By -. Gene Levine. Retired CEO Gene Levine Associates (GLA), Consultantd, and Life Coaches

Here is the story of how my company used gold stars that cost less than a penny to eventually upend how traditional labor-intensive management in  industries applied the stars and increased their production workforce's output 30% or more. The gold stars increased worker's motivation and earnings, and provided millions of additional profit dollars for our clients.

One of the main business goals is to increase profits. Very often, additional profits come from increasing employee production. If that is your goal, can something that costs less than a penny and properly used increase employee output 40 percent or more?  

Back when you were a child in school, did your teacher give you a gold star or a stamped piece of paper to show your parents when you did something very good? Most likely, that psychic reward made you feel good. To explain how and why gold stars work, I need to tell you a short story.

The story begins during the Second World War when civilian doctors and dentists had to find innovative ways to overcome a shortage of vital pain-killing medicines needed by the military. That’s why, when I was about nine years old and had my first severe toothache, my mother, knowing my low tolerance for pain at the time, took me to an advertised “painless” dentist – Dr. Macklin.

He had my mom wait in the waiting room and ushered me into the treatment room. Before he sat me down, Dr. Macklin motioned me to walk over to look at lots of charts on the wall, each one entitled, “I CAN TAKE IT CLUB”. Down the left side of the charts were many names. To the right of each name, in little boxes were various numbers of gold stars. I recognized some names as being classmates and friends. He then told me, ‘Gene, when I was filling your friend’s cavities, they were brave; they didn’t scream, or squirm, spit on me, or cry, and that earned them a gold star.’

When I got into the dental chair, I had already decided that if my friends earned gold stars, I could also get them. To this day, I clearly remember the whining sound and pressure of the drill, the smell of burning bone, and the pain. But even though I wanted to cry, I wanted that star. I hid the pain by squeezing the porcelain arms of the chair so very, very hard. I was surprised the porcelain didn’t crumble. All the time he worked in my mouth, I kept telling myself, if my friends didn’t cry, I can’t and won’t cry either!

After he finished, Dr. Macklin added my name to the chart and began bragging about me to my mother as he put a gold star next to my name. Little did I realize it then, but that was to be the most important gold star I would ever receive in my life. Let me explain.

20 years after receiving that gold star, I was in South Carolina, employed for three years now as an Industrial Engineering and Management trainee at Allendale Garment Company. The seven words I heard one day did more to help me achieve and understand people, success and happiness than any others I've heard, or read since then. Knowing the answer it provided, allowed me to start a consultancy that for over 33 years helped clients increase their employee’s production 30% or more.

Seminar attendees, with whom I've constantly shared these seven words often remarked that they were one of the most revealing and usable ideas they had ever heard, and they thanked me for sharing it with them.

Imagine seven simple words that can provide you with a powerful tool to get people motivated. A small thought that can give you a greater understanding of yourself, of your success, and your happiness. Let me tell you about it.

In 1961 I was a management trainee for a labor-intensive Garment Company in Allendale, SC. Howard Stringer, VP and my boss, told me to attend a meeting of the Lower South Carolina Management Association being held at the Westinghouse factory in Hampton, South Carolina that manufactured a product called Micarta.

The speaker was going to be Douglas McGregor, the distinguished professor of management at the School of Industrial Management at M.I.T. Howard told me I would find Dr, McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y interesting. Dr. McGregor was doing consulting work for Westinghouse at the time and had agreed to talk at a regularly scheduled meeting of the Association. The subject of his talk was "The Human Side of Enterprise," which coincidentally was the name of the book he had recently published.

It was at that meeting, during his lengthy speech, that I heard Professor McGregor nonchalantly remark, "A satisfied need no longer motivates behavior."

For whatever the reason, something told me that someday, that statement would be important to me. So, I wrote it onto the notes I was taking. How right I was! Because, several years after my writing down those seven words, Allendale’s factory’s loud speakers blared out my name telling me to immediately go to Howard Stringer’s office. He was V.P. of Manufacturing. Howard explained to me that the Factory Manager of the Barnwell factory had suddenly become ill, and he needed me to provide a management presence that would only “WATCH, AND NOT CHANGE ANYTHING” in the factory, until the regular manager recovered and returned.

While driving us the 17 miles to the Barnwell factory, Howard turned to me and said, “The company’s Allendale, Bamberg and Barnwell factories had been making the same garments for years, but Barnwell would be an easy factory for you to manage.” He went on and emphasized, “Levine, nothing in Barnwell needs changing. Barnwell is a balanced factory. The truck will come to you on Friday to drop off the cut work for the next week and pick up finished goods. So keep it that way.” When he left, his repeating those directives to only watch, not to speak to any of the sewing machine operators, and not to change anything, was therefore indelibly engraved in my mind.

Most sewing factories, pay sewing machine operators for each completed parts of the garment they’re skilled to put together. That pay method is known as, “Piece Work.” At Barnwell, I soon learned the average piece work operator was earning $.60 per hour. But, federal law in 1963 required the company to pay any piece-worker who earned less than the prevailing federal minimum wage be paid the prevailing minimum hourly wage of $.75 per hour.

Even though Howard warned me not to talk to the operators I was having trouble understanding why as a group, they wouldn’t work harder to earn more money, and I wanted to find out why. As time went by, the more I talked to them, the more it became apparent to me that as a group, they didn’t seem to want to earn more because to them, the prevailing federal minimum wage was sufficient for the effort they expended.

