1 00:00:00,944 --> 00:00:04,809 I want to talk a little bit today about labor and work. 2 00:00:06,500 --> 00:00:09,222 When we think about how people work, 3 00:00:09,246 --> 00:00:11,615 the naive intuition we have 4 00:00:11,639 --> 00:00:14,003 is that people are like rats in a maze -- 5 00:00:14,027 --> 00:00:15,996 that all people care about is money, 6 00:00:16,020 --> 00:00:17,672 and the moment we give them money, 7 00:00:17,696 --> 00:00:19,394 we can direct them to work one way, 8 00:00:19,418 --> 00:00:21,398 we can direct them to work another way. 9 00:00:21,422 --> 00:00:25,033 This is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. 10 00:00:25,057 --> 00:00:28,525 And we really have this incredibly simplistic view 11 00:00:28,549 --> 00:00:32,819 of why people work, and what the labor market looks like. 12 00:00:32,843 --> 00:00:35,166 At the same time, if you think about it, 13 00:00:35,190 --> 00:00:38,499 there's all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. 14 00:00:38,910 --> 00:00:42,251 Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. 15 00:00:42,275 --> 00:00:46,526 If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, 16 00:00:46,550 --> 00:00:51,239 do you think that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? 17 00:00:51,699 --> 00:00:54,016 No, they are full of misery. 18 00:00:54,040 --> 00:00:57,698 In fact, it's all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, 19 00:00:57,722 --> 00:00:59,382 and difficulty breathing -- 20 00:00:59,406 --> 00:01:02,444 cold, challenging circumstances. 21 00:01:02,468 --> 00:01:04,922 And if people were just trying to be happy, 22 00:01:04,946 --> 00:01:06,803 the moment they would get to the top, 23 00:01:06,827 --> 00:01:08,952 they would say, "This was a terrible mistake. 24 00:01:08,976 --> 00:01:10,357 I'll never do it again." 25 00:01:10,381 --> 00:01:11,498 (Laughter) 26 00:01:11,522 --> 00:01:15,137 "Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos." 27 00:01:15,161 --> 00:01:18,835 But instead, people go down, 28 00:01:18,859 --> 00:01:21,177 and after they recover, they go up again. 29 00:01:21,756 --> 00:01:24,826 And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, 30 00:01:24,850 --> 00:01:26,865 it suggests all kinds of things. 31 00:01:27,206 --> 00:01:30,793 It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. 32 00:01:31,135 --> 00:01:34,642 It suggests that we care about the fight, about the challenge. 33 00:01:34,666 --> 00:01:38,126 It suggests that there's all kinds of other things that motivate us 34 00:01:38,150 --> 00:01:41,497 to work or behave in all kinds of ways. 35 00:01:42,322 --> 00:01:44,797 And for me personally, I started thinking about this 36 00:01:44,821 --> 00:01:47,614 after a student came to visit me. 37 00:01:48,085 --> 00:01:51,990 This was one of my students from a few years earlier, 38 00:01:52,014 --> 00:01:53,798 and he came one day back to campus. 39 00:01:54,204 --> 00:01:56,047 And he told me the following story: 40 00:01:56,359 --> 00:01:58,781 He said that for more than two weeks, 41 00:01:58,805 --> 00:02:01,472 he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. 42 00:02:01,850 --> 00:02:03,596 He was working in a big bank, 43 00:02:03,620 --> 00:02:07,009 and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. 44 00:02:07,430 --> 00:02:09,921 And he was working very hard on this presentation -- 45 00:02:09,945 --> 00:02:11,930 graphs, tables, information. 46 00:02:11,954 --> 00:02:14,901 He stayed late at night every day. 47 00:02:15,464 --> 00:02:17,654 And the day before it was due, 48 00:02:17,678 --> 00:02:20,988 he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, 49 00:02:21,012 --> 00:02:23,618 and his boss wrote him back and said, 50 00:02:23,642 --> 00:02:27,134 "Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled." 51 00:02:28,340 --> 00:02:30,157 And the guy was deeply depressed. 52 00:02:30,475 --> 00:02:32,635 Now at the moment when he was working, 53 00:02:32,659 --> 00:02:34,519 he was actually quite happy. 54 00:02:34,543 --> 00:02:36,798 Every night he was enjoying his work, 55 00:02:36,822 --> 00:02:41,496 he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. 