Avui m'agradaria parlar una mica sobre la feina i els treballadors. Quan pensem com funciona la gent, tenim la intuició ingènua que les persones són com rates en un laberint, que només es preocupen pels diners, i que quan els hi donem diners, els podem fer treballar així els podem fer treballar aixà. Per això donem bonificacions als banquers i paguem de mil maneres. I tenim aquesta visió increïblement simplista de per què la gent treballa i de com és el mercat.
I want to talk a little bit today about labor and work. When we think about how people work, the naive intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze -- that all people care about is money, and the moment we give them money, we can direct them to work one way, we can direct them to work another way. This is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways. And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work, and what the labor market looks like.
De la mateixa manera, si ho penseu, hi ha tot tipus de comportaments estranys al món. Penseu en l'alpinisme o en el muntanyisme. Si llegiu llibres de gent que escala muntanyes, muntanyes difícils, creieu que aquests llibres són plens de moments de joia i felicitat? No, són plens de misèria. De fet, parlen de la congelació, de la dificultat per caminar i la dificultat de respirar... Fred, circumstàncies adverses. I si les persones intentessin només ser feliçes, en el moment d'arribar al cim, dirien: "Això ha estat un gran error. No ho repetiré mai." (Riures) "En lloc d'això, prendré uns mojitos a la platja." Però per contra, les persones baixen, i després de recuperar-se, tornen a pujar. I si preneu el muntanyisme com a exemple, suggereix una sèrie de coses. Suggereix que ens importa arribar al final, al cim. Suggereix que ens importa la lluita, el repte. Suggereix que hi ha moltes altres coses que ens motiven a treballar i a comportar-nos de diferents maneres.
At the same time, if you think about it, there's all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us. Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing. If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it's all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing -- cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say, "This was a terrible mistake. I'll never do it again." (Laughter) "Instead, let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos." But instead, people go down, and after they recover, they go up again. And if you think about mountain climbing as an example, it suggests all kinds of things. It suggests that we care about reaching the end, a peak. It suggests that we care about the fight, about the challenge. It suggests that there's all kinds of other things that motivate us to work or behave in all kinds of ways.
Personalment, vaig començar a plantejar-m'ho després que un estudiant em fes una visita. Era un noi que havia estat alumne meu feia uns anys. I un dia va tornar al campus. I em va contar la història següent: Durant més de 2 setmanes havia treballat en una presentació de PowerPoint. Treballava en un banc important que s'estava preparant per a una fusió i adquisició. I estava treballant de valent en la presentació, gràfics, taules, informació... Anava a dormir tard cada dia. I el dia abans de la presentació va enviar el PowerPoint al seu cap, i el cap li va contestar: "Bona presentació, però la fusió s'ha cancel·lat." I el noi es va deprimir molt. I mentre estava fent aquell treball era força feliç. Cada nit gaudia de la seva feina, no dormia per perfeccionar la presentació. Però saber que ningú no la veuria el deprimia bastant.
And for me personally, I started thinking about this after a student came to visit me. This was one of my students from a few years earlier, and he came one day back to campus. And he told me the following story: He said that for more than two weeks, he was working on a PowerPoint presentation. He was working in a big bank, and this was in preparation for a merger and acquisition. And he was working very hard on this presentation -- graphs, tables, information. He stayed late at night every day. And the day before it was due, he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss, and his boss wrote him back and said, "Nice presentation, but the merger is canceled." And the guy was deeply depressed. Now at the moment when he was working, he was actually quite happy. Every night he was enjoying his work, he was staying late, he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation. But knowing that nobody would ever watch it made him quite depressed.
