I want to talk a little bit about labor and work.
When we think about how work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like in a maze — that all people care about is money, the moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers pay 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 you think about it, there’s all kinds strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to be happy, moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people down, and after they recover, they go up again. And you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there’s kinds of other things that motivate us to work or behave all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I started thinking this after a student came to visit me. This was of my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day to campus. And he told me the following story: He that for more than two weeks, he was working a 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 — graphs, tables, information. He stayed 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.” And guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it him quite depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we asked them build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them and we said, “Hey, would you like to build Bionicle for three dollars? We’ll pay you three dollars it.” And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And when they finished, took it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like to build another one, time for $2.70?” If they said 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 so on, until some point people said, “No more. It’s not worth it for me.” This was what we called the condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, put them under the table. And we told them that at the end of the experiment, we will all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will them back in the boxes, and we will use 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 the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same up a hill, and when he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he have to start again. And you can think about this the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill hole back up and then dig again. There’s something about this version of doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.
So the second condition of this experiment, that’s exactly what we did. We asked people, “Would you like build one Bionicle for three dollars?” And if they said yes, they built it. Then we them, “Do you want to build another one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a 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 build one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if said yes, we gave them the one that they built we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened that people built many more Bionicles — eleven in meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning made difference.
Now we had another version of this experiment. this other version of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we described to them the situation, much as I am describing you now, and we asked them to predict what the result would be. What happened? 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. 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 data looked at. If you think about it, there are some people 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 after all, get more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less would build less Legos because enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that’s actually what we in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice between the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built.
What in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero — there was no relationship between the of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to that with this manipulation of breaking things in front people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity. basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to big software company in Seattle. I can’t tell you who they were, but they were big company in Seattle. This was a group within software company that was put in a different building, and asked them to innovate, and create the next big 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. And I stood in front of 200 of the most depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And described to them some of these Lego experiments, and said they felt like they had just been through experiment. And I asked them, I said, “How many of now show up to work later than you used to?” everybody raised their hand. I said, “How many of now 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 didn’t raise their hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the have done to make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds of ideas.
They the CEO could have asked them to present to 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 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 did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning unimportant, then he [wouldn’t] care. And he would say, “At the moment I directed in this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything will be okay.” if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out that it’s actually important spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more about they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper random letters, and we asked 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 little bit less, and so on and so forth. And we had conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, “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 put it on pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in those conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what pay rate stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They 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 shredder condition, it 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 out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people could 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 is really testing it, so you would more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people have submitted more work and gotten more money, and less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. gets you a whole way out there. The good news that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people’s motivations. So the news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, might overdo it. So this 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 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 know about you, every time I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it’s more 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 to like those IKEA pieces of furniture than I like other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So they started cake mixes in the ’40s, they 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 the oven, and — voila — you had cake. But it turns they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of 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, as if you it in the store. It didn’t really feel like your own. So did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you had to the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was cake. Now everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to harder, they actually got them to love what they’re to a higher degree.
So how do we look this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something that was really quite ugly — like a frog or a crane. But then we told them, “Look, origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it you. How much do you want to pay for it?” And measured how much they were willing to pay for it. we 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 beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they were willing pay five times more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now could say — if you were a builder, do think [you’d say], “Oh, I love this origami, but I know that nobody else love it?” Or “I love this origami, and everybody else will it as well?” Which one of 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 gave same task. For some people, we made it harder 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 now this tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we the same thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the 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 you something about how we evaluate things.
Now think kids. Imagine I asked you, “How much would you sell your 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 different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one you went to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played them for a few hours, and when you were to leave, the parents said, “Hey, by the way, before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much you pay for them now? Most people say not much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just of who they are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, and of the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what the instructions that come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much like builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don’t that other people don’t see things our way.
Let say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith 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 one person 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 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 the pin. But if you do one step every time, maybe don’t care as much.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Marx. But the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I that as we move to situations in which people have to on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, connected they feel to it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, in the shower and so on, all of a sudden has more things to say to us. So when we think labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to — meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.
The good news is that if added all of those components and thought about them — how we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how we do it in our workplace, and for the employees — think we could get people to be both more and happier.
Thank you very much.