WEBVTT

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I want to talk a little bit today
about labor and work.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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."

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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What happened in those three conditions?

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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

00:12:24.090 --> 00:12:25.841
seems to be incredibly easy,

00:12:25.865 --> 00:12:29.657
and if we don't think about it
carefully, we might overdo it.

00:12:29.681 --> 00:12:33.092
So this is all in terms
of negative motivation,

00:12:33.116 --> 00:12:35.450
or eliminating negative motivation.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:36.426 --> 00:12:39.905
The next part I want to show you
is something about positive motivation.

00:12:40.473 --> 00:12:44.160
So there is a store
in the U.S. called IKEA.

00:12:44.970 --> 00:12:49.175
And IKEA is a store
with kind of okay furniture

00:12:49.199 --> 00:12:51.183
that takes a long time to assemble.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:51.667 --> 00:12:53.316
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:53.714 --> 00:12:54.866
I don't know about you,

00:12:54.890 --> 00:12:56.763
but every time I assemble one of those,

00:12:56.787 --> 00:12:59.128
it takes me much longer,
it's much more effortful,

00:12:59.152 --> 00:13:02.517
it's much more confusing,
I put things in the wrong way --

00:13:03.186 --> 00:13:05.766
I can't say I enjoy those pieces.

00:13:06.175 --> 00:13:08.473
I can't say I enjoy the process.

00:13:09.040 --> 00:13:10.676
But when I finish it,

00:13:10.700 --> 00:13:12.818
I seem to like those
IKEA pieces of furniture

00:13:12.842 --> 00:13:14.694
more than I like other ones.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:14.718 --> 00:13:15.774
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:15.798 --> 00:13:19.151
And there's an old story about cake mixes.

00:13:19.758 --> 00:13:22.985
So when they started
cake mixes in the '40s,

00:13:23.009 --> 00:13:26.465
they would take this powder
and they would put it in a box,

00:13:26.489 --> 00:13:29.530
and they would ask housewives
to basically pour it in,

00:13:29.554 --> 00:13:31.276
stir some water in it,

00:13:31.300 --> 00:13:35.562
mix it, put it in the oven,
and -- voila -- you had cake.

00:13:35.586 --> 00:13:37.615
But it turns out they were very unpopular.

00:13:37.639 --> 00:13:39.450
People did not want them,

00:13:39.474 --> 00:13:41.999
and they thought about
all kinds of reasons for that.

00:13:42.023 --> 00:13:43.432
Maybe the taste was not good?

00:13:43.456 --> 00:13:44.632
No, the taste was great.

00:13:44.656 --> 00:13:49.656
What they figured out was
that there was not enough effort involved.

00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:53.057
It was so easy that nobody
could serve cake to their guests

00:13:53.081 --> 00:13:55.365
and say, "Here is my cake."

00:13:55.389 --> 00:13:58.965
No, it was somebody else's cake,
as if you bought it in the store.

00:13:58.989 --> 00:14:01.232
It didn't really feel like your own.

00:14:01.574 --> 00:14:03.019
So what did they do?

00:14:03.043 --> 00:14:06.289
They took the eggs and the milk
out of the powder.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:06.313 --> 00:14:08.039
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:08.063 --> 00:14:11.880
Now you had to break
the eggs and add them,

00:14:11.904 --> 00:14:15.060
you had to measure the milk
and add it, mixing it.

00:14:15.084 --> 00:14:17.917
Now it was your cake.
Now everything was fine.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:17.941 --> 00:14:20.305
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:20.329 --> 00:14:27.251
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:27.904 --> 00:14:30.133
Now, I think a little bit
like the IKEA effect,

00:14:30.157 --> 00:14:31.785
by getting people to work harder,

00:14:31.809 --> 00:14:34.222
they actually got them to love
what they're doing

00:14:34.246 --> 00:14:35.762
to a higher degree.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:36.150 --> 00:14:38.586
So how do we look at this
question experimentally?

00:14:39.046 --> 00:14:41.199
We asked people to build some origami.

00:14:41.223 --> 00:14:43.976
We gave them instructions
on how to create origami,

00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:45.738
and we gave them a sheet of paper.

00:14:45.762 --> 00:14:47.580
And these were all novices,

00:14:47.604 --> 00:14:50.158
and they built something
that was really quite ugly --

00:14:50.182 --> 00:14:52.317
nothing like a frog or a crane.

00:14:53.086 --> 00:14:56.127
But then we told them,
"Look, this origami really belongs to us.

00:14:56.151 --> 00:14:59.175
You worked for us, but I'll tell
you what, we'll sell it to you.