56 00:02:41,520 --> 00:02:46,191 But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed. 57 00:02:46,779 --> 00:02:49,303 So I started thinking about how do we experiment 58 00:02:49,327 --> 00:02:52,596 with this idea of the fruits of our labor. 59 00:02:53,366 --> 00:02:57,564 And to start with, we created a little experiment 60 00:02:57,588 --> 00:03:00,594 in which we gave people Legos, 61 00:03:00,618 --> 00:03:03,142 and we asked them to build with Legos. 62 00:03:03,960 --> 00:03:07,477 And for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, 63 00:03:07,501 --> 00:03:12,246 "Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? 64 00:03:12,270 --> 00:03:14,320 We'll pay you three dollars for it." 65 00:03:14,344 --> 00:03:17,491 And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. 66 00:03:17,872 --> 00:03:21,438 And when they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, 67 00:03:21,462 --> 00:03:24,447 and we said, "Would you like to build another one, 68 00:03:24,471 --> 00:03:26,096 this time for $2.70?" 69 00:03:26,471 --> 00:03:28,488 If they said yes, we gave them another one, 70 00:03:28,512 --> 00:03:30,369 and when they finished, we asked them, 71 00:03:30,393 --> 00:03:34,213 "Do you want to build another one?" for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, 72 00:03:34,237 --> 00:03:36,087 until at some point people said, 73 00:03:36,111 --> 00:03:38,832 "No more. It's not worth it for me." 74 00:03:40,102 --> 00:03:42,754 This was what we called the meaningful condition. 75 00:03:42,778 --> 00:03:45,805 People built one Bionicle after another. 76 00:03:45,829 --> 00:03:47,655 After they finished every one of them, 77 00:03:47,679 --> 00:03:49,024 we put them under the table. 78 00:03:49,048 --> 00:03:51,432 And we told them that at the end of the experiment, 79 00:03:51,456 --> 00:03:54,532 we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, 80 00:03:54,556 --> 00:03:56,379 we will put them back in the boxes, 81 00:03:56,403 --> 00:03:58,743 and we will use it for the next participant. 82 00:03:59,727 --> 00:04:01,258 There was another condition. 83 00:04:01,282 --> 00:04:05,338 This other condition was inspired by David, my student. 84 00:04:05,814 --> 00:04:09,242 And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. 85 00:04:09,266 --> 00:04:11,451 And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, 86 00:04:11,475 --> 00:04:16,702 Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, 87 00:04:16,726 --> 00:04:18,787 and when he almost got to the end, 88 00:04:18,811 --> 00:04:21,771 the rock would roll over, and he would have to start again. 89 00:04:21,795 --> 00:04:26,667 And you can think about this as the essence of doing futile work. 90 00:04:26,691 --> 00:04:29,644 You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, 91 00:04:29,668 --> 00:04:32,292 at least he would have some sense of progress. 92 00:04:32,316 --> 00:04:35,000 Also, if you look at prison movies, 93 00:04:35,024 --> 00:04:38,183 sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners 94 00:04:38,207 --> 00:04:41,842 is to get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, 95 00:04:41,866 --> 00:04:44,865 they ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again. 96 00:04:44,889 --> 00:04:47,071 There's something about this cyclical version 97 00:04:47,095 --> 00:04:49,710 of doing something over and over and over 98 00:04:49,734 --> 00:04:52,187 that seems to be particularly demotivating. 99 00:04:52,575 --> 00:04:54,782 So in the second condition of this experiment, 100 00:04:54,806 --> 00:04:56,472 that's exactly what we did. 101 00:04:56,496 --> 00:04:57,783 We asked people, 102 00:04:57,807 --> 00:05:00,966 "Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?" 103 00:05:00,990 --> 00:05:02,879 And if they said yes, they built it. 104 00:05:03,309 --> 00:05:06,714 Then we asked them, "Do you want to build another one for $2.70?" 105 00:05:06,738 --> 00:05:09,882 And if they said yes, we gave them a new one, 106 00:05:09,906 --> 00:05:11,691 and as they were building it, 107 00:05:11,715 --> 00:05:14,428 we took apart the one that they just finished. 