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So after the morning's talks I thought,
you know: what can I do to improve?

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So, you know, Paul took off
his shirt, I can't do that --

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But, you know, I thought:
maybe I'll take off my -- No.

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So I want to talk a little bit about
labor and motivation.

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And, when we think about
people as workforce,

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we often think about people
like rats in a maze.

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We think that people hate working,
we think that all that people want to do

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is to sit on the beach drinking mojitos
and the only reason that they work

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is that we pay them so they can
seat on the beach drinking mojitos.

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But is this the case?

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We have things like mountain climbing.

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Mountain climbing is a really challenging thing.

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When you read books
of people who climb mountains

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you would think that those books would be filled
with moments of elation and joy --

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No! They're filled with moments
of misery and pain, frostbites --

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So you would think that once people get up
with these experiences and come down

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they will say, "My goodness, this was
a terrible mistake, I'll never do it again!"

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No! They go straight up! They get to heal,
they get to recover and they go straight up!

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And this, I think, proposes a real challenge
for what do we think about joy,

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and what do we think about motivation,
and what actually gets people to care.

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I started thinking about
meaning and motivation in the workplace

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when one of my ex-students
came back to see me.

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His name was David - still is David -
he came to see me,

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and he told me the following story:

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He said that he was working
at an investment bank,

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preparing a PowerPoint presentation
for a merger and acquisition.

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He was working on it for weeks.
He was working hard,

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staying up late at night --
And the day before

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the merger and acquisition
was going to take place

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he mailed his PowerPoint presentation to his boss

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and his boss wrote him quickly back saying,
"Nice job! The deal is cancelled."

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Now, throughout the process
he was incredibly excited!

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He was working, he was thinking happy,
his boss appreciated it.

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But the fact that nobody was going
to see it deflated him.

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In fact, when he was looking
at his next projects,

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he couldn't really find
that much motivation.

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And if you think about it, it's interesting
because physically, everything was OK.

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His boss appreciated it, he would probably get a raise, everything was OK --

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But something was missing
that is more, kind of a more

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general meaning for what he was doing.

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So I thought, you know: how can we capture it
with some simple experiments?

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So I decided to build Legos.

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So we paid people to build Lego Bionicles,
like the ones that you see.

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And we paid people in diminishing rate.

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So here's what happened:
you came in and we say,

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"Would you like to build one Bionicle?"

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"We'll pay you 3 dollars for it."

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And if you said "yes" you would build it
and when you finished, we took it back

49
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and we say, "Would you like to build
another one? For 2.70?"

50
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And if you finished that and wanted
another one? For 2.40 and so on --

51
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And the question was,
"At what point will people stop?"

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And we told people that we take the Bionicles,
we'll put them under the desk,

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and we'll break them into pieces
for the next participant.

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(Laughter)

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This was the first condition.

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People build one after the other,
after the other, after the other.

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The second condition
we called the 'Sisyphic Condition.'

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If you remember the story of Sisyphus --
Sisyphus basically was sentenced by the gods

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to push a rock up a big mountain
and the almost moment he got there --

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The rock would roll back
and he would have to do it again.

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And you could think about
how demotivating this is, right?

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And how better it would be if at least it were
different mountains he would push the rock over.

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But being the same mountain
over and over and over is demotivating.

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So that's what we tried to do
in the 'Sisyphic Condition.'

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We gave people a Bionicle,

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when they finished it, we said,
"Would you like to build another one?"

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If they said "yes",
we gave them the second one,

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but as they were working on the second one
we took the first one to pieces.

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In front of their eyes.

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And then, if they wanted to build a third one,
we gave the first one back to them.

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(Laughter)

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So we had an endless cycle of breaking
and creating, creating and breaking.

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What happened?
The first thing that happened,

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was that people built many more Bionicles

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in the 'Meaningful Condition'
compared to the 'Sisyphic Condition.'

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And what I should point out here is that
the meaning in the 'Meaningful Condition'

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was not really high meaning.
This was a tiny meaning. Right?

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So the fact that just destroying it
in front of their eyes a few minutes earlier

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made a difference,
is quite important.

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The second thing is that
we asked another group of people

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to predict how big the effect will be.

