Leggo My LEGOs
What Parks & Rec, LEGOs, and call centers can teach us about motivation
In Season 5 of Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson and April Ludgate find themselves in Chris Traeger's management seminar. As the discussion turns to motivation and productivity, distinct positions are taken between the three characters:
Ron: "There are only three ways to motivate people: money, fear, and hunger."
Chris: "Oh, I disagree. What about encouragement, appreciation, and smiles? When people feel supported, they literally explode with productivity!"
April: "Can you guys just figure out which is better and tell me so we can leave?"
Regardless of your familiarity with these characters, I'll bet you can relate to at least one of their perspectives. The debate on the show is one that rages on in workplaces around the world, seemingly with no end. Whether you have experienced a manager like Chris or Ron or struggled with the dichotomy of carrots and sticks that they represent in managing your team, It's hard not to feel like April, desperate to get out of the situation without debating management theory altogether.
What if there’s more to the debate? Maybe the reason the debate rages on with no clear resolution is that the framing is wrong. A missing piece, perhaps? One that could just click into place...
Imagine someone offered to pay you to build LEGO models. Not a lot, mind you - a few dollars for the first one and a little less for each subsequent unit - but hey, you've played with LEGOs as a kid for free so you're certainly moving up in the world.
After meeting with the researcher, you take your LEGO kit and get to work. It's not too complicated - it takes you about ten minutes to build the 40 piece set. Once you're done, you hand the completed model to the researcher, who then asks if you'd like to build another. Sure, why not? Each time you agree to build one more, you're given an identical new LEGO model to build. If you're anything like the average Harvard undergrads that participated in this study, 11 models have accumulated on the desk before you decided to take your money and leave.
Score one for Ron Swanson. Here‘s a job to be done and you pay someone to do it for you. Money talks, right?
Imagine the same scenario with one slight twist. After you complete the first model and tell the researcher you'll do another, you take your new LEGO set to your desk and that's when you notice that the researcher is disassembling what you just built. When you're done and offer to do a third, the researcher hands you the box with your first model. As you return to your seat, the researcher deconstructs your second LEGO set so that it'll be ready for you should you decide to do a fourth. When you finally call it quits, the researcher's desk is clear of all but the last model you completed, which she begins to deconstruct. Piece. By. Piece.
So what? LEGOs aren't intended to survive the test of time. Surely you went into this knowing your hard work wasn't going to be preserved in the university trophy case for all to see. The endgame is the same, with the second scenario being far more practical for the poor researcher who had to watch you play with LEGOs.
Here's the thing - that slight twist makes a world of difference. If you were put into the second scenario (the Sisyphus condition), you would have built 32% fewer LEGO models and your payout would be 20% less than your peers in the first (the Meaningful condition). This is striking. The study described above (1) was conducted with Harvard undergraduates - surely smart enough to know that the LEGO models were destined to go back in the box. Yet the Sisyphus participants were less productive and, therefore, earned less than their statistically identical peers whose only distinction was being spared observing the deconstruction of their work.
If money talks, it was merely a whisper in this case. The pointlessness of the task sapped the students' motivation, causing them to disregard the earning opportunity afforded to them by the incentive structure. As intuitive as they are, the productivity theories posed by Ron and Chris fail to explain this.
This begs the question: if stripping meaning from a task can demotivate workers, can emphasizing it increase productivity? To answer that, let's turn our attention to a workplace where productivity tracking is king: call centers.
There are a lot of thankless jobs out there, but that of the university development fundraiser has to be near the top of the list. Cold-calling alumni and asking for donations can be a grueling task. Most calls will go straight to voicemail and, when they don’t, more often than not you probably wish they did.
Metrics matter, particularly how much money you bring in. The industry has an abundance of Chris Traegers, with their relentless attempts to boost employee satisfaction, and Ron Swansons, with their laser-like focus on incentives and performance minimums. For managers, it can be challenging to cut through the noise as the sheer volume of rewards and punishments can crowd out any other motivation. How can meaning possibly make a difference in an environment like this?
Adam Grant, now of the Wharton School, designed an experiment (2) to find out. A sample of thirty-nine fundraiser callers was split into three groups:
1. The Interpersonal Contact Condition, who spent five minutes interacting with a student who benefited from the scholarships their work funded
2. The Letter Control Condition, who read a letter from such a student and discussed it within the team for five minutes
3. The Control Condition, who received no interaction with the scholarship beneficiaries
I'm sure you can guess where this is going. Those in the first condition vastly outperformed the other two. Here's what you probably didn't expect - the productivity gained from that five-minute conversation had a lasting impact. A month after the interaction, students in the Interpersonal Contact Condition were bringing in 2.71 times more money than what they had brought in before the intervention. Five minutes of meaning equated to productivity lifts for a month. That‘s one hell of an ROI.
Dismissing this as purely academic would be a mistake. Results such as those above have been replicated elsewhere (see further reading), but the signs that meaning matters extend beyond university research labs. The business benefits, but so do the employees. In a recent survey (3), 80% of respondents reported they would rather have a boss who cared about them finding meaning and success in work than receive a 20% pay increase. I wouldn't recommend such a pitch in the next annual review, but it gives you a sense of how critical this is.
Money talks, but meaning motivates.
Chris and Ron devise an experiment to decide whose management theory is best. The rules are simple: each has a stack of folders to be filed and go about putting their techniques to work on the hapless Jerry Gergich. Chris uses inspiration, Ron intimidation. The results are unsurprising: more of Ron's folders were put away, but most of them were filed incorrectly. It's ultimately declared a draw, with the real winner being April who pitted the two against each other while she achieved her goal of leaving the seminar altogether.
After what we've discussed above, a draw feels appropriate. The task was pointless and the techniques employed were attempts to externally influence rather than internally motivating. None of this is to say that carrots and sticks don't work - they do. But like any good LEGO set, it's not how many pieces you have but how they fit together.
This all makes sense, but when push comes to shove, it runs counter to our intuition. Left to our own devices, we'll default to carrots and sticks because the theories are more pervasive, which in turn makes it easier. Less risky. What manager would want to be left holding the bag because they shifted from PIPs to customer meet and greets? I'd argue that's a false choice, as enhancing meaning at work is a compliment to the other structures in place, but that doesn't make it any easier. This is a new motion and, like any new exercise, it's going to be uncomfortable as you adjust.
Here's how to think about it. Every task doesn't have to have to be framed as life-changing. Look for ways to imbue meaning in work by connecting the task to the beneficiary. Remember, simply spending five minutes highlighting such a connection can motivate for weeks If not months. Just as importantly, avoiding pointless work (or at least avoiding making work seem pointless) so that other motivators can work as intended. Nobody wants to watch their hard work disassembled, piece by piece, so if a project gets scrapped it's important to underscore why the work mattered regardless of the outcome.
Meaning is the centerpiece of productivity at work. When present, even in small doses, it acts as a multiplier. When absent or stripped away, nothing else can replace it.
Sources
1. Man’s search for meaning: The Case of LEGOs
3. 9 Out of 10 People Are Willing to Earn Less Money to Do More-Meaningful Work - HBR
Further Reading
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
· Written by the lead researcher of the LEGO study (Dan Ariely), this book covers his vast research on how we behave doesn't often jive with our intuition.
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
· Written by the lead researcher of the Call Center study (Adam Grant), this book compiles his research on the success of those who focus on others.