Em vaig preguntar com fer un experiment sobre aquesta idea dels fruits de la nostra feina. I per començar vam crear un petit experiment: donàvem Legos a un grup de gent i els demanàvem que fessin construccions. A alguns, els vam donar Legos i els vam dir: "T'agradaria construir aquest robot per 3 $? Et pagarem 3 $ per fer-ho." Deien que sí i els construien. Quan acabaven, els agafàvem i els posàvem sota la taula, i els dèiem: "Vols construir-ne un altre però per 2,70 $?" Si deien que sí, els en donàvem un altre. I en acabar, els dèiem: "Vols fer-ne un altre per 2,40 $, 2,10 $ i així successivament, fins que deien: "Ja no. No val la pena." Això és el que vam anomenar la condició amb significat. Construien un robot rere l'altre. Quan acabaven cada robot, els posàvem sota la taula. Els dèiem que després de l'experiment agafaríem els robots, els desmuntaríem i els tornaríem a les capses, i els donaríem al participant següent.
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of our labor. And to start with, we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos, and we asked them to build with Legos. And for some people, we gave them Legos and we said, "Hey, would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars? We'll pay you three dollars for it." And people said yes, and they built with these Legos. And when they finished, we took it, we put it under the table, and we said, "Would you like to build another one, this time for $2.70?" If they said yes, we gave them another one, and when they finished, we asked them, "Do you want to build another one?" for $2.40, $2.10, and so on, until at some point people said, "No more. It's not worth it for me." This was what we called the meaningful condition. People built one Bionicle after another. After they finished every one of them, we put them under the table. And we told them that at the end of the experiment, we will take all these Bionicles, we will disassemble them, we will put them back in the boxes, and we will use it for the next participant.
Teníem una altra condició, inspirada en el David, el meu alumne. La vam anomenar la condició de Sísif. Si recordeu la història de Sísif, els déus van castigar Sísif a empènyer una roca muntanya amunt i quan gairebé arribava al cim, la roca queia muntanya avall i havia de començar de nou. Això és l'essència d'una feina inútil. Si empenyés la roca per diferents muntanyes, al menys tindria certa sensació de progrés. Si mirem pel·lícules de presons, veiem que de vegades els guàrdies torturen els presoners fent-los cavar un forat i quan acaba, fan que l'omplin i el tornin a cavar. Hi ha alguna cosa en aquesta versió cíclica de fer quelcom un cop i un altre i un altre que és particularment descoratjadora. Això és exactament el que vam fer en la 2a condició de l'experiment. Preguntàvem: "Vols construir un robot per 3 $?" Si ens deien que sí, el construien. Després preguntàvem si en volien fer un altre per 2,70 $. Si ens deien que sí, els donàvem un altre, i mentre el construien, desmuntàvem el que acabaven de muntar. I quan havíen acabat l'altre els dèiem: "Vols fer-ne un altre per 30 cèntims menys?" I si deien que sí, els donàvem el que havíem desmuntat. Era un cercle sense fi. Ells construïen i nosaltres destruëm davant dels seus nassos.
There was another condition. This other condition was inspired by David, my student. And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition. And if you remember the story about Sisyphus, Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill, and when he almost got to the end, the rock would roll over, and he would have to start again. And you can think about this as the essence of doing futile work. You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills, at least he would have some sense of progress. Also, if you look at prison movies, sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole, and when the prisoner is finished, they ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again. There's something about this cyclical version of doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating. So in the second condition of this experiment, that's exactly what we did. We asked people, "Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?" And if they said yes, they built it. Then we asked them, "Do you want to build another one for $2.70?" And if they said yes, we gave them a new one, and as they were building it, we took apart the one that they just finished. And when they finished that, we said, "Would you like to build another one, this time for 30 cents less?" And if they said yes, we gave them the one that they built and we broke. So this was an endless cycle of them building, and us destroying in front of their eyes.
I què passa quan compares ambdues condicions? En primer lloc, van construïr més robots, 11 contra 7, en la condició amb significat en front de la condició de Sísif. Cal dir que la tasca no tenia cap significat. No es tractava de curar el càncer ni de construïr ponts. Es tractava de construïr robots per dos duros. I no sols això, tothom sabia que es destruïrien aviat. Així que no se li podia donar un gran sentit. Però fins i tot un petit sentit ja significava alguna cosa.
