The IKEA effect

Today is my 600th blog post!  I have really enjoyed reading and writing about leadership.  Looking back to my very first post (entitled, appropriately enough, First blog post!), I mentioned two goals for starting my own blog.  First, I wanted to write more.  I have always enjoyed writing, and I thought that having my own blog would be a great way to continue to develop and refine my writing skills on a subject that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Second, I wanted a place to collect stories, lessons, articles, and good examples of leadership.  I never thought that I would get to 100 posts (I did start slowly, going almost seven months without a post during the first year), let alone six hundred!  It's truly been a great experience for me, and even if no one outside my own family reads this blog, it's been worth it!

My first post was just an introduction and an explanation for why I was starting my own blog.  My second post introduced a favorite personal strategy on learning about leadership ("What can we learn about leadership from a movie?").  I enjoy watching movies, particularly those movies that have important lessons about leadership (see my post "12 O'Clock High" for a list of some of my personal favorites).  Last year, I watched the famous war movie, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" starring Sir Alec Guinness and William Holden as two prisoners of war during the Burma Campaign of World War II.  Guiness stars as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, the senior British officer at the POW camp, who provides a very interesting case study in leadership.  He is all spit and polish and lives 100% by the book.  

The Allied POW's are forced, at least at first, to build a railroad bridge across the River Kwai (hence the name of the movie).  Ultimately, Nicholson leads his men to build the bridge on time, on budget, and according to specification.  The bridge becomes an object of pride and admiration for the men.  Nicholson seems to forget about the bridge's strategic importance, but William Holden's character, Navy Lieutenant Commander Shears does not.  Shears escapes from the camp and leads a band of commandos to destroy the bridge.  

At one point, Nicholson unbelievably tries to prevent Shears and his team from bombing the bridge.  At the last minute, he comes to his senses, uttering "What have I done?"  He is shot, and as he falls, he detonates the bridge just as a Japanese train is crossing it.  The mission ultimately succeeds.  Why was Nicholson so attached to the bridge?  He was either incredibly stupid or deranged to the point where he tried to save the bridge for the Japanese Army Colonel who ran the POW camp.  Actually, there's a simpler explanation.  The bridge was his creation, or at least he saw it that way.

If you have a chance to read anything by the cognitive psychologist and author, Dan Ariely, please do so.  He's authored a number of books and research papers, and he most recently started writing a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal called "Ask Ariely".  A few years ago, he published the results of a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology on something he calls, "The IKEA effect".  After reading this study, I suspect that Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson's behavior in The Bridge Over the River Kwai will make a lot more sense.  Ariely and his team conducted four studies in which study subjects were asked to build IKEA boxes, fold Origami, and build Lego sets.  Subjects were consistently willing to pay significantly more money for their own creations than someone else's creation.  

Ariely's "IKEA effect" (so named to honor the Swedish company whose products require assembly) reminds me of another famous study by the cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler on something known as the "endowment effect".  In this study, subjects who had been given a coffee mug were offered a chance to trade it for some pens or sell it for a certain amount of money.  The price that subjects were willing to sell their mugs was almost twice as much as the price that they were originally willing to pay for it.  Ariely also demonstrated the endowment effect in another study, in which students were willing to sell four NCAA basketball tournament tickets for twice as much as they would have been willing to pay for them.  In other words, once we own something, we tend to want to hold on to it and are reluctant to part with it.

Okay, now that we've introduced the "IKEA effect" and reviewed the "endowment effect", what's the lesson for leadership?  I will suggest that there are two points to be made here - both have to do with change management.  First, according to the "endowment effect", individuals will want to hang on to the "way that we've always done things around here,"  making any significant process or culture change that more difficult.  Leaders should be cognizant of this fact.  Second, according to the "IKEA effect," we place a greater value on things that we have created or built.  Leaders should absolutely leverage this cognitive tendency when it comes to change management.  Individuals and groups will be more receptive and supportive of change when they have a hand in what, how, and when it happens (more on this in a post next month).  

Perhaps the "IKEA effect" can overcome the "endowment effect" here - remember, at least in the movie "The Bridge Over the River Kwai", the "IKEA effect" was so strong as to overcome patriotism and loyalty to the Allied cause!  At least in my own experience, change is easier to manage when the individuals or groups have at least some input into it.  

As I close this 600th post, I will end, as I frequently do, with a quote.  Going back to one of the main reasons I started this blog - to write - I will leave with a quote by the author Louis L'Amour, "Start writing, no matter what.  The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on."  And one more, from the essayist, Anais Nin, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."  I have enjoyed writing these posts, and I look forward to the next 600 with even greater anticipation.