TEAM BUILDING – HOW TO USE THE IKEA EFFECT?
Czas czytania: 5min.
A discreet investigation into colleagues’ non-work-related interests can be surprising. Specialists and managers, after leaving the office, rush to repair bicycles, paint figurines, plane furniture, make liqueurs, and knit scarves. Sometimes we wish our team would show even a fraction of the enthusiasm at work that they reserve for their hobbies ☺
And contrary to appearances, it is achievable. The so-called ‘Ikea effect’ can help us with this.
Why Ikea specifically? Anyone who has ever assembled Ikea furniture remembers the entire process of unpacking boxes and bags of screws, figuring out the assembly order, diligently screwing things together, the screwdriver that rolled under the shelf… and finally – the genuine satisfaction felt when looking at the self-assembled wardrobe.
And even if our work is objectively not an ideal piece of furniture, because we feel like its proud creators (well, co-creators, without the instructions with the characteristic little figures it would be much more difficult…), we value it much more than if we had bought the wardrobe ready-made. In a word – the Ikea effect is the tendency to value things made by oneself higher compared to an identical product made by someone else.
Even if our work is not an ideal piece of furniture, we value it much higher than if we had bought the wardrobe ready-made.
How to use the Ikea effect in team building? To take advantage of the Ikea effect in building engagement in the team, you need to: clearly identify the author, give them the freedom to choose how to complete the task, and the project must end in success (a wardrobe with doors opening inward will not awaken pride and satisfaction in us either…). Therefore:
How to do it? Creative problem-solving techniques come to the rescue.
Employees will be invaluable during brainstorming sessions about a service or product, user persona/customer journey analysis (especially when they deal with it daily), or planning modifications to the process they are involved in. After all, they know best what works in the process and what doesn’t, understand the client’s pain points, and have many insights about the product. At the same time, the product will become more their product, the client their client, and the process their process.
Engaging the team using creative work methods has another advantage – clarity of the situation. In such a format (brainstorming, working on a persona, etc.), it is clear that gathering opinions is a valuable consultation, while avoiding the expectation that solutions contrary to the company’s strategy will be implemented as a result of discussions/voting (and disappointment when this does not happen).
- Divide the project into smaller, ‘checkable’ tasks, within which there is room for decisions. Projects we participate in are often so complex that they go beyond the activities of a single department, and it is not even possible to indicate one person responsible for ‘assembling the wardrobe.
So what should be done to prevent subordinates from feeling that from the moment they arrive at work until they leave, they are laboriously going through a series of repetitive, insignificant tasks that constitute an imperceptible element of the final result?
The Ikea effect can be utilized here by breaking the process into smaller stages and assigning owners to them. Note: It is crucial that within their stage, the owner has a real opportunity to make decisions and organize their work. It should be clear at what point a task can be ‘checked off’ as completed.
It is crucial that within their stage, the task owner has a real opportunity to make decisions and organize their work.
- Ensure to celebrate and appreciate successes – both individually and as a team. The Ikea effect only appears after completing a task successfully. Let’s admit, during the assembly of a wardrobe, we experience various emotions… and they are not always pride and satisfaction. Especially when it turns out that the drawers should have been installed before attaching the doors (because now they don’t fit inside). Similar surprises occur when executing our part of a project and can cost us a lot of nerves – especially when we care about the final outcome.
That is why it is such an important task for the manager to appreciate an employee who has completed a task despite all odds (positive feedback!) and that is why there is so much written about celebrating team successes. And there are as many ways to celebrate as there are teams – from the classic going out for a beer (pizza, sushi…) to an extra casual day and the right to come in favorite T-shirts with comic book characters.
Because if we diligently assemble a wardrobe and don’t even get a chance to look at it, and the spouse already sends us running for shopping… our motivation to assemble another one won’t be high. Instead, let’s watch funny cats on the Internet ☺
Author: Zosia Augustyniak
Źródło:
Norton, M., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22 (3), 453-460 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcps.2011.08.002