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Translator: Timothy Covell
Reviewer: Morton Bast
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I want to talk a little bit today
about labor and work.
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When we think about how people work,
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the naive intuition we have
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is that people are like rats in a maze --
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that all people care about is money,
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and the moment we give them money,
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we can direct them to work one way,
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we can direct them to work another way.
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This is why we give bonuses to bankers
and pay in all kinds of ways.
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And we really have
this incredibly simplistic view
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of why people work, and what
the labor market looks like.
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At the same time, if you think about it,
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there's all kinds of strange behaviors
in the world around us.
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Think about something like mountaineering
and mountain climbing.
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If you read books of people
who climb mountains, difficult mountains,
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do you think that those books are full
of moments of joy and happiness?
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No, they are full of misery.
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In fact, it's all about frostbite
and having difficulty walking,
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and difficulty breathing --
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cold, challenging circumstances.
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And if people were just trying
to be happy,
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the moment they would get to the top,
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they would say,
"This was a terrible mistake.
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I'll never do it again."
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(Laughter)
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"Instead, let me sit on a beach
somewhere drinking mojitos."
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But instead, people go down,
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and after they recover, they go up again.
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And if you think about
mountain climbing as an example,
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it suggests all kinds of things.
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It suggests that we care
about reaching the end, a peak.
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It suggests that we care
about the fight, about the challenge.
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It suggests that there's all kinds
of other things that motivate us
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to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
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And for me personally,
I started thinking about this
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after a student came to visit me.
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This was one of my students
from a few years earlier,
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and he came one day back to campus.
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And he told me the following story:
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He said that for more than two weeks,
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he was working
on a PowerPoint presentation.
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He was working in a big bank,
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and this was in preparation
for a merger and acquisition.
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And he was working very hard
on this presentation --
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graphs, tables, information.
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He stayed late at night every day.
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And the day before it was due,
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he sent his PowerPoint
presentation to his boss,
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and his boss wrote him back and said,
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"Nice presentation,
but the merger is canceled."
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And the guy was deeply depressed.
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Now at the moment when he was working,
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he was actually quite happy.
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Every night he was enjoying his work,
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he was staying late, he was perfecting
this PowerPoint presentation.
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But knowing that nobody would ever
watch it made him quite depressed.
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So I started thinking
about how do we experiment
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with this idea of the fruits of our labor.
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And to start with, we created
a little experiment
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in which we gave people Legos,
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and we asked them to build with Legos.
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And for some people,
we gave them Legos and we said,
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"Hey, would you like to build
this Bionicle for three dollars?
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We'll pay you three dollars for it."
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And people said yes,
and they built with these Legos.
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And when they finished, we took it,
we put it under the table,
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and we said, "Would you like
to build another one,
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this time for $2.70?"
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If they said yes,
we gave them another one,
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and when they finished, we asked them,
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"Do you want to build another one?"
for $2.40, $2.10, and so on,
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until at some point people said,
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"No more. It's not worth it for me."
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This was what we called
the meaningful condition.
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People built one Bionicle after another.
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After they finished every one of them,
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we put them under the table.
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And we told them that at the end
of the experiment,
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we will take all these Bionicles,
we will disassemble them,
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we will put them back in the boxes,
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and we will use it
for the next participant.
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There was another condition.
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This other condition was inspired
by David, my student.
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And this other condition we called
the Sisyphic condition.
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And if you remember
the story about Sisyphus,
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Sisyphus was punished by the gods
to push the same rock up a hill,
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and when he almost got to the end,
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the rock would roll over,
and he would have to start again.
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And you can think about this
as the essence of doing futile work.
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You can imagine that if he pushed
the rock on different hills,
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at least he would have
some sense of progress.
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Also, if you look at prison movies,
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sometimes the way that the guards
torture the prisoners
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is to get them to dig a hole,
and when the prisoner is finished,
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they ask him to fill the hole
back up and then dig again.
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There's something
about this cyclical version
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of doing something over and over and over
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that seems to be
particularly demotivating.
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So in the second condition
of this experiment,
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that's exactly what we did.
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We asked people,
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"Would you like to build
one Bionicle for three dollars?"
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And if they said yes, they built it.
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Then we asked them, "Do you want
to build another one for $2.70?"
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And if they said yes,
we gave them a new one,
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and as they were building it,
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we took apart the one
that they just finished.
