The Four Way Test for Christmas

I was watching last week the movie “Love Actually.” It’s become an annual tradition in my family, along with Chevy Chase’s “Christmas Vacation.” Chevy reminds me not to plug in too many lights. “Love Actually” reminds me that the Christmas season is in part about honest relationships. Non-Christians have separate times of the year to do the same; but since this is the Christmas season, I’m using this time of year to make a point.

The point is that Christmas should be a time to focus on business relationships as well as personal and spiritual relationships. One of the themes running through the various plots in “Love Actually” is that Christmas is the time to tell the truth. In the movie, that moral theme emboldens characters to strengthen relationships through being honest.

Christmas should also be a time to strengthen business as well as personal relationships. That can be done by thinking about a company’s core values. Richard Anderson, the Chairman of Delta Airlines, says the graveyard of corporate failures is filled by companies that had no sense of values.

Values are a set of moral guidelines. These guidelines can be rooted in various foundations, with religions the primary sources throughout history. That history is changing as secularism becomes more prominent, so it’s more important than ever to have a time set aside to think about morals.

David Brooks muses in a column in the New York Times on the impact of secularism on morals and relationships. He notes: “…an age of mass secularization is an age in which millions of people have put unprecedented moral burdens upon themselves…”

Any religious season, or any secular reminder, should make us think about our own business “moral burdens.” Where do we start to develop moral guidelines? We would do well to adopt for starters the basic historic religious and secular principle: “Do to others as you would like them to do to you.”

There are other good guidelines, but the one I think best for business relationships is the Rotary Four Way Test in what we think, say, and do:

1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair to all concerned?
3. Will it build good will and better friendships?
4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Amongst all the things for which we are reminded at Christmas, thinking about how we implement our business values is one that will make the year ahead more meaningful and successful.