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions? The first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles -- eleven in the meaningful condition, versus seven in the Sisyphus condition. And by the way, we should point out that this was not big meaning. People were not curing cancer or building bridges. People were building Bionicles for a few cents. And not only that, everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon. So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning. But even the small meaning made a difference.
Teníem una altra versio de l'experiment. En aquesta altra versió, no vam posar la gent en aquesta situació, els la vam descriure, com us l'he descrita ara, i els vam demanar que prediguessin el resultat. Què va passar? Van encertar la direcció, però no la magnitud. La gent a qui vam descriure l'experiment van dir que en la condició amb significat la gent potser construiria un robot més. És a dir, entenenien que el significat és important, el que no entenien és la magnitud de la importància, fins a quin punt és important.
Now we had another version of this experiment. In this other version of the experiment, we didn't put people in this situation, we just described to them the situation, much as I am describing to you now, and we asked them to predict what the result would be. What happened? People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude. People who were just given the description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition, people would probably build one more Bionicle. So people understand that meaning is important, they just don't understand the magnitude of the importance, the extent to which it's important.
També vam observar una altra variable. Hi ha gent a qui els encanten els Legos i n'hi ha a qui no. I podeu especular que a qui li agraden construirà més, fins i tot per menys diners, perquè, al cap i a la fi, s'ho passen millor. I la gent a qui no els agrada construirà menys perquè la satisfacció és menor. I això és el que trobem en la condició amb significat. Hi havia bona correlacció entre que t'agradessin els Legos i la quantitat de Legos que construïes. Què passava en la condició de Sísif? En aquesta condició la correlació era nul·la. No hi havia cap relació entre que t'agradessin i quant construïes. Això ens suggereix que amb la manipulació de desmuntar les coses davant d'algú, vam destruïr tot el goig que podien treure de l'activitat. El vam eliminar.
There was one other piece of data we looked at. If you think about it, there are some people who love Legos, and some people who don't. And you would speculate that the people who love Legos would build more Legos, even for less money, because after all, they get more internal joy from it. And the people who love Legos less would build less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower. And that's actually what we found in the meaningful condition. There was a very nice correlation between the love of Legos and the amount of Legos people built. What happened in the Sisyphic condition? In that condition, the correlation was zero -- there was no relationship between the love of Legos, and how much people built, which suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people's eyes, we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity. We basically eliminated it.
Al cap de poc d'acabar aquest experiment, vaig parlar amb una gran empresa de software de Seattle. No puc dir quina, però una gran empresa de Seattle. Concretament amb una part de l'empresa que es trobava en un altre edifici. Els havien encarregat innovar i crear un gran producte. I la setmana abans que jo hi anés, el director general de l'empresa va anar a aquest grup de 200 enginyers i va cancel·lar el projecte. I jo estava allà davant de les 200 persones més deprimides amb que havia vist mai. Quan els vaig descriure els experiments amb Legos, van dir que era com si ells també hi haguessin participat. Els vaig preguntar: "Quants de vosaltres arribeu ara més tard a la feina que abans?" I tothom va aixecar la mà. "Quants marxeu a casa més d'hora que abans?" I tothom va aixecar la mà. I també: "Quants afegiu coses poc correctes a l'informe de despeses?" I ningú no va aixecar la mà, però em van portar a sopar i em van ensenyar què podien fer amb l'informe de despeses. Els vaig preguntar: "Què podria haver fer el director per què no us sentíssiu tant malament?" I van suggerir un munt d'idees. Els podria haver demanat que donèssin a conèixer a tota l'empresa la feina dels últims dos anys i el que havien decidit fer. Els podria haver demanat que pensessin quin aspecte de la seva tecnologia podria encaixar amb altres parts de l'organització. Els podria haver demanat que construïssin prototips d'última generació i veure com funcionarien. Qualsevol d'aquestes opcions requeriria esforç i motivació. I crec que el president no entenia la importància del significat. Si el president, com els participants, pensava que l'essència del significat era poc important, no li importaria. I els diria: "Abans us vaig dirigir per aquest camí, i ara que us dirigeixo cap a aquest altre, tot anirà bé". Però si entens com d'important és el significat, te n'adones que de fet és important dedicar temps, energia i esforç en fer que la gent es preocupi més pel que fan.