108 00:05:15,515 --> 00:05:17,112 And when they finished that, 109 00:05:17,136 --> 00:05:19,308 we said, "Would you like to build another one, 110 00:05:19,332 --> 00:05:20,854 this time for 30 cents less?" 111 00:05:20,878 --> 00:05:22,077 And if they said yes, 112 00:05:22,101 --> 00:05:25,252 we gave them the one that they built and we broke. 113 00:05:25,276 --> 00:05:28,863 So this was an endless cycle of them building, 114 00:05:28,887 --> 00:05:31,413 and us destroying in front of their eyes. 115 00:05:32,643 --> 00:05:36,319 Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? 116 00:05:36,343 --> 00:05:39,874 The first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles -- 117 00:05:39,898 --> 00:05:42,136 eleven in the meaningful condition, 118 00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:44,898 versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. 119 00:05:44,922 --> 00:05:48,035 And by the way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. 120 00:05:48,059 --> 00:05:50,596 People were not curing cancer or building bridges. 121 00:05:50,620 --> 00:05:54,359 People were building Bionicles for a few cents. 122 00:05:54,383 --> 00:05:56,336 And not only that, everybody knew 123 00:05:56,360 --> 00:05:59,662 that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. 124 00:05:59,686 --> 00:06:02,517 So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning. 125 00:06:02,541 --> 00:06:05,646 But even the small meaning made a difference. 126 00:06:06,471 --> 00:06:08,789 Now we had another version of this experiment. 127 00:06:08,813 --> 00:06:10,728 In this other version of the experiment, 128 00:06:10,752 --> 00:06:12,695 we didn't put people in this situation, 129 00:06:12,719 --> 00:06:14,725 we just described to them the situation, 130 00:06:14,749 --> 00:06:16,855 much as I am describing to you now, 131 00:06:16,879 --> 00:06:20,234 and we asked them to predict what the result would be. 132 00:06:20,258 --> 00:06:21,417 What happened? 133 00:06:21,441 --> 00:06:25,117 People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. 134 00:06:25,491 --> 00:06:29,174 People who were just given the description of the experiment 135 00:06:29,198 --> 00:06:31,086 said that in the meaningful condition, 136 00:06:31,110 --> 00:06:33,768 people would probably build one more Bionicle. 137 00:06:33,792 --> 00:06:36,021 So people understand that meaning is important, 138 00:06:36,045 --> 00:06:38,879 they just don't understand the magnitude of the importance, 139 00:06:38,903 --> 00:06:40,854 the extent to which it's important. 140 00:06:41,657 --> 00:06:44,101 There was one other piece of data we looked at. 141 00:06:44,474 --> 00:06:47,331 If you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, 142 00:06:47,355 --> 00:06:48,817 and some people who don't. 143 00:06:48,841 --> 00:06:51,404 And you would speculate that the people who love Legos 144 00:06:51,428 --> 00:06:53,520 would build more Legos, even for less money, 145 00:06:53,544 --> 00:06:56,741 because after all, they get more internal joy from it. 146 00:06:56,765 --> 00:06:59,861 And the people who love Legos less would build less Legos 147 00:06:59,885 --> 00:07:02,789 because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. 148 00:07:02,813 --> 00:07:05,741 And that's actually what we found in the meaningful condition. 149 00:07:05,765 --> 00:07:08,574 There was a very nice correlation between the love of Legos 150 00:07:08,598 --> 00:07:10,703 and the amount of Legos people built. 151 00:07:11,012 --> 00:07:13,254 What happened in the Sisyphic condition? 152 00:07:13,679 --> 00:07:16,290 In that condition, the correlation was zero -- 153 00:07:16,314 --> 00:07:19,035 there was no relationship between the love of Legos, 154 00:07:19,059 --> 00:07:20,822 and how much people built, 155 00:07:20,846 --> 00:07:23,521 which suggests to me that with this manipulation 156 00:07:23,545 --> 00:07:25,983 of breaking things in front of people's eyes, 157 00:07:26,007 --> 00:07:30,556 we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity. 158 00:07:30,580 --> 00:07:32,238 We basically eliminated it. 159 00:07:33,833 --> 00:07:37,054 Soon after I finished running this experiment, 160 00:07:37,078 --> 00:07:40,498 I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. 