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We said, "If you were in this experiment,
how many Bionicles do you think

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people would build here
and how many will they build here?"

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And people understood that
the 'Meaningful Condition' would create

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higher motivation, but they didn't understand
the magnitude of that.

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So people thought that the difference was
one Bionicle. In fact it was much larger.

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And finally, we looked at the correlation
between how much people love Bionicles

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and how many Bionicles they created.

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You would expect that, naturally,
people who love Bionicles more

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would build more Bionicles,
even for less money.

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And that's indeed what we saw.

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In the 'Meaningful Condition'
there was a nice correlation.

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People who like Bionicles build more,
people who don't like Bionicles as much

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don't build as much.

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What happened in the 'Sisyphic Condition'?

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In the 'Sisyphic Condition'
there was no correlation.

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We were basically able, by destroying
people's labor in front of their eyes,

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to crash the joy out of this process.

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(Laughter)

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After I finished this study, I went to talk
to a big software company in Seattle.

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(Laughter)

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And this was a big room
full of 200 engineers

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and these were engineers
that worked for 2 years

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about the project that they thought
would be the next development

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for this big software company.

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And a week before I came
the CEO cancelled the project.

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And I never sat in front of a group
of more depressed people --

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And I asked them,"How many of you 
show up later for work these days?"

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They all raised their hands.

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I said, "How many of you leave earlier?"

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They all raised their hands.

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I said, "How many of you charge
extra things on your expense accounts?"

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Nobody raised their hands,
but they took me for dinner that night.

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(Laughter)

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They showed me what they could do,
with creativity --

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And they said they felt
just like in the Lego experiment.

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They basically felt that somebody cancelled
something in front of their eyes, under their feet,

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without letting them have
any meaning of what they were doing.

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Now, here's the thing:
I think the CEO of that company

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did not understand the meaning of labor.

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He just said, "OK, we directed you
in this direction up to now,

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let me redirect you somewhere else,
and you will just go in the way I think."

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This is not how people operate.

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And I asked these people, "What could the CEO
have done? Let's say he had to cancel the project.

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What could he have done
to keep some of your motivation?"

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And they came up
with all kinds of ideas.

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They said, "What if he allowed them to do
a presentation in front of the whole company?"

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"What if he asked them to build
a few more prototypes, to try and think about

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what aspect of the technology that they
were developing could fit in other projects?"

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Now, the thing is that, any one of those aspects,
any one of those approaches would demand

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some effort, attention and time,
and if you don't think people

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care about their meaning
you wouldn't spend their time.

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But if you understand how important
meaning is, you might do that.

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In the next experiment,
we took this a step further.

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We asked people to find
some letters in a sheet of paper.

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And again they got more money
for the first sheet, then less for the second

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and less for the third, and so on.

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And for some people we had
what we called the 'Meaningful Condition.'

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We asked people to write their name on each sheet
and when they gave it to the experimenter,

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the experimenter looked at it from top to bottom,
said "aha" and put it on the side.

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In the second condition,
the experimenter didn't look at it.

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There was no name, the experimenter just took it
from the participant and put it on the desk.

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In the third condition,
the experimenter simply took the sheet

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and directly put it 
through a shredder. (Laughter)

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Now, I should point out
that in this third condition,

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when the page goes directly
into a shredder, nobody looks.

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You could cheat. Right?

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You could be dishonest and do more sheets
for less money and put less effort into it.

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What were the results?

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In the 'Acknowledged Condition'
- when we looked at it -

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people worked all the way down
to 15 cents. They worked quite a lot.

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In the 'Shredded Condition,'
people stopped much faster.

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So people cared more about -- They enjoyed more
the labor in the 'Acknowledged Condition.'

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What about the 'Ignored Condition'?
Where does it sit in the middle?

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Is it close to the 'Acknowledged,'
the 'Shredded' or somewhere in the middle?

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Well, very very close
to the 'Shredded Condition.'

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So, I guess the good news here is
that if you want to motivate people,

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simply looking at what they've done
and say, "I've acknowledged,

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I've seen that you've done something,"
seems to be sufficient.

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Even without the nice word
- just acknowledge people.

