In 1932 Herbert J. Taylor was tasked with saving a company from bankruptcy. After a thorough evaluation of the situation the company was in, Taylor needed to find something that wasn’t based on investing money that would allow the company to develop a competitive advantage.
He decided that what the company could develop most compared to other organizations was their personnel. It was a bet that such help would allow the company to come back to a prosperous situation.
Their idea went further than seeking to be selective in the selection process of their personnel. They also decided to find a way to help everyone develop themselves and chose to help their personnel develop the character, dependability, and service-mindedness that would contribute to the company’s business ethics.
What they could also see was that the existing code of ethics hadn’t done the job yet. It was too complicated and too long for people to apply it on the fly. They wanted to have something that would give everyone a simple measuring stick of ethics they could easily apply and use. The other requirement they had in mind was that their code of ethics shouldn’t be there to tell people what to do but to guide them in their daily actions.
After some considerable work, the company settled on four questions:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
But Taylor decided to first explore the practice of these questions himself. He set out to figure out what impact the questions would have. As the story goes, the beginning was frustrating to him as he discovered how many of the company documents didn’t pass the first question. Experimenting for some sixty days with these questions he learned to see the impact of his newfound practice.
After his initial tests, he started deploying the four questions. Which led, for example, to change their advertisements. They removed the many superlatives used, with words like better, best, greatest, and finest subsequently disappearing. It also meant eliminating all the statements which could not be proved. Changing advertisements like this made it easier for others to trust their statements.
They work on the documents produced by the company reviewing them with these four questions, finding themselves working on the company’s and its personnel’s attitude towards truth, justice, friendliness, and helpfulness. It not only worked well, it transformed the company back into a profitable and successful organization. Experiencing how much these questions helped him and his company, Taylor shared them with Rotary who adopted them in the 1940’s.
One may wonder if these questions would still enable an organization today to transform itself into a successful company.
It requires courage and practice to find out.