161 00:07:41,392 --> 00:07:45,236 I can't tell you who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. 162 00:07:45,260 --> 00:07:47,348 This was a group within the software company 163 00:07:47,372 --> 00:07:49,164 that was put in a different building, 164 00:07:49,188 --> 00:07:50,808 and they asked them to innovate, 165 00:07:50,832 --> 00:07:54,090 and create the next big product for this company. 166 00:07:54,590 --> 00:07:56,119 And the week before I showed up, 167 00:07:56,143 --> 00:08:00,550 the CEO of this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, 168 00:08:00,574 --> 00:08:02,522 and canceled the project. 169 00:08:03,311 --> 00:08:05,341 And I stood there in front of 200 170 00:08:05,365 --> 00:08:08,441 of the most depressed people I've ever talked to. 171 00:08:09,014 --> 00:08:11,637 And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, 172 00:08:11,661 --> 00:08:16,561 and they said they felt like they had just been through that experiment. 173 00:08:17,053 --> 00:08:18,276 And I asked them, I said, 174 00:08:18,300 --> 00:08:21,892 "How many of you now show up to work later than you used to?" 175 00:08:21,916 --> 00:08:23,870 And everybody raised their hand. 176 00:08:23,894 --> 00:08:27,069 I said, "How many of you now go home earlier than you used to?" 177 00:08:27,093 --> 00:08:28,619 Everybody raised their hand. 178 00:08:29,006 --> 00:08:31,685 I asked them, "How many of you now add 179 00:08:31,709 --> 00:08:34,842 not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?" 180 00:08:34,866 --> 00:08:36,517 And they didn't raise their hands, 181 00:08:36,541 --> 00:08:37,986 but they took me out to dinner 182 00:08:38,010 --> 00:08:40,599 and showed me what they could do with expense reports. 183 00:08:42,580 --> 00:08:44,032 And then I asked them, I said, 184 00:08:44,056 --> 00:08:48,397 "What could the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?" 185 00:08:48,421 --> 00:08:50,524 And they came up with all kinds of ideas. 186 00:08:50,548 --> 00:08:53,929 They said the CEO could have asked them to present to the whole company 187 00:08:53,953 --> 00:08:55,956 about their journey over the last two years 188 00:08:55,980 --> 00:08:57,382 and what they decided to do. 189 00:08:57,406 --> 00:09:01,166 He could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology 190 00:09:01,190 --> 00:09:04,512 could fit with other parts of the organization. 191 00:09:04,536 --> 00:09:07,854 He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, 192 00:09:07,878 --> 00:09:09,879 and see how they would work. 193 00:09:09,903 --> 00:09:14,888 But the thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. 194 00:09:14,912 --> 00:09:19,092 And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. 195 00:09:19,116 --> 00:09:21,314 If the CEO, just like our participants, 196 00:09:21,338 --> 00:09:24,299 thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, 197 00:09:24,323 --> 00:09:25,537 then he [wouldn't] care. 198 00:09:25,561 --> 00:09:28,460 And he would say, "At the moment I directed you in this way, 199 00:09:28,484 --> 00:09:30,507 and now that I'm directing you in this way, 200 00:09:30,531 --> 00:09:32,053 everything will be okay." 201 00:09:32,077 --> 00:09:34,752 But if you understood how important meaning is, 202 00:09:34,776 --> 00:09:37,354 then you would figure out that it's actually important 203 00:09:37,378 --> 00:09:39,172 to spend some time, energy and effort 204 00:09:39,196 --> 00:09:42,100 in getting people to care more about what they're doing. 205 00:09:43,322 --> 00:09:45,433 The next experiment was slightly different. 206 00:09:45,457 --> 00:09:48,092 We took a sheet of paper with random letters, 207 00:09:48,116 --> 00:09:50,203 and we asked people to find pairs of letters 208 00:09:50,227 --> 00:09:52,258 that were identical next to each other. 209 00:09:52,282 --> 00:09:53,442 That was the task. 210 00:09:53,466 --> 00:09:54,870 People did the first sheet, 211 00:09:54,894 --> 00:09:58,239 then we asked if they wanted to do another for a little less money, 212 00:09:58,263 --> 00:10:01,139 the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. 213 00:10:01,163 --> 00:10:02,723 And we had three conditions. 