This document discusses different perspectives on why people work and how work is structured. It suggests that: 1) Traditional views see humans as lazy and only working for incentives, but people can achieve more with meaningful work that engages their full potential. 2) The industrial revolution created efficient systems that broke down jobs into monotonous tasks, ignoring human needs for purpose, which has negative effects on workers' well-being and skills. 3) Societal views and institutions shape human nature as much as discover it, so creating a system focused only on incentives can change human motivation in unintended ways. Overall, the document questions whether current work structures truly reflect innate human nature or have been influenced by particular economic theories.

1. S

2. JANITOR’S JD
S Shampoo the floor
S Vacuum
S Clean toilet
S Dust blinds
S Restock the cabinets
S Collect waste
S Stock restrooms
S WHAT’S MISSING IN THIS JD?

3. WHAT THE JANITORS DID
S Stop mopping the floor because a patient wants to do some
exercise by walking slowly in the hallways
S Ignore supervisor’s demands and did not vacuum the waiting area
floor, because a family who has been waiting there all day decided
to take a nap
S Wash the floor twice because the patient’s father didn’t see it the
first time and was angry
S What they did made people feel better and improved patient care
S Their JD never include kindness and empathy

4. A WISE WORKER …
S Knows when to make an exception to the rule
S Knows how to improvise. Real world problems are often
ambiguous and ill-defined, and context ever changing
S Uses moral skills to serve the right purpose, not to manipulate
S Builds a lot of experience by knowing the people they serve,
having permission to improvise, allowed to learn and recover
from mistakes, and having wise mentors

5. DUMB RULES & SMART
INCENTIVES ?
S Have to follow procedures, although you hate to do it?
S Rules may be dumb, but they help you do things without
thinking?
S Rules are there because previously we were too lax and things
went wrong?
S 2 ways to solve any problem: rules, better ones, more of them;
incentives, better ones, more of them
S But what rules / incentives make a good hospital
janitor?

6. DUMB RULES & SMART
INCENTIVES ?
S Short term – make things better; long term – bad news
S Rules – chip away moral skills
S Incentives – destroys our desires to do the right thing (moral
will)
S We don’t trust the employees enough to let
them loose on their own ways – so we set
rules as an insurance policy. We prevented
disaster, but we also ensured mediocrity.

7. 2 REASONS ARE BETTER
THAN 1?
S If we have more incentives (reason) to do something,
certainly we are more likely to do it. Right? Logical?
S Switzerland Nuclear Waste Dump Poll Experiment –
Group A & B were polled if they agree to have the nuclear
waste dump built near their area. But Group B were also
offered a 1.5 months annual salary bonus if they agree.
Guess the results.

8. SO, WHY DO WE WORK
S First, let’s be honest here.
S But despite all that, we allowed a large majority of
workforce in the world to work only for money and
nothing else. Their work is monotonous, meaningless,
with no immaterial satisfaction at all (e.g. factory
production, call centre, etc.) WHY?

9. BLAME IT ON SCIENCE
S Social sciences – the idea in which we understand
ourselves
S We discard false and useless sciences / technologies,
but when we have false ideas about people – we create
an institution that is consistent and strengthen our false
ideas. Bad ideas do not simply disappear
S E.g. the way we motivate ourselves, or believing that we
are victim of consequence, even religion

10. THE STUPID SYSTEM THAT
WE CREATED
S Industrial revolution created the efficient way of utilizing human workforce
S One of its founder, Adam Smith, developed this idea based on his belief that humans
are by nature lazy and would only work for incentives
S Truth is, people can never achieve their full potential if their work is demeaning and
soulless
S In fact, Adam Smith later said, “People who work in assembly lines generally
BECOME as stupid as a human being can BECOME.”
S Human nature are consistently changed by the very theories we develop to
understand ourselves.
S Maybe human nature is created, not discovered.

11. WHY WE WORK ? BECAUSE