The more I met with the operators the stranger their reason for their lack of motivation became, simply because of my knowledge of the operators in the Allendale factory. Allendale made the same garments as Barnwell, and the piece rates job by job, were identical. But, the average operator’s hourly earnings in Allendale was $1.00 per hour–over 60% more than the Barnwell average of $.60 per hour.

In my considered opinion, it was Barnwell’s operator’s negative attitude (“no need or desire to work harder to produce more”) was the issue. I felt if I could somehow get them to work harder, they could earn the same $.40 per hour more that Allendale’s employees earn on the same jobs. I needed a way to change their mindsets, but I didn't know how to do that without me violating even more of Howard’s instructions. For about a month, I unsuccessfully pondered how to do it.

One day, an idea came as I was walking out from the lunch restaurant.  I passed by a stationary store and in the window was a big discount sale on poster boards, the same type boards that Doctor Macklin used for his “I Can Take It Club charts.

Seeing that sale sign somehow caused me to flash back to have me remember how Dr. Macklin used the promise of a gold star would be the motivator for me to sit quietly without squirming while he worked on my tooth. The word “motivator” then triggered my mind to recall the seven-word scenario in Hampton, South Carolina when Dr. MacGregor nonchalantly remarked, "A satisfied need no longer motivates behavior." Since the Federal Government’s guaranteed wage of $.75 per hour, paid Barnwell sewers more then what they earned, Barnwell’s operators weren’t motivated to work harder to earn more but maybe gold stars could somehow be the motivator to reverse their negative thinking?

I mentally concluded that I had nothing to lose by trying, and so those two memories gave me the motivation to try. I purchased about 30 poster boards and several boxes of small gold stars. I gave each chart the header that read, “I CAN MAKE $1.00 PER HOUR CLUB.” I put all the operators’ names on them and to the right of their names were many small boxes slightly larger than the stars. I decided I would do nothing more than just hang the charts. I wanted to see if just hanging them would do the trick.

I told the factory supervisors that, each day, any operator earning $1.00 or more per hour they were to have a gold star pasted next to their name and then congratulate that employee. The supervisors verbally trying to convince me that their new Yankee boss was nuts. They told me, “How can you expect them to earn $1.00 when no one is even close. . . and do it for silly little stars?” I replied, Please say nothing to the operators about those charts and be patient. Night after night, week after week, when the supervisors were leaving, one by one they would respectfully jeer, “Not one earned that dollar per hour today.”

It was many weeks before the first star appeared. The next day, that same operator got another star. On the third day, the same operator got another star, but then, suddenly, new operators were also getting stars.  The race was on, The game had begun. The operators were saying to themselves the same thing I said to myself in Dr. Macklin’s office: if they can do it, I can do it too, because they are no better than me.

Soon, production increased, and many new gold stars were being placed on all the charts, so I called the Allendale factory to send me the truck two days earlier because the operators were running out of garments to sew.

Within minutes after I called, I received a phone call from Howard Stringer: “Levine Why has production suddenly increased? I told him the truth – Howard, I never asked or told any of the operators to increase their production. They just decided on their own and figured out how to increase their output.

About a half hour later, without any warning Howard’ walked in, unannounced, into the Barnwell factory. When I saw him and sensed his mood, I knew I might be in trouble.

As he walked into the factory, he couldn’t help but immediately see the 30 charts on the wall. The sounds of the machines had become louder. He was chewing his lit cigar causing it to rotate his mouth when he motioned to me to put my lips near his ear, which I did. Pointing to the charts, he annoyingly asked, “Where did these charts come from and what are they all about?” He went on to say, “Levine, didn’t I tell you; only watch, no changes?” I replied, Howard, I swear, all I did was to hang those charts on the wall.

He then turned, and as he walked to the door, he was shaking his head from left to right. He stopped before exiting the building and said, “Levine, can you be in my office in about an hour?” I nodded a yes, and when he left. Based on his persona, I felt I was going to be fired.

I soon drove to Allendale. When I entered his office, Howard silently handed me a white sealed envelope with my name neatly typed on it, I thought to myself, my termination notice is probably inside. He scowled as he said, “Open it?” When I did, I received one of the most pleasant surprises of my life. On a white piece of paper, Instead of being fired was a single gold star with the words, “Congratulations on your promotion and your raise in pay. Howard.”

When I looked up, he was smiling!

About 20 years later, I opened my Management Consultancy, where I successfully used gold star charts and various other games to achieve my client’s desires to improve their manufacturing output. Using my time-tested ideas that provided employees with a psychic income reason to produce more, and a reason to increase their take home pay.

My seminar attendees and clients learned my games are not tools to exploiter work forces, instead, they accomplish goals in a very untraditional way by making work fun. The higher and harder the goal is to reach, the more meaningful the award was. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss more than the above examples. But, by using motivational games, I have seen accomplishments that my client’s management would have deemed “impossible” in any of their quieter moments.

To make games work you must have a belief in people and the fact that your employees were once children. They loved all the different types of gold star games then, and will love those same reasons now, and will strive to win the prizes.

Ready? Well then, begin to provide real challenges, offer gold stars, and let the games begin.