214 00:10:02,747 --> 00:10:06,327 In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, 215 00:10:06,351 --> 00:10:08,641 found all the pairs of letters, 216 00:10:08,665 --> 00:10:10,306 gave it to the experimenter, 217 00:10:10,330 --> 00:10:12,213 the experimenter would look at it, 218 00:10:12,237 --> 00:10:13,972 scan it from top to bottom, 219 00:10:13,996 --> 00:10:17,910 say "Uh huh," and put it on the pile next to them. 220 00:10:18,680 --> 00:10:21,966 In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. 221 00:10:21,990 --> 00:10:24,355 The experimenter looked at it, 222 00:10:24,379 --> 00:10:27,322 took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, 223 00:10:27,346 --> 00:10:30,950 and simply put it on the pile of pages. 224 00:10:30,974 --> 00:10:33,510 So you take a piece, you just put it on the side. 225 00:10:33,534 --> 00:10:34,859 In the third condition, 226 00:10:34,883 --> 00:10:37,226 the experimenter got the sheet of paper, 227 00:10:37,250 --> 00:10:39,732 and put it directly into a shredder. 228 00:10:39,756 --> 00:10:41,756 (Laughter) 229 00:10:43,177 --> 00:10:45,970 What happened in those three conditions? 230 00:10:45,994 --> 00:10:50,196 In this plot I'm showing you at what pay rate people stopped. 231 00:10:50,220 --> 00:10:52,802 So low numbers mean that people worked harder. 232 00:10:52,826 --> 00:10:54,928 They worked for much longer. 233 00:10:54,952 --> 00:10:56,506 In the acknowledged condition, 234 00:10:56,530 --> 00:10:59,630 people worked all the way down to 15 cents. 235 00:10:59,654 --> 00:11:01,271 At 15 cents per page, 236 00:11:01,295 --> 00:11:03,119 they basically stopped these efforts. 237 00:11:03,642 --> 00:11:08,129 In the shredder condition, it was twice as much -- 30 cents per sheet. 238 00:11:08,153 --> 00:11:10,392 And this is basically the result we had before. 239 00:11:10,416 --> 00:11:13,780 You shred people's efforts, output -- 240 00:11:13,804 --> 00:11:16,464 you get them not to be as happy with what they're doing. 241 00:11:16,488 --> 00:11:18,192 But I should point out, by the way, 242 00:11:18,216 --> 00:11:20,946 that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. 243 00:11:20,970 --> 00:11:22,975 They could have done not so good work, 244 00:11:22,999 --> 00:11:25,498 because they realized people were just shredding it. 245 00:11:25,522 --> 00:11:27,609 So maybe the first sheet you'd do good work, 246 00:11:27,633 --> 00:11:29,768 but then you see nobody is really testing it, 247 00:11:29,792 --> 00:11:31,705 so you would do more and more and more. 248 00:11:31,729 --> 00:11:33,569 So in fact, in the shredder condition, 249 00:11:33,593 --> 00:11:36,427 people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, 250 00:11:36,451 --> 00:11:37,831 and put less effort into it. 251 00:11:38,471 --> 00:11:40,416 But what about the ignored condition? 252 00:11:40,440 --> 00:11:43,170 Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged 253 00:11:43,194 --> 00:11:46,113 or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? 254 00:11:46,137 --> 00:11:48,561 It turns out it was almost like the shredder. 255 00:11:49,473 --> 00:11:52,141 Now there's good news and bad news here. 256 00:11:52,917 --> 00:11:56,980 The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people 257 00:11:57,004 --> 00:12:01,276 is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. 258 00:12:01,300 --> 00:12:04,649 Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. 259 00:12:05,213 --> 00:12:09,522 The good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, 260 00:12:09,546 --> 00:12:11,539 scanning it and saying "Uh huh," 261 00:12:11,563 --> 00:12:13,149 that seems to be quite sufficient 262 00:12:13,173 --> 00:12:15,942 to dramatically improve people's motivations. 263 00:12:16,585 --> 00:12:19,365 So the good news is that adding motivation 264 00:12:19,389 --> 00:12:21,888 doesn't seem to be so difficult. 265 00:12:21,912 --> 00:12:24,066 The bad news is that eliminating motivations 266 00:12:24,090 --> 00:12:25,841 seems to be incredibly easy, 267 00:12:25,865 --> 00:12:29,657 and if we don't think about it carefully, we might overdo it. 268 00:12:29,681 --> 00:12:33,092 So this is all in terms of negative motivation, 269 00:12:33,116 --> 00:12:35,450 or eliminating negative motivation. 