00:14:59.199 --> 00:15:01.203
How much do you want to pay for it?"

00:15:01.610 --> 00:15:04.286
And we measured how much
they were willing to pay for it.

00:15:04.310 --> 00:15:06.118
And we had two types of people:

00:15:06.142 --> 00:15:08.086
We had the people who built it,

00:15:08.110 --> 00:15:09.889
and the people who did not build it,

00:15:09.913 --> 00:15:12.713
and just looked at it
as external observers.

00:15:13.173 --> 00:15:15.404
And what we found
was that the builders thought

00:15:15.428 --> 00:15:18.056
that these were beautiful
pieces of origami --

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:19.342
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:19.366 --> 00:15:21.857
and they were willing to pay
five times more for them

00:15:21.881 --> 00:15:24.485
than the people who just
evaluated them externally.

00:15:24.890 --> 00:15:27.918
Now you could say --
if you were a builder,

00:15:27.942 --> 00:15:31.110
do you think [you'd say],
"Oh, I love this origami,

00:15:31.134 --> 00:15:33.728
but I know that nobody
else would love it?"

00:15:34.474 --> 00:15:39.868
Or "I love this origami,
and everybody else will love it as well?"

00:15:39.892 --> 00:15:42.273
Which one of those two is correct?

00:15:42.297 --> 00:15:45.749
Turns out the builders
not only loved the origami more,

00:15:45.773 --> 00:15:49.077
they thought that everybody
would see the world in their view.

00:15:49.101 --> 00:15:51.793
They thought everybody else
would love it more as well.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:52.451 --> 00:15:54.889
In the next version,
we tried to do the IKEA effect.

00:15:54.913 --> 00:15:56.777
We tried to make it more difficult.

00:15:57.126 --> 00:15:59.754
So for some people, we gave the same task.

00:15:59.778 --> 00:16:03.636
For some people, we made it harder
by hiding the instructions.

00:16:04.001 --> 00:16:06.383
At the top of the sheet,
we had little diagrams

00:16:06.407 --> 00:16:08.366
of how you fold origami.

00:16:08.390 --> 00:16:10.719
For some people, we just eliminated that.

00:16:11.151 --> 00:16:12.484
So now this was tougher.

00:16:12.867 --> 00:16:14.024
What happened?

00:16:14.048 --> 00:16:16.095
Well in an objective way,

00:16:16.119 --> 00:16:19.585
the origami now was uglier,
it was more difficult.

00:16:20.064 --> 00:16:23.071
Now when we looked at the easy
origami, we saw the same thing --

00:16:23.095 --> 00:16:26.317
builders loved it more,
evaluators loved it less.

00:16:26.341 --> 00:16:28.500
When you looked at the hard instructions,

00:16:28.524 --> 00:16:31.222
the effect was larger.

00:16:31.246 --> 00:16:32.398
Why?

00:16:32.422 --> 00:16:35.492
Because now the builders
loved it even more.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:35.516 --> 00:16:36.722
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:36.746 --> 00:16:38.902
They put all this extra effort into it.

00:16:39.352 --> 00:16:41.188
And evaluators?

00:16:41.212 --> 00:16:42.839
They loved it even less.

00:16:42.863 --> 00:16:46.712
Because in reality, it was even uglier
than the first version.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:46.736 --> 00:16:48.077
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:48.101 --> 00:16:52.073
Of course, this tells you something
about how we evaluate things.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:52.835 --> 00:16:54.414
Now think about kids.

00:16:55.216 --> 00:16:58.323
Imagine I asked you, "How much
would you sell your kids for?"

00:16:59.748 --> 00:17:01.756
Your memories and associations and so on.

00:17:01.780 --> 00:17:04.419
Most people would say
for a lot, a lot of money.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:04.443 --> 00:17:05.607
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:05.631 --> 00:17:07.015
On good days.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:08.279
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:08.303 --> 00:17:10.208
But imagine this was slightly different.

00:17:10.232 --> 00:17:12.042
Imagine if you did not have your kids.

00:17:12.066 --> 00:17:14.801
And one day you went to the park
and you met some kids.

00:17:14.825 --> 00:17:16.307
They were just like your kids,

00:17:16.331 --> 00:17:18.349
and you played with them for a few hours,

00:17:18.373 --> 00:17:21.722
and when you were about to leave,
the parents said, "Hey, by the way,

00:17:21.746 --> 00:17:24.729
just before you leave,
if you're interested, they're for sale."

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:24.753 --> 00:17:26.859
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:26.883 --> 00:17:29.113
How much would you pay for them now?