Soon after I finished running this experiment, I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle. I can't tell you who they were, but they were a big company in Seattle. This was a group within the software company that was put in a different building, and they asked them to innovate, and create the next big product for this company. And the week before I showed up, the CEO of this big software company went to that group, 200 engineers, and canceled the project. And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I've ever talked to. And I described to them some of these Lego experiments, and they said they felt like they had just been through that experiment. And I asked them, I said, "How many of you now show up to work later than you used to?" And everybody raised their hand. I said, "How many of you now go home earlier than you used to?" Everybody raised their hand. I asked them, "How many of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports?" And they didn't raise their hands, but they took me out to dinner and showed me what they could do with expense reports. And then I asked them, I said, "What could the CEO have done to make you not as depressed?" And they came up with all kinds of ideas. They said the CEO could have asked them to present to the whole company about their journey over the last two years and what they decided to do. He could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization. He could have asked them to build some next-generation prototypes, and see how they would work. But the thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation. And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning. If the CEO, just like our participants, thought the essence of meaning is unimportant, then he [wouldn't] care. And he would say, "At the moment I directed you in this way, and now that I'm directing you in this way, everything will be okay." But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out that it's actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more about what they're doing.
L'experiment següent va ser una mica diferent. Vam agafar un full de paper amb lletres a l'atzar, i vam demanar a la gent que busquessin parells de lletres idèntiques una al costat de l'altra. Aquesta era la tasca. Els participants omplien el primer full. I llavors els preguntàvem si volien fer el següent per menys diners i el següent per una mica menys, i així successivament. Teníem tres condicions. En la primera condició, la gent escrivia el seu nom en el full, trobava tots els parells de lletres i retornava el full a l'encarregat. L'encarregat ho revisava, ho mirava de dalt a baix, deia "aha" i ho posava damunt d'una pila al seu costat. En la segona condició, la gent no escrivia el nom al full. L'encarregat mirava, agafava el full, no el mirarva, no el revisava, i només el posava al damunt de la pila de papers. Simplement agafava el full i l'apartava I en la tercera condició, l'encarregat agafava el full i el posava en una trituradora.
The next experiment was slightly different. We took a sheet of paper with random letters, and we asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other. That was the task. People did the first sheet, then we asked if they wanted to do another for a little less money, the next sheet for a little bit less, and so on and so forth. And we had three conditions. In the first condition, people wrote their name on the sheet, found all the pairs of letters, gave it to the experimenter, the experimenter would look at it, scan it from top to bottom, say "Uh huh," and put it on the pile next to them. In the second condition, people did not write their name on it. The experimenter looked at it, took the sheet of paper, did not look at it, did not scan it, and simply put it on the pile of pages. So you take a piece, you just put it on the side. In the third condition, the experimenter got the sheet of paper, and put it directly into a shredder.
Què va passar en aquelles tres condicions?
(Laughter) What happened in those three conditions?
Aquí us mostro a quants diners la gent parava. Els nombres més baixos volen dir que treballaven més, durant més temps. En la condició reconeguda, treballen fins a arribar a 15 centaus. A 15 centaus per pàgina deixaven d'esforçar-se. En la condició de la trituradora, era el doble: 30 centaus per full. I aquest és el mateix resultat que teníem abans. Si tritures els seus esforços,, fas que no estiguin tan contents del que fan. Cal assenyalar, per cert, que en la condició de la trituradora, podien fer trampes. Podien fer-ho malament, perquè el full es triturava directament. Podrien haver fet el primer full bé, i, veient que no el revisaven, haver-ne fet més i més. En la condició de la trituradora, podrien haver fet més fulls i aconseguit més diners posant-hi menys esforç. Però què passava amb la condició ignorada? S'assemblaria més a la reconeguda o a la de la trituradora, o es trobaria en una posició intermèdia? Resulta que era gairebé com la de la trituradora.