270 00:12:36,426 --> 00:12:39,905 The next part I want to show you is something about positive motivation. 271 00:12:40,473 --> 00:12:44,160 So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. 272 00:12:44,970 --> 00:12:49,175 And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture 273 00:12:49,199 --> 00:12:51,183 that takes a long time to assemble. 274 00:12:51,667 --> 00:12:53,316 (Laughter) 275 00:12:53,714 --> 00:12:54,866 I don't know about you, 276 00:12:54,890 --> 00:12:56,763 but every time I assemble one of those, 277 00:12:56,787 --> 00:12:59,128 it takes me much longer, it's much more effortful, 278 00:12:59,152 --> 00:13:02,517 it's much more confusing, I put things in the wrong way -- 279 00:13:03,186 --> 00:13:05,766 I can't say I enjoy those pieces. 280 00:13:06,175 --> 00:13:08,473 I can't say I enjoy the process. 281 00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:10,676 But when I finish it, 282 00:13:10,700 --> 00:13:12,818 I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture 283 00:13:12,842 --> 00:13:14,694 more than I like other ones. 284 00:13:14,718 --> 00:13:15,774 (Laughter) 285 00:13:15,798 --> 00:13:19,151 And there's an old story about cake mixes. 286 00:13:19,758 --> 00:13:22,985 So when they started cake mixes in the '40s, 287 00:13:23,009 --> 00:13:26,465 they would take this powder and they would put it in a box, 288 00:13:26,489 --> 00:13:29,530 and they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, 289 00:13:29,554 --> 00:13:31,276 stir some water in it, 290 00:13:31,300 --> 00:13:35,562 mix it, put it in the oven, and -- voila -- you had cake. 291 00:13:35,586 --> 00:13:37,615 But it turns out they were very unpopular. 292 00:13:37,639 --> 00:13:39,450 People did not want them, 293 00:13:39,474 --> 00:13:41,999 and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. 294 00:13:42,023 --> 00:13:43,432 Maybe the taste was not good? 295 00:13:43,456 --> 00:13:44,632 No, the taste was great. 296 00:13:44,656 --> 00:13:49,656 What they figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. 297 00:13:49,680 --> 00:13:53,057 It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests 298 00:13:53,081 --> 00:13:55,365 and say, "Here is my cake." 299 00:13:55,389 --> 00:13:58,965 No, it was somebody else's cake, as if you bought it in the store. 300 00:13:58,989 --> 00:14:01,232 It didn't really feel like your own. 301 00:14:01,574 --> 00:14:03,019 So what did they do? 302 00:14:03,043 --> 00:14:06,289 They took the eggs and the milk out of the powder. 303 00:14:06,313 --> 00:14:08,039 (Laughter) 304 00:14:08,063 --> 00:14:11,880 Now you had to break the eggs and add them, 305 00:14:11,904 --> 00:14:15,060 you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. 306 00:14:15,084 --> 00:14:17,917 Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine. 307 00:14:17,941 --> 00:14:20,305 (Laughter) 308 00:14:20,329 --> 00:14:27,251 (Applause) 309 00:14:27,904 --> 00:14:30,133 Now, I think a little bit like the IKEA effect, 310 00:14:30,157 --> 00:14:31,785 by getting people to work harder, 311 00:14:31,809 --> 00:14:34,222 they actually got them to love what they're doing 312 00:14:34,246 --> 00:14:35,762 to a higher degree. 313 00:14:36,150 --> 00:14:38,586 So how do we look at this question experimentally? 314 00:14:39,046 --> 00:14:41,199 We asked people to build some origami. 315 00:14:41,223 --> 00:14:43,976 We gave them instructions on how to create origami, 316 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:45,738 and we gave them a sheet of paper. 317 00:14:45,762 --> 00:14:47,580 And these were all novices, 318 00:14:47,604 --> 00:14:50,158 and they built something that was really quite ugly -- 319 00:14:50,182 --> 00:14:52,317 nothing like a frog or a crane. 320 00:14:53,086 --> 00:14:56,127 But then we told them, "Look, this origami really belongs to us. 321 00:14:56,151 --> 00:14:59,175 You worked for us, but I'll tell you what, we'll sell it to you. 322 00:14:59,199 --> 00:15:01,203 How much do you want to pay for it?" 323 00:15:01,610 --> 00:15:04,286 And we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. 