00:17:29.803 --> 00:17:31.900
Most people say not that much.

00:17:32.549 --> 00:17:36.719
And this is because our kids
are so valuable,

00:17:36.743 --> 00:17:38.873
not just because of who they are,

00:17:38.897 --> 00:17:40.508
but because of us,

00:17:40.532 --> 00:17:42.692
because they are so connected to us,

00:17:42.716 --> 00:17:45.287
and because of the time and connection.

00:17:45.311 --> 00:17:48.218
By the way, if you think
IKEA instructions are not good,

00:17:48.242 --> 00:17:51.630
what about the instructions that come
with kids, those are really tough.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:51.654 --> 00:17:52.662
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:52.686 --> 00:17:56.928
By the way, these are my kids, which,
of course, are wonderful and so on.

00:17:56.952 --> 00:17:58.876
Which comes to tell you one more thing,

00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:01.350
which is, much like our builders,

00:18:01.374 --> 00:18:05.215
when they look at the creature
of their creation,

00:18:05.239 --> 00:18:08.503
we don't see that other people
don't see things our way.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:10.463 --> 00:18:12.297
Let me say one last comment.

00:18:13.162 --> 00:18:16.955
If you think about Adam Smith
versus Karl Marx,

00:18:16.979 --> 00:18:20.194
Adam Smith had a very important
notion of efficiency.

00:18:20.750 --> 00:18:22.892
He gave an example of a pin factory.

00:18:23.464 --> 00:18:26.421
He said pins have 12 different steps,

00:18:26.445 --> 00:18:30.350
and if one person does all 12 steps,
production is very low.

00:18:30.818 --> 00:18:32.946
But if you get one person to do step one,

00:18:32.970 --> 00:18:35.723
and one person to do step two
and step three and so on,

00:18:35.747 --> 00:18:38.358
production can increase tremendously.

00:18:38.382 --> 00:18:40.121
And indeed, this is a great example,

00:18:40.145 --> 00:18:43.596
and the reason for the Industrial
Revolution and efficiency.

00:18:44.270 --> 00:18:45.856
Karl Marx, on the other hand,

00:18:45.880 --> 00:18:49.341
said that the alienation
of labor is incredibly important

00:18:49.365 --> 00:18:52.761
in how people think about the connection
to what they are doing.

00:18:52.785 --> 00:18:56.055
And if you do all 12 steps,
you care about the pin.

00:18:56.079 --> 00:18:59.531
But if you do one step every time,
maybe you don't care as much.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:00.568 --> 00:19:03.353
I think that in the Industrial Revolution,

00:19:03.377 --> 00:19:05.964
Adam Smith was more
correct than Karl Marx.

00:19:06.488 --> 00:19:09.323
But the reality is that we've switched,

00:19:09.347 --> 00:19:11.355
and now we're in the knowledge economy.

00:19:11.379 --> 00:19:14.266
You can ask yourself, what happens
in a knowledge economy?

00:19:14.290 --> 00:19:17.537
Is efficiency still more
important than meaning?

00:19:17.561 --> 00:19:18.971
I think the answer is no.

00:19:18.995 --> 00:19:21.189
I think that as we move to situations

00:19:21.213 --> 00:19:24.172
in which people have
to decide on their own

00:19:24.196 --> 00:19:28.366
about how much effort, attention,
caring, how connected they feel to it,

00:19:28.390 --> 00:19:30.765
are they thinking about labor
on the way to work,

00:19:30.789 --> 00:19:32.366
and in the shower and so on,

00:19:32.390 --> 00:19:35.978
all of a sudden Marx
has more things to say to us.

00:19:36.843 --> 00:19:38.249
So when we think about labor,

00:19:38.273 --> 00:19:41.673
we usually think about motivation
and payment as the same thing,

00:19:41.697 --> 00:19:45.299
but the reality is that we should
probably add all kinds of things to it --

00:19:45.323 --> 00:19:49.519
meaning, creation, challenges,
ownership, identity, pride, etc.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:49.823 --> 00:19:52.506
The good news is that if we added
all of those components

00:19:52.530 --> 00:19:54.108
and thought about them --

00:19:54.132 --> 00:19:57.545
how do we create our own
meaning, pride, motivation,

00:19:57.569 --> 00:19:59.419
and how do we do it in our workplace,

00:19:59.443 --> 00:20:00.841
and for the employees --

00:20:00.865 --> 00:20:04.830
I think we could get people to be
both more productive and happier.

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:04.854 --> 00:20:06.160
Thank you very much.

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:06.184 --> 00:20:07.984
(Applause)