Is it the truth?
By Paul Engleman
Rotary International News
Herbert Taylor with The Four-Way Test.
Rotary Images
It is a story so familiar to most Rotarians that it has evolved beyond lore and become assimilated into the genetic code of the organization.
In 1932, Herbert J. Taylor, the newly appointed president of a nearly bankrupt Chicago cookware company, believing his employees were in need of an “ethical yardstick,” wrote four questions on a small, white piece of paper:
Is it the TRUTH? Is it FAIR to all concerned? Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
When Taylor penned what came to be known as The Four-Way Test, the country was in the grip of the Great Depression, and there was widespread distrust of banks and corporations after the stock market crash three years earlier.
At the Club Aluminum Products Company, a new and expensive type of cookware was being sold with rapidly declining success by door-to-door salesmen using high-pressure tactics.
Although Taylor instituted additional measures, such as establishing distribution channels through retail stores and offering free trials and affordable payment plans, he came to believe that applying his test to Club’s advertising and sales methods was the key factor that led to the company’s remarkable return to profitability.
Read more in the August The Rotarian (English).