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On the other hand, it turns out that
if you really want to demotivate people,

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it's incredibly easy!

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Shredding, of course, is the optimal way
to demotivate people! If you want to.

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But just ignoring what they're doing
gets you almost all the way there.

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So this was all about demotivating people.

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There are lot's of ways to demotivate people,
and we should try to avoid those.

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What about motivating people?

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What about the second part of this equation?

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And, for me the insight for this part
of the story came from IKEA.

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So, I don't know about you,
but I have some IKEA furniture --

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and when I reflect back
on the experience, it turns out

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that it took me a long time to assemble
these instructions, to assemble this furniture.

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The instructions were not clear,
I would put things in the wrong place,

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I would have to disassemble it --
But what I've also noticed

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is that I keep on looking fondly
at this IKEA furniture.

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We share something in common that I think
is more than just buying something in the store.

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And you can wonder, "What happens when
you invest some of your love and effort

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and attention, even frustration,
into something?"

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Do you start loving it more?

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And there's an old story - it's kind of a nice story -
it's a story about cake mixes.

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When they introduced cake mixes in the US,


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it turns out housewives 
at the time did not accept them.

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They had mixes for all kinds of things:
for muffins, for bread --

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Cake mixes, not so much.
And they wondered why?

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The taste was perfectly fine.

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They found out that what was missing
was a feeling of labor.

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If you basically put some water in the cake mix,
mix it together, put it in the oven

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and the cake comes out --
You can't take credit for that!

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00:11:01,580 --> 00:11:02,832
(Laughter)

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00:11:02,832 --> 00:11:07,907
If somebody comes and says, "Nice cake,
thank you!" you've not done anything!

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00:11:07,908 --> 00:11:09,238
So what did they do?

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They took the eggs and the milk out of it.

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00:11:11,748 --> 00:11:14,973
(Laughter)

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00:11:14,975 --> 00:11:17,509
Now you put the cake mix, you break
some eggs, you put some milk --

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Now it's your cake! 
(Laughter)

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00:11:20,506 --> 00:11:26,188
(Applause)

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So, how do we test this idea?

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We started by asking people to build origami.

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We gave people instructions
on how to fold origami.

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And these were people
who don't really know how to do origami,

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so they came up with kind of
ugly origami, but that's OK.

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00:11:40,979 --> 00:11:43,618
And then we told them that
we actually owned that origami

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and we asked them, "How much
would you pay for you to keep it?"

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00:11:46,742 --> 00:11:50,761
And we tried to measure how valuable
they thought this origami was.

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And people loved
the origamis that they created.

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00:11:54,005 --> 00:11:59,065
(Laughter)

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00:11:59,065 --> 00:12:03,054
Then we asked other people
that did not build that origami

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00:12:03,054 --> 00:12:05,183
what they thought about this origami --

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00:12:05,183 --> 00:12:06,906
(Laughter)

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00:12:06,906 --> 00:12:09,805
And they didn't like it as much.

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00:12:09,805 --> 00:12:15,219
So the builders thought this origami was fantastic,
the evaluators not so much.

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00:12:15,219 --> 00:12:18,436
Now, the question is:
are the builders, in their mind,

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do they think that they are
the only ones who love this origami?

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00:12:21,366 --> 00:12:25,313
So, do I look at this origami and say,
"Oh, this is mine, I think it's wonderful!

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00:12:25,313 --> 00:12:28,970
I know that nobody would like it,
but for me it's wonderful!"

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00:12:28,970 --> 00:12:32,386
No. They think everybody
would love it as much as they do.

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00:12:32,386 --> 00:12:34,347
(Laughter)

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00:12:34,349 --> 00:12:36,439
The next thing was the IKEA effect,
right? The IKEA --

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What about the instructions? 
What if the instructions are difficult and complex?

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So we gave the easy instructions to some people
and for other people we hid what's on the top,

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which is the manual of 
what does a fold mean and so on.

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So the hard instructions
were really baffling.

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What happened now?

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So, first of all, we got the basic result:
the builders loved their own origami

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more than the evaluators -- What happens
when the instructions are more difficult?

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Now the builders love it even more,
and the evaluators dislike it even more.

