The IKEA Effect: Our tendency to place higher value on things we helped create or build.

What we experience when we say, “I put so much effort into this project.”

Not just at work, but throughout our lives. While assembling the furniture we bought from IKEA, while cooking by watching YouTube videos…

We love and value more the things we put effort, time, labor into, and use our creativity for. For this reason, if there will be a new project or change, transformation process in institutions, it is effective to include the employees in the process from the beginning and get their ideas. Those who have taken ownership of the process or who are “the salt in the soup” processes with people are much more efficient, faster and more effective.

I emphasize this a lot, especially in the consultancy I provide to institutions that will permanently switch to the work-from-home model. When employees express their ideas, when management also hears them, when employees are included in the decision-making process or feel included, when they make contributions such as “it might be better if we do it this way”, “there might be sensitivity in this issue, let’s be careful”, the adaptation process and implementation become both more enjoyable and sustainable.