I want to talk little bit today about labor and work.
When we think about how people work, the naive intuition we is that people are like rats in a maze — that people care about is money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them to one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers pay in all kinds of ways. And we really this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and the labor market looks like.
At the same time, if think about it, there’s all kinds of strange behaviors in world around us. Think about something like mountaineering and climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. if people were just trying to be happy, the moment they get to the top, they would say, “This was terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”
(Laughter)
“Instead, let me sit a beach somewhere drinking mojitos.” But instead, people go down, and they recover, they go up again. And if you think about climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, about challenge. It suggests that there’s all kinds of other things that motivate us work or behave in all kinds of ways.
And for me personally, I thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This was one of my students from a years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And he told the following story: He said that for more than weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He working in a big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. he was working very hard on this presentation — graphs, tables, information. He stayed late night every day. And the day before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and boss wrote him back and said, “Nice presentation, but merger is canceled.” And the guy was deeply depressed. at the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him depressed.
So I started thinking about how do we with this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, we asked them to build with Legos. And for people, we gave them Legos and we said, “Hey, would 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 when finished, we took it, we put it under the table, and we said, “Would you like build another one, this time for $2.70?” If they yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, 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. People built one Bionicle after another. After finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And we them that at the end of the experiment, we will take all Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back the boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
There was another condition. other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we called the condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when he got to the end, the rock would roll over, he would have to start again. And you can think about as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he the rock on different hills, at least he would some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way the guards torture the prisoners is to get them dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, ask him to fill the hole back up and dig 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 one for $2.70?” And if they said yes, we gave them a new one, and as were building it, we took apart the one that just finished. And when they finished that, we said, “Would you like to another one, this time for 30 cents less?” And if they said yes, gave them the one that they built and we broke. So was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of eyes.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? first thing that happened was that people built many more — eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And the way, we should point out that this was big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real for big meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Now had another version of this experiment. In this other of the experiment, we didn’t put people in this situation, we just to them the situation, much as I am describing to now, and we asked them to predict what the result would be. What happened? People predicted the direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just given description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand meaning is important, they just don’t understand the magnitude of the importance, extent to which it’s important.
There was one other piece of data looked at. If you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, and people who don’t. And you would speculate that the who love Legos would build more Legos, even for money, because after all, they get more internal joy it. And the people who love Legos less would less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from is lower. And that’s actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There was very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the of Legos people built.
What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation zero — there was no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front people’s eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Soon after I finished running experiment, I went to talk to a big software company 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 they asked them to innovate, and the next big product for this company. And the before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company went that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the depressed people I’ve ever talked to. And I described them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like had just been through that experiment. And I asked them, 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 go home earlier than you used to?” Everybody raised hand. I asked 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 they could do with reports. And then I asked them, I said, “What could the CEO done to make you not as depressed?” And they came up with all kinds ideas.
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to the company about their journey over the last two years and they decided to do. He could have asked them think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other of the organization. He could have asked them to some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But the thing is that one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically 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 moment I directed you in this way, and now that I’m directing you in this way, everything be okay.” But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out it’s actually important to spend some time, energy and effort getting people to care more about what they’re doing.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet paper with random letters, and we asked people to find of letters that were identical next to each other. was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if wanted to do another for a little less money, next sheet for a little bit less, and so on so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it top to bottom, say “Uh huh,” and put it the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So you take piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
(Laughter)
What happened in three conditions?
In this plot I’m showing you at what rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In shredder 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. But I 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. maybe the first sheet you’d do good work, but you see nobody is really testing it, so you would more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, could have submitted more work and gotten more money, put less effort into it. But what about the condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was like the shredder.
Now there’s good news and bad news here. bad 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 something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying “Uh huh,” that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically people’s motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, eliminating negative motivation.
The next part I want to you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store in U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a time to assemble.
(Laughter)
I don’t know about you, but every time I assemble one of those, it me much longer, it’s much more effortful, it’s much more confusing, I things in the wrong way — I can’t say enjoy those pieces. I can’t say I enjoy the process. But I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I other ones.
(Laughter)
And there’s an old story about cake mixes. So when started cake mixes in the ’40s, they would take this and they would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, — voila — you had cake. But it turns out they very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could cake to their guests and say, “Here is my cake.” No, it was 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 and the milk out the powder.
(Laughter)
Now you had to break the eggs add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. everything was fine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, I think a little bit like IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them love what they’re doing to a higher degree.
So how do we at this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We gave instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. these were all novices, and they built something that really quite ugly — nothing like a frog or crane. But then we told them, “Look, this origami really belongs us. You worked for us, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll sell it to you. much do you want to pay for it?” And measured how much they 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 builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami —
(Laughter)
and they willing to pay five times more for them than the people who just them externally. Now you could say — if you were a builder, do 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 two is correct? Turns out the builders not only the origami more, they thought that everybody would see world in their view. They thought everybody else would love more as well.
In the next version, we tried to do 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. the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now we looked at the easy origami, we saw the thing — builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the loved it even more.
(Laughter)
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? 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 your kids for?” Your memories and associations and so on. Most people say for a lot, a lot of money.
(Laughter)
On good days.
(Laughter)
But this 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 few hours, when you were about to leave, the parents said, “Hey, the way, just before you leave, if you’re interested, they’re for sale.”
(Laughter)
How much would you pay for now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not because of who they are, but because of us, they are so connected to us, and because of time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions come with kids, those are really tough.
(Laughter)
By the way, 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 at the creature of their creation, we don’t see that other don’t see things our way.
Let me say one last comment. If you think Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But you get one person to do step one, and person to do step two and step three and so on, production 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 alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people think about the to what they are doing. And if you do 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you one step every time, maybe you don’t care as much.
I think that the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. the reality is that we’ve switched, and now we’re in the knowledge economy. can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I that as we move to situations in which people have to decide on own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected feel to 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 to say to us. So when we about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as same thing, but the reality is that we should probably 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 — how do we create our meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it our workplace, and for the employees — I think could get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank very much.