In his book Born Standing Up, Steve Martin refers to several occasions during his early performing days when he gave a show for an audience of exactly … zero.
Having had the experience of performing to particularly loud crickets myself, I’ve been reflecting lately on how the lack of immediate payoff impacts a performer in such situations. What sustains him and keeps him going?
And how can the answer provide insight into the age-old question for the Daily Improviser: What’s my motivation, man? That is, what prompts the Daily Improviser to engage in sustained effort on certain tasks and endeavors – and to persevere in the face of challenges?
All of these questions are addressed by Dan Ariely in his book The Upside of Irrationality. A researcher in the area of behaviorial economics, Ariely describes a series of experiments he conducted that uncovered some intriguing answers to the question: “What is it aside from a paycheck that confers meaning on work?”
Ariely’s experimental design was simple and elegant. He gave each research subject the task of building a robot figure out of Lego blocks and paid him a diminishing amount of money for each robot he built, until the subject decided that he didn’t want to continue. For half of the subjects, Ariely’s researcher put each completed robot into a box underneath a desk. However, for the other half, the researcher immediately disassembled the completed robot right before the subject’s eyes.
Notice that the monetary payoff for each subject was based wholly on the number of robots he chose to build. If you’re a person who believes that people act in a strictly rational (and mercenary) way, you would probably predict that the researcher’s action with respect to the completed robots would have no impact on the number of robots the subjects chose to build.
And you would be wrong.
The experiments showed that those subjects whose robots were destroyed in their presence produced 32% fewer robots and made almost three dollars less than those whose creations were carefully stowed in the box. Even though there was nothing stopping them from building more robots, the subjects who saw their work immediately broken up generally felt that the extra effort to make three more dollars just wasn’t worth it.
Ariely personifies this group by referring to Chad, the first subject in the group, and concludes as follows:
"Chad … witnessed the piece-by-piece destruction of his work, forcing him to realize that his labor was meaningless…. For those in Chad’s condition, watching their creations being deconstructed in front of their eyes was hugely demotivating."
To further emphasize how powerfully people crave meaning – even with a small “m” – in their work, Ariely next designed an experiment in which subjects solved simple word puzzles on successive pieces of paper and were again paid a diminishing amount for each puzzle solved. For one group, the researcher looked at each completed paper and nodded approvingly before giving the subject the next puzzle. For a second group, the researcher shredded the completed paper in front of the subject’s eyes. For a third group, the researcher simply put the paper aside without looking at the subject’s work at all.
As in the Lego exercise, the subjects whose work was acknowledged persevered in the task longer (and made more money) than the group whose work was summarily torn up. Incredibly, though, the group whose work was totally unacknowledged gave up the task about as early as the group whose work was destroyed!
So what does this mean for the Daily Improviser? As Ariely observes:
"The experiment taught us that sucking the meaning out of work is surprisingly easy. If you’re a manager who really wants to demotivate your employees, destroy their work in front of their eyes. Or, if you want to be a little subtler about it, just ignore them and their efforts."
To Ariely’s conclusion, I would add that there are even lots of subtle ways to “destroy” an employee’s work, if only in a figurative sense:
- Minimize their best efforts
- Pour cold water on their aspirations
- Discount their ideas
- Punish them for taking calculated risks that don't work out
On the other hand, perhaps the good news about Ariely’s research is: A little recognition, used consistently and genuinely, can go a long way toward creating engagement, satisfaction, and meaningfulness for an employee as he applies his best efforts.
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