In this plot I'm showing you at what pay rate people stopped. So low numbers mean that people worked harder. They worked for much longer. In the acknowledged condition, people worked all the way down to 15 cents. At 15 cents per page, they basically stopped these efforts. In the shredder condition, it was twice as much -- 30 cents per sheet. And this is basically the result we had before. You shred people's efforts, output -- you get them not to be as happy with what they're doing. But I should point out, by the way, that in the shredder condition, people could have cheated. They could have done not so good work, because they realized people were just shredding it. So maybe the first sheet you'd do good work, but then you see nobody is really testing it, so you would do more and more and more. So in fact, in the shredder condition, people could have submitted more work and gotten more money, and put less effort into it. But what about the ignored condition? Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder, or somewhere in the middle? It turns out it was almost like the shredder.
Això són bones i males notícies. La mala notícia és que ignorar el rendiment de la gent és quasi tant dolent com triturar el seu esforç als seus nassos. Ignorant aconsegueixes molt més. La bona notícia és que només mirant la feina, amb una ullada i dient "aha", sembla suficient per millorar dràsticament la motivació. La bona notícia és que augmentar la motivació no sembla massa difícil. La mala notícia és que eliminar-la sembla que és extremadament fàcil, i si no ens hi mirem, ho podem fer. Això es refereix a la motivació negativa o a eliminar la motivació negativa.
Now there's good news and bad news here. The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying "Uh huh," that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people's motivations. So the good news is that adding motivation doesn't seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don't think about it carefully, we might overdo it. So this is all in terms of negative motivation, or eliminating negative motivation.
La següent part tracta de la motivació positiva. Hi ha una botiga als EUA que es diu IKEA. IKEA té mobles més o menys bons que trigues molt a muntar. (Riures) I no se vosaltres, però cada cop que en munto un em costa molt més, més esforç, és més confús. Poso les coses malament. No puc dir que m'agradin les peces. No puc dir que m'agradi el procés. Però quan ho acabo, sembla que m'agraden més els d'IKEA que altres mobles.
The next part I want to show you is something about positive motivation. So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA. And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long time to assemble. (Laughter) I don't know about you, but every time I assemble one of those, it takes me much longer, it's much more effortful, it's much more confusing, I put things in the wrong way -- I can't say I enjoy those pieces. I can't say I enjoy the process. But when I finish it, I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like other ones.
Hi ha una història sobre els preparats per a pastissos.
(Laughter)
Quan els van començar a fer als anys 40, agafaven els ingredients i els posaven en una caixa, i a casa només s'hi afegia aigua, es barrejava, es posava al forn i "Voila!", tenies el pastís. Però eren molt poc populars. La gent no els volia. I van pensar en moltes raons per a allò Potser el sabor no era bo. No, el sabor era bo. El que van deduir és que no implicava prou esforç. Era tant fàcil que ningú podia servir el pastís als seus invitats i dir, "Vet aquí el meu pastís". No, era d'algú altre. Com si l'haguessis comprat. No el senties com a propi. I què van fer? Van treure els ous i la llet del preparat. (Riures) Ara havies de trencar els ous i afegir-los. Havies de mesurar la llet i afegir-la, i barrejar-ho. Ara ja era el teu pastís. Tot estava bé.
And there's an old story about cake mixes. So when they started cake mixes in the '40s, they would take this powder and they would put it in a box, and they would ask housewives to basically pour it in, stir some water in it, mix it, put it in the oven, and -- voila -- you had cake. But it turns out they were very unpopular. People did not want them, and they thought about all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe the taste was not good? No, the taste was great. What they figured out was that there was not enough effort involved. It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say, "Here is my cake." No, it was somebody else's cake, as if you bought it in the store. It didn't really feel like your own. So what did they do? They took the eggs and the milk out of the powder. (Laughter) Now you had to break the eggs and add them, you had to measure the milk and add it, mixing it. Now it was your cake. Now everything was fine.
(Aplaudiments)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Era una mica com l'efecte IKEA. Fent que la gent s'esforci més aconsegueixen que els agradi el que fan.
