and you met some kids. They were like your kids, and you played with them for 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? Most say not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are good, what about the instructions that come with kids, are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature of creation, we don’t see that other people don’t see things our way.
Let me say last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He an example 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 get person to do step one, and one person to do step and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they doing. And 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 Karl Marx. But the is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer no. I think that as we move to situations in people have to decide on their own about how 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 Marx has 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 probably add all kinds things to it — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if we added all of components and thought about them — how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, how do we do it in our workplace, and the employees — I think we could get people to be both productive and happier.
Thank you very much.