324 00:15:04,310 --> 00:15:06,118 And we had two types of people: 325 00:15:06,142 --> 00:15:08,086 We had the people who built it, 326 00:15:08,110 --> 00:15:09,889 and the people who did not build it, 327 00:15:09,913 --> 00:15:12,713 and just looked at it as external observers. 328 00:15:13,173 --> 00:15:15,404 And what we found was that the builders thought 329 00:15:15,428 --> 00:15:18,056 that these were beautiful pieces of origami -- 330 00:15:18,080 --> 00:15:19,342 (Laughter) 331 00:15:19,366 --> 00:15:21,857 and they were willing to pay five times more for them 332 00:15:21,881 --> 00:15:24,485 than the people who just evaluated them externally. 333 00:15:24,890 --> 00:15:27,918 Now you could say -- if you were a builder, 334 00:15:27,942 --> 00:15:31,110 do you think [you'd say], "Oh, I love this origami, 335 00:15:31,134 --> 00:15:33,728 but I know that nobody else would love it?" 336 00:15:34,474 --> 00:15:39,868 Or "I love this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?" 337 00:15:39,892 --> 00:15:42,273 Which one of those two is correct? 338 00:15:42,297 --> 00:15:45,749 Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, 339 00:15:45,773 --> 00:15:49,077 they thought that everybody would see the world in their view. 340 00:15:49,101 --> 00:15:51,793 They thought everybody else would love it more as well. 341 00:15:52,451 --> 00:15:54,889 In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. 342 00:15:54,913 --> 00:15:56,777 We tried to make it more difficult. 343 00:15:57,126 --> 00:15:59,754 So for some people, we gave the same task. 344 00:15:59,778 --> 00:16:03,636 For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. 345 00:16:04,001 --> 00:16:06,383 At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams 346 00:16:06,407 --> 00:16:08,366 of how you fold origami. 347 00:16:08,390 --> 00:16:10,719 For some people, we just eliminated that. 348 00:16:11,151 --> 00:16:12,484 So now this was tougher. 349 00:16:12,867 --> 00:16:14,024 What happened? 350 00:16:14,048 --> 00:16:16,095 Well in an objective way, 351 00:16:16,119 --> 00:16:19,585 the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. 352 00:16:20,064 --> 00:16:23,071 Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing -- 353 00:16:23,095 --> 00:16:26,317 builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. 354 00:16:26,341 --> 00:16:28,500 When you looked at the hard instructions, 355 00:16:28,524 --> 00:16:31,222 the effect was larger. 356 00:16:31,246 --> 00:16:32,398 Why? 357 00:16:32,422 --> 00:16:35,492 Because now the builders loved it even more. 358 00:16:35,516 --> 00:16:36,722 (Laughter) 359 00:16:36,746 --> 00:16:38,902 They put all this extra effort into it. 360 00:16:39,352 --> 00:16:41,188 And evaluators? 361 00:16:41,212 --> 00:16:42,839 They loved it even less. 362 00:16:42,863 --> 00:16:46,712 Because in reality, it was even uglier than the first version. 363 00:16:46,736 --> 00:16:48,077 (Laughter) 364 00:16:48,101 --> 00:16:52,073 Of course, this tells you something about how we evaluate things. 365 00:16:52,835 --> 00:16:54,414 Now think about kids. 366 00:16:55,216 --> 00:16:58,323 Imagine I asked you, "How much would you sell your kids for?" 367 00:16:59,748 --> 00:17:01,756 Your memories and associations and so on. 368 00:17:01,780 --> 00:17:04,419 Most people would say for a lot, a lot of money. 369 00:17:04,443 --> 00:17:05,607 (Laughter) 370 00:17:05,631 --> 00:17:07,015 On good days. 371 00:17:07,039 --> 00:17:08,279 (Laughter) 372 00:17:08,303 --> 00:17:10,208 But imagine this was slightly different. 373 00:17:10,232 --> 00:17:12,042 Imagine if you did not have your kids. 374 00:17:12,066 --> 00:17:14,801 And one day you went to the park and you met some kids. 375 00:17:14,825 --> 00:17:16,307 They were just like your kids, 376 00:17:16,331 --> 00:17:18,349 and you played with them for a few hours, 377 00:17:18,373 --> 00:17:21,722 and when you were about to leave, the parents said, "Hey, by the way, 378 00:17:21,746 --> 00:17:24,729 just before you leave, if you're interested, they're for sale." 379 00:17:24,753 --> 00:17:26,859 (Laughter) 380 00:17:26,883 --> 00:17:29,113 How much would you pay for them now? 381 00:17:29,803 --> 00:17:31,900 Most people say not that much. 382 00:17:32,549 --> 00:17:36,719 And this is because our kids are so valuable, 383 00:17:36,743 --> 00:17:38,873 not just because of who they are, 384 00:17:38,897 --> 00:17:40,508 but because of us, 385 00:17:40,532 --> 00:17:42,692 because they are so connected to us, 386 00:17:42,716 --> 00:17:45,287 and because of the time and connection. 