Now, I think a little bit like the IKEA effect, by getting people to work harder, they actually got them to love what they're doing
I com ho analitzem experimentalment?
to a higher degree.
A través de tasques de papiroflèxia. Donàvem instruccions de com fer figures i donàvem un full de paper. Tothom eren principiants i feien figures molt lletges. Res a veure amb una granota o una grua. I els dèiem "Mira, aquesta figura ens pertany. Has treballat per nosaltres, però saps què? Te la venem. Quant en vols pagar?" I mesuràvem quant en volien pagar. I teniem dos tipus de gent. Els que les feien, i gent que no en feien i només feien d'observadors externs. Va resultar que els que les feien pensaven que eren maques i estaven disposats a pagar fins a cinc cops més que els observadors externs. Ben mirat, si fossis el que fa les figures pensaries "M'encanta aquesta figura, però a ningú més li agradarà"? O pensaries "M'encanta aquesta figura, i a tothom li agradarà"? Quina és la correcta? Resulta que als que les feien no només els agradaven més, també creien que tothom pensaria el mateix. Pensaven que a tothom els agradaria tant com a ells.
So how do we look at this question experimentally? We asked people to build some origami. We gave them instructions on how to create origami, and we gave them a sheet of paper. And these were all novices, and they built something that was really quite ugly -- nothing like a frog or a crane. But then we told them, "Look, this origami really belongs to us. You worked for us, but I'll tell you what, we'll sell it to you. How much do you want to pay for it?" And we measured how much they were willing to pay for it. And we had two types of people: We had the people who built it, and the people who did not build it, and just looked at it as external observers. And what we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami -- (Laughter) and they were willing to pay five times more for them than the people who just evaluated them externally. Now you could say -- if you were a builder, do you think [you'd say], "Oh, I love this origami, but I know that nobody else would love it?" Or "I love this origami, and everybody else will love it as well?" Which one of those two is correct? Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more, they thought that everybody would see the world in their view. They thought everybody else would love it more as well.
A la següent versió vam intentar reproduir l'efecte IKEA. Vam intentar fer-ho més difícil. A alguns els vam donar la mateixa tasca. Per a d'altres ho vam fer més difícil, sense instruccions. A dalt del full hi havia un diagrama de com doblegar-lo. Per a alguns ho vam eliminar. Ara era més difícil. I què va passar? Objectivament, les figures eren més lletges, era més difícil. Pel que fa a la versió fàcil, vam veure el mateix: agradaven més als que les feien que als observadors. I amb les instruccions difícils, l'efecte era més gran. Per què? Als que les feien ara els agradaven més. S'hi esforçaven molt més.
In the next version, we tried to do the IKEA effect. We tried to make it more difficult. So for some people, we gave the same task. For some people, we made it harder by hiding the instructions. At the top of the sheet, we had little diagrams of how you fold origami. For some people, we just eliminated that. So now this was tougher. What happened? Well in an objective way, the origami now was uglier, it was more difficult. Now when we looked at the easy origami, we saw the same thing -- builders loved it more, evaluators loved it less. When you looked at the hard instructions, the effect was larger. Why? Because now the builders loved it even more. (Laughter)
I als observadors? Encara els agradaven menys. Perquè en realitat eren encara més lletges que abans. Això diu molt de com avaluem les coses.
They put all this extra effort into it. And evaluators? They loved it even less. Because in reality, it was even uglier than the first version. (Laughter)
Of course, this tells you something about how we evaluate things.
Penseu en els nens. Imagineu que us dic "Per quant vendríeu els vostres fills?". Inclosos records i qualsevol connexió. La majoria diríeu que per molts molts diners. En dies bons.
