Barry Schwartz

The logic behind the presumption that if some choice is good, more choice is better seems compelling. But in his ground breaking work, Barry Schwartz has found evidence that there can be too much of a good thing-that a point can be reached at which options paralyze rather than liberate. From consumer products, to Medicare prescription drug plans, media choices, travel options and even financial services, Schwartz’ research has shown that when confronted with overwhelming choices the vast majority of us will either end up unhappy with the choice we make, or choose to not make a choice at all.

What makes work satisfying? Apart from a paycheck, there are intangible values that, Barry Schwartz suggests, our current way of thinking about work simply ignores. It’s time to stop thinking of workers as cogs on a wheel.

Based on Barry’s latest TED Talk and new book, Why We Work, Barry presents an eye-opening, groundbreaking tour of the purpose of work in our lives, showing how work operates in our culture and how you can find your own path to happiness in the workplace.

We’ve long been taught that the reason we work is primarily for a paycheck. In fact, we’ve shaped much of the infrastructure of our society to accommodate this belief. Then why are so many people dissatisfied with their work, despite healthy compensation? And why do so many people find immense fulfillment and satisfaction through “menial” jobs? Schwartz explores why so many believe that the goal for working should be to earn money, how we arrived to believe that paying workers more leads to better work, and why this has made our society confused, unhappy, and has established a dangerously misguided system.

The international financial crisis of the last two years has vividly illustrated how,when things go wrong, people are quick to reach for two tools to fix them: more and better rules, and smarter incentives. This talk will show that neither rules nor incentives are adequate substitutes for character. To induce people to do the right thing, we need to figure out how to get them to want to do the right thing. Rules and incentives may make things better in the short run. But they make things worse in the long run, by demoralizing activities and demoralizing the people who engage in the activities. The task before us—in finance, in education, in medicine, in law, and in virtually any occupation that involves human interaction—is to find ways to nurture character rather than destroying it.

When our institutions fail to give us what we need and expect, we reach for two tools to try to fix them. We develop rules and standard operating procedures (“sticks”) to force people to do the right thing, and incentives (“carrots”) to entice them to do the right thing. Both strategies are evident throughout the educational system as the demand for “accountability” grows ever more insistent. In this talk, I will argue that neither does the job. What we need instead of rules and incentives is character—virtue. We need people who want to do the right thing because it’s the right thing. And most especially, we need the virtue that Aristotle called “practical wisdom.” Moreover, the more we rely on rules and incentives, the more we drive wise practices and wise people out of education. Our task is to find ways to nurture practical wisdom; instead we are destroying it.