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And when they finished that,
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we said, "Would you like
to build another one,
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this time for 30 cents less?"
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And if they said yes,
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we gave them the one
that they built and we broke.
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So this was an endless cycle
of them building,
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and us destroying in front of their eyes.
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Now what happens when you compare
these two conditions?
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The first thing that happened was
that people built many more Bionicles --
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eleven in the meaningful condition,
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versus seven in the Sisyphus condition.
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And by the way, we should point out
that this was not big meaning.
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People were not curing cancer
or building bridges.
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People were building
Bionicles for a few cents.
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And not only that, everybody knew
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that the Bionicles
would be destroyed quite soon.
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So there was not a real
opportunity for big meaning.
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But even the small meaning
made a difference.
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Now we had another version
of this experiment.
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In this other version of the experiment,
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we didn't put people in this situation,
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we just described to them the situation,
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much as I am describing to you now,
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and we asked them to predict
what the result would be.
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What happened?
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People predicted the right direction
but not the right magnitude.
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People who were just given
the description of the experiment
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said that in the meaningful condition,
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people would probably build
one more Bionicle.
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So people understand
that meaning is important,
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they just don't understand
the magnitude of the importance,
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the extent to which it's important.
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There was one other piece
of data we looked at.
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If you think about it, there are
some people who love Legos,
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and some people who don't.
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And you would speculate
that the people who love Legos
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would build more Legos,
even for less money,
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because after all,
they get more internal joy from it.
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And the people who love Legos less
would build less Legos
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because the enjoyment
that they derive from it is lower.
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And that's actually what we found
in the meaningful condition.
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There was a very nice correlation
between the love of Legos
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and the amount of Legos people built.
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What happened in the Sisyphic condition?
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In that condition,
the correlation was zero --
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there was no relationship
between the love of Legos,
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and how much people built,
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which suggests to me
that with this manipulation
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of breaking things
in front of people's eyes,
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we basically crushed any joy
that they could get out of this activity.
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We basically eliminated it.
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Soon after I finished
running this experiment,
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I went to talk to a big
software company in Seattle.
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I can't tell you who they were,
but they were a big company in Seattle.
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This was a group
within the software company
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that was put in a different building,
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and they asked them to innovate,
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and create the next big product
for this company.
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And the week before I showed up,
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the CEO of this big software company
went to that group, 200 engineers,
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and canceled the project.
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And I stood there in front of 200
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of the most depressed
people I've ever talked to.
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And I described to them
some of these Lego experiments,
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and they said they felt like they had
just been through that experiment.
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And I asked them, I said,
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"How many of you now show up
to work later than you used to?"
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And everybody raised their hand.
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I said, "How many of you now go home
earlier than you used to?"
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Everybody raised their hand.
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I asked them, "How many of you now add
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not-so-kosher things
to your expense reports?"
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And they didn't raise their hands,
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but they took me out to dinner
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and showed me what they could do
with expense reports.
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And then I asked them, I said,
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"What could the CEO have done
to make you not as depressed?"
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And they came up with all kinds of ideas.
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They said the CEO could have asked
them to present to the whole company
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about their journey
over the last two years
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and what they decided to do.
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He could have asked them to think
about which aspect of their technology
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could fit with other parts
of the organization.
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He could have asked them to build
some next-generation prototypes,
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and see how they would work.
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But the thing is that any one of those
would require some effort and motivation.
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And I think the CEO basically did not
understand the importance of meaning.
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If the CEO, just like our participants,
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thought the essence
of meaning is unimportant,
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then he [wouldn't] care.
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And he would say, "At the moment
I directed you in this way,
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and now that I'm directing
you in this way,
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everything will be okay."
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But if you understood
how important meaning is,
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then you would figure out
that it's actually important
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to spend some time, energy and effort
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in getting people to care more
about what they're doing.
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The next experiment
was slightly different.
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We took a sheet of paper
with random letters,
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and we asked people
to find pairs of letters
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that were identical next to each other.
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That was the task.
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People did the first sheet,
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then we asked if they wanted to do
another for a little less money,
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the next sheet for a little bit
less, and so on and so forth.
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And we had three conditions.
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In the first condition, people
wrote their name on the sheet,
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found all the pairs of letters,
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gave it to the experimenter,
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the experimenter would look at it,
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scan it from top to bottom,
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say "Uh huh," and put it
on the pile next to them.