Now think about kids. Imagine I asked you, "How much would you sell your kids for?" Your memories and associations and so on. Most people would say for a lot, a lot of money. (Laughter)
(Riures) Ara imagineu una cosa un xic diferent. Imagineu que no teniu fills i un dia aneu al parc i coneixeu uns nens que són com els vostres fills. I jugueu amb ells unes hores. I quan esteu a punt de marxar, els pares diuen "Per cert, abans que marxeu, si hi esteu interessats estan en venta." (Riures) Quant pagaríeu per ells ara? La majoria de la gent diu que no tant. Això és perquè els nostres fills són tan valuosos, no per qui són, sinó per nosaltres, perquè estan molt connectats a nosaltres i pel temps i la connexió. Per cert, si penseu que les instruccions d'IKEA no valen res, penseu en les que porten els nens. Aquestes sí que són difícils. (Riures) Per cert, aquests són els meus fills, que, per descomptat, són meravellosos. Cosa que fa que us digui una cosa més: Igual que els constructors quan miren la obra que han creat, no veiem que els altres no veuen les coses com nosaltres.
On good days. (Laughter) But imagine this was slightly different. Imagine if you did not have your kids. And one day you went to the park and you met some kids. They were just like your kids, and you played with them for a few hours, and when you were about to leave, the parents said, "Hey, by the way, just before you leave, if you're interested, they're for sale." (Laughter) How much would you pay for them now? Most people say not that much. And this is because our kids are so valuable, not just because of who they are, but because of us, because they are so connected to us, and because of the time and connection. By the way, if you think IKEA instructions are not good, what about the instructions that come with kids, those are really tough. (Laughter) By the way, these are my kids, which, of course, are wonderful and so on. Which comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don't see that other people don't see things our way.
Deixeu-me fer un últim comentari. Si compareu Adam Smith amb Karl Marx, Adam Smith tenia la noció molt important de l'eficiència. Va posar l'exemple d'una fàbrica d'imperdibles. Va dir que els imperdibles es fan en 12 passos i si una persona fa els 12 passos, la producció és molt baixa. Però si una persona fa el primer pas i una altra el segon, el tercer... la producció pot augmentar dràsticament. Va ser un bon exemple i el motiu de la Revolució Industrial i l'eficiència. Karl Marx, d'altra banda, deia que l'alienació és increïblement important amb relació a la gent i la connexió amb el que fan. Si fas els 12 passos, l'imperdible t'importa. Però si només en fas un, potser no t'importa tant.
Let me say one last comment. If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx, Adam Smith had a very important notion of efficiency. He gave an example of a pin factory. He said pins have 12 different steps, and if one person does all 12 steps, production is very low. But if you get one person to do step one, and one person to do step two and step three and so on, production can increase tremendously. And indeed, this is a great example, and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency. Karl Marx, on the other hand, said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing. And if you do all 12 steps, you care about the pin. But if you do one step every time, maybe you don't care as much.
I penso que en la Revolució Industrial Adam Smith tenia més raó que Karl Marx. Però la realitat és que hem canviat i ara estem en l'economia del coneixement. I us preguntareu què passa en l'economia del coneixement? L'eficiència és més important que el sentit encara? Crec que la resposta és no. A mesura que passem de situacions en què la gent ha de decidir sobre l'esforç, l'atenció, la cura i la connexió, i pensen en la feina de camí a la feina i a la dutxa, de sobte Marx té més coses a dir. Quan parlem de feina, solem pensar que la motivació i el sou són el mateix, però hi hauriem d'afegir un munt de coses: sentit, creació, repte, propietat, identitat, orgull, etc. La bona notícia és que si hi afegim aquests components i pensem com crear el sentit, l'orgull, la motivació i com aplicar-ho a la feina per als treballadors, podríem aconseguir que la gent fos alhora més productiva i feliç.
I think that in the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx. But the reality is that we've switched, and now we're in the knowledge economy. You can ask yourself, what happens in a knowledge economy? Is efficiency still more important than meaning? I think the answer is no. I think that as we move to situations in which people have to decide on their own about how much effort, attention, caring, how connected they feel to it, are they thinking about labor on the way to work, and in the shower and so on, all of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us. So when we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it -- meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc. The good news is that if we added all of those components and thought about them -- how do we create our own meaning, pride, motivation, and how do we do it in our workplace, and for the employees --
Moltes gràcies.
I think we could get people to be both more productive and happier.
Thank you very much.
(Aplaudiments)
(Applause)