387 00:17:45,311 --> 00:17:48,218 By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, 388 00:17:48,242 --> 00:17:51,630 what about the instructions that come with kids, those are really tough. 389 00:17:51,654 --> 00:17:52,662 (Laughter) 390 00:17:52,686 --> 00:17:56,928 By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. 391 00:17:56,952 --> 00:17:58,876 Which comes to tell you one more thing, 392 00:17:58,900 --> 00:18:01,350 which is, much like our builders, 393 00:18:01,374 --> 00:18:05,215 when they look at the creature of their creation, 394 00:18:05,239 --> 00:18:08,503 we don't see that other people don't see things our way. 395 00:18:10,463 --> 00:18:12,297 Let me say one last comment. 396 00:18:13,162 --> 00:18:16,955 If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, 397 00:18:16,979 --> 00:18:20,194 Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. 398 00:18:20,750 --> 00:18:22,892 He gave an example of a pin factory. 399 00:18:23,464 --> 00:18:26,421 He said pins have 12 different steps, 400 00:18:26,445 --> 00:18:30,350 and if one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. 401 00:18:30,818 --> 00:18:32,946 But if you get one person to do step one, 402 00:18:32,970 --> 00:18:35,723 and one person to do step two and step three and so on, 403 00:18:35,747 --> 00:18:38,358 production can increase tremendously. 404 00:18:38,382 --> 00:18:40,121 And indeed, this is a great example, 405 00:18:40,145 --> 00:18:43,596 and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. 406 00:18:44,270 --> 00:18:45,856 Karl Marx, on the other hand, 407 00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:49,341 said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important 408 00:18:49,365 --> 00:18:52,761 in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. 409 00:18:52,785 --> 00:18:56,055 And if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. 410 00:18:56,079 --> 00:18:59,531 But if you do one step every time, maybe you don't care as much. 411 00:19:00,568 --> 00:19:03,353 I think that in the Industrial Revolution, 412 00:19:03,377 --> 00:19:05,964 Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. 413 00:19:06,488 --> 00:19:09,323 But the reality is that we've switched, 414 00:19:09,347 --> 00:19:11,355 and now we're in the knowledge economy. 415 00:19:11,379 --> 00:19:14,266 You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? 416 00:19:14,290 --> 00:19:17,537 Is efficiency still more important than meaning? 417 00:19:17,561 --> 00:19:18,971 I think the answer is no. 418 00:19:18,995 --> 00:19:21,189 I think that as we move to situations 419 00:19:21,213 --> 00:19:24,172 in which people have to decide on their own 420 00:19:24,196 --> 00:19:28,366 about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, 421 00:19:28,390 --> 00:19:30,765 are they thinking about labor on the way to work, 422 00:19:30,789 --> 00:19:32,366 and in the shower and so on, 423 00:19:32,390 --> 00:19:35,978 all of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. 424 00:19:36,843 --> 00:19:38,249 So when we think about labor, 425 00:19:38,273 --> 00:19:41,673 we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, 426 00:19:41,697 --> 00:19:45,299 but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it -- 427 00:19:45,323 --> 00:19:49,519 meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc. 428 00:19:49,823 --> 00:19:52,506 The good news is that if we added all of those components 429 00:19:52,530 --> 00:19:54,108 and thought about them -- 430 00:19:54,132 --> 00:19:57,545 how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, 431 00:19:57,569 --> 00:19:59,419 and how do we do it in our workplace, 432 00:19:59,443 --> 00:20:00,841 and for the employees -- 433 00:20:00,865 --> 00:20:04,830 I think we could get people to be both more productive and happier. 434 00:20:04,854 --> 00:20:06,160 Thank you very much. 435 00:20:06,184 --> 00:20:07,984 (Applause)