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In the second condition,
people did not write their name on it.
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The experimenter looked at it,
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took the sheet of paper,
did not look at it, did not scan it,
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and simply put it on the pile of pages.
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So you take a piece,
you just put it on the side.
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In the third condition,
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the experimenter got the sheet of paper,
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and put it directly into a shredder.
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(Laughter)
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What happened in those three conditions?
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In this plot I'm showing you
at what pay rate people stopped.
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So low numbers mean
that people worked harder.
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They worked for much longer.
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In the acknowledged condition,
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people worked all the way
down to 15 cents.
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At 15 cents per page,
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they basically stopped these efforts.
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In the shredder condition, it was twice
as much -- 30 cents per sheet.
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And this is basically
the result we had before.
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You shred people's efforts, output --
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you get them not to be as happy
with what they're doing.
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But I should point out, by the way,
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that in the shredder condition,
people could have cheated.
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They could have done not so good work,
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because they realized
people were just shredding it.
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So maybe the first sheet
you'd do good work,
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but then you see nobody
is really testing it,
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so you would do more and more and more.
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So in fact, in the shredder condition,
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people could have submitted more work
and gotten more money,
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and put less effort into it.
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But what about the ignored condition?
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Would the ignored condition
be more like the acknowledged
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or more like the shredder,
or somewhere in the middle?
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It turns out it was
almost like the shredder.
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Now there's good news and bad news here.
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The bad news is that ignoring
the performance of people
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is almost as bad as shredding
their effort in front of their eyes.
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Ignoring gets you a whole way out there.
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The good news is that by simply looking
at something that somebody has done,
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scanning it and saying "Uh huh,"
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that seems to be quite sufficient
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to dramatically improve
people's motivations.
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So the good news is that adding motivation
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doesn't seem to be so difficult.
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The bad news is
that eliminating motivations
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seems to be incredibly easy,
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and if we don't think about it
carefully, we might overdo it.
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So this is all in terms
of negative motivation,
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or eliminating negative motivation.
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The next part I want to show you
is something about positive motivation.
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So there is a store
in the U.S. called IKEA.
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And IKEA is a store
with kind of okay furniture
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that takes a long time to assemble.
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(Laughter)
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I don't know about you,
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but every time I assemble one of those,
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it takes me much longer,
it's much more effortful,
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it's much more confusing,
I put things in the wrong way --
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I can't say I enjoy those pieces.
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I can't say I enjoy the process.
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But when I finish it,
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I seem to like those
IKEA pieces of furniture
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more than I like other ones.
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(Laughter)
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And there's an old story about cake mixes.
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So when they started
cake mixes in the '40s,
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they would take this powder
and they would put it in a box,
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and they would ask housewives
to basically pour it in,
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stir some water in it,
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mix it, put it in the oven,
and -- voila -- you had cake.
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But it turns out they were very unpopular.
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People did not want them,
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and they thought about
all kinds of reasons for that.
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Maybe the taste was not good?
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No, the taste was great.
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What they figured out was
that there was not enough effort involved.
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It was so easy that nobody
could serve cake to their guests
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and say, "Here is my cake."
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No, it was somebody else's cake,
as if you bought it in the store.
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It didn't really feel like your own.
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So what did they do?
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They took the eggs and the milk
out of the powder.
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(Laughter)
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Now you had to break
the eggs and add them,
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you had to measure the milk
and add it, mixing it.
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Now it was your cake.
Now everything was fine.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Now, I think a little bit
like the IKEA effect,
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by getting people to work harder,
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they actually got them to love
what they're doing
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to a higher degree.
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So how do we look at this
question experimentally?
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We asked people to build some origami.
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We gave them instructions
on how to create origami,
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and we gave them a sheet of paper.
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And these were all novices,
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and they built something
that was really quite ugly --
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nothing like a frog or a crane.
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But then we told them,
"Look, this origami really belongs to us.
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You worked for us, but I'll tell
you what, we'll sell it to you.
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How much do you want to pay for it?"
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And we measured how much
they were willing to pay for it.
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And we had two types of people:
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We had the people who built it,
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and the people who did not build it,
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and just looked at it
as external observers.
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And what we found
was that the builders thought
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that these were beautiful
pieces of origami --
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(Laughter)
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and they were willing to pay
five times more for them
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than the people who just
evaluated them externally.