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Why? Because objectively
it was worse off!

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So the evaluators saw the objective quality

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of these crumbled pieces of paper
and didn't like it as much;

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the builders thought 
it was even more fantastic!

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So, not only is labor leading to love,
more labor and more effort

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and more investment
leads to higher love.

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I think you could also
think about kids this way.

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So imagine 
that you have kids and I ask you,


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"How much would you 
sell me your kids for?"

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(Laughter)

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Your memory and attention,
and experience about them --

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And most people in a good day say,
"A lot of money!"

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(Laughter)

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But imagine you didn't have your kids.

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And you went to the park, and you met
some kids very much like yours,

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and you played with them for a few hours,
and then you were about to say goodbye,

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and before you left, their parents said,
"By the way, you know, they're for sale!"

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(Laughter)

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"How much would you pay for them?"

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Most people realize, 
"not that much!"

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(Laughter)

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And I think it's because the kids are really
kind of the optimal example for the IKEA effect.

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(Laughter)

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00:14:21,612 --> 00:14:27,705
(Applause)

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They are complex, they are difficult,
the instruction manual is not that good --

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(Laughter)

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We invest a lot of effort in them
and our tremendous love [for] them

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is largely a part of us investing in them
rather than who they are.

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These are, by the way, my kids,
who are wonderful!

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And, not only are our kids wonderful,

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we don't understand that other people
don't see our kids in the way that we do.

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So what do we have to say 
about all of this?

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There's kind of two competing theories
about labor: Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

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Adam Smith gave us this wonderful example
of efficiency in the labor market.

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He showed how you can take a pin factory

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and if you take one laborer who makes all steps,
all 12 steps to create a pin,

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that's really inefficient.

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And if you break the job into 12 pieces
and each person does their own piece of the work,

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the efficiency of the whole is incredibly increasing.
Dramatically increasing.

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And that's really what the Industrial Revolution
has given us in terms of increasing productivity.

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Karl Marx, on the other hand, told us
that it's about alienation of labor,

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and how much do you
feel connected to your labor.

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And these ideas are really standing
in opposition to each other.

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Which one is more important? The efficiency
or the feeling of connection to the labor?

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00:15:47,083 --> 00:15:50,295
So if you think about taking a big job
and breaking it into pieces,

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00:15:50,295 --> 00:15:53,737
it might become more efficient.
But as you break it into pieces,

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00:15:53,737 --> 00:15:57,401
the people who do each of the pieces
don't feel connected, to the same degree,

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to what they're doing. 
So, which one is more important?

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So, I think that in the Industrial Economy time
Smith was more correct than Marx.

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There were tremendous efficiency gains.

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But what's happening now,
in the Knowledge Economy?

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What happens when people
have more control over what they're doing?

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When we want people to think about their labor
in the shower and talk to friends,

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00:16:18,770 --> 00:16:21,208
and when we want people to be fully engaged,


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and really immersed in what they're doing --

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I think that now things have changed.
In the Knowledge Economy,

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I think the notion of Marx 
is actually more important.

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And it might be useful to sometimes sacrifice


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some efficiency for more meaning at work.

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00:16:37,177 --> 00:16:40,015
So, you know, we have this
very simple model of labor,

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which says that people work for money.

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00:16:42,985 --> 00:16:46,278
And often we pay people just with this notion.

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00:16:46,278 --> 00:16:49,648
But I think there are two things to consider:
the first one is that we care about

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[many] more things than money.
We care about meaning,

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00:16:52,880 --> 00:16:58,189
we care about creation, challenge,
ownership, identity, pride, and so on --

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00:16:58,189 --> 00:17:02,331
And the really good news about it is
that if we're able to create workplaces

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00:17:02,347 --> 00:17:06,631
that give people all of those things,
everybody would be better off.

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The workplace would be better off,
the individual would be better off --

295
00:17:09,759 --> 00:17:13,138
It's a tremendous wonderful thing about
human nature that we can be motivated

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00:17:13,138 --> 00:17:15,302
by a whole range of aspects.

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00:17:15,302 --> 00:17:19,036
The question is, how do we use
the workplace and society in general

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to tap into all of those motivations?

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)