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Now you could say --
if you were a builder,
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do you think [you'd say],
"Oh, I love this origami,
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but I know that nobody
else would love it?"
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Or "I love this origami,
and everybody else will love it as well?"
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Which one of those two is correct?
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Turns out the builders
not only loved the origami more,
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they thought that everybody
would see the world in their view.
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They thought everybody else
would love it more as well.
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In the next version,
we tried to do the IKEA effect.
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We tried to make it more difficult.
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So for some people, we gave the same task.
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For some people, we made it harder
by hiding the instructions.
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At the top of the sheet,
we had little diagrams
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of how you fold origami.
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For some people, we just eliminated that.
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So now this was tougher.
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What happened?
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Well in an objective way,
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the origami now was uglier,
it was more difficult.
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Now when we looked at the easy
origami, we saw the same thing --
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builders loved it more,
evaluators loved it less.
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When you looked at the hard instructions,
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the effect was larger.
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Why?
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Because now the builders
loved it even more.
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(Laughter)
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They put all this extra effort into it.
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And evaluators?
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They loved it even less.
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Because in reality, it was even uglier
than the first version.
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(Laughter)
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Of course, this tells you something
about how we evaluate things.
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Now think about kids.
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Imagine I asked you, "How much
would you sell your kids for?"
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Your memories and associations and so on.
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Most people would say
for a lot, a lot of money.
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(Laughter)
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On good days.
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(Laughter)
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But imagine this was slightly different.
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Imagine if you did not have your kids.
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And one day you went to the park
and you met some kids.
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They were just like your kids,
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and you played with them for a few hours,
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and when you were about to leave,
the parents said, "Hey, by the way,
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just before you leave,
if you're interested, they're for sale."
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(Laughter)
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How much would you pay for them now?
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Most people say not that much.
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And this is because our kids
are so valuable,
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not just because of who they are,
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but because of us,
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because they are so connected to us,
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and because of the time and connection.
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By the way, if you think
IKEA instructions are not good,
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what about the instructions that come
with kids, those are really tough.
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(Laughter)
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By the way, these are my kids, which,
of course, are wonderful and so on.
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Which comes to tell you one more thing,
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which is, much like our builders,
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when they look at the creature
of their creation,
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we don't see that other people
don't see things our way.
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Let me say one last comment.
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If you think about Adam Smith
versus Karl Marx,
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Adam Smith had a very important
notion of efficiency.
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He gave an example of a pin factory.
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He said pins have 12 different steps,
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and if one person does all 12 steps,
production is very low.
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But if you get one person to do step one,
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and one person to do step two
and step three and so on,
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production can increase tremendously.
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And indeed, this is a great example,
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and the reason for the Industrial
Revolution and efficiency.
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Karl Marx, on the other hand,
00:18:57
said that the alienation
of labor is incredibly important
00:19:01
in how people think about the connection
to what they are doing.
00:19:04
And if you do all 12 steps,
you care about the pin.
00:19:08
But if you do one step every time,
maybe you don't care as much.
00:19:12
I think that in the Industrial Revolution,
00:19:15
Adam Smith was more
correct than Karl Marx.
00:19:18
But the reality is that we've switched,
00:19:21
and now we're in the knowledge economy.
00:19:23
You can ask yourself, what happens
in a knowledge economy?
00:19:26
Is efficiency still more
important than meaning?
00:19:29
I think the answer is no.
00:19:30
I think that as we move to situations
00:19:33
in which people have
to decide on their own
00:19:36
about how much effort, attention,
caring, how connected they feel to it,
00:19:40
are they thinking about labor
on the way to work,
00:19:42
and in the shower and so on,
00:19:44
all of a sudden Marx
has more things to say to us.
00:19:48
So when we think about labor,
00:19:50
we usually think about motivation
and payment as the same thing,
00:19:53
but the reality is that we should
probably add all kinds of things to it --
00:19:57
meaning, creation, challenges,
ownership, identity, pride, etc.
00:20:01
The good news is that if we added
all of those components
00:20:04
and thought about them --
00:20:06
how do we create our own
meaning, pride, motivation,
00:20:09
and how do we do it in our workplace,
00:20:11
and for the employees --
00:20:12
I think we could get people to be
both more productive and happier.
00:20:16
Thank you very much.
00:20:18
(Applause)
