Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.activism,alt.privacy,talk.politics.misc
From: [p m dowd] at [cbnews.att.com] (patrick.m.dowd)
Subject: tom peters on drug testing
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 1994 18:10:00 GMT

DRUG TESTING VIOLATES TRUST IN THE WORKPLACE
Tom Peters, Tribune Media Services
Chicago Tibune (posted without permission)
(the original article appeared around 10/12/94)


Q- "What's your reaction to widespread use of drug testing
as a condition of employment and random drug testing as a
condition of continued employment?"

     A seminar participant, Houston, Sept. 22, 1994.

A- I think it's absolute rubish.  Am I for drug- or booze-impaired
employees disrupting others and creating safety hazards in the
workplace?  Don't be absurd.  Of course not.  But that puts the
cart way before the horse.

Put aside productivity and safety issues.  Let's talk about what makes
any business tick: super folks who trust one another, care about
one another and are committed to working hard together to create
great outcomes for each other- and their customers.

Trust.  Respect.  Commitment.  Mutual support.  Each is wholly at
odds with intrusive, imperson assessment measures.  That is, drug
tests (and, to my mind, canned psychological-assessment tests,
secret monitoring of telemarketers and, heaven knows, lie-detector
tests).

Start at the beginning.  Your recruiting process should say to the
candidate, "How would you like to be part of our community, do neat
things together, grow individually and with your peers?"

Recruiting becomes a painstaking, two-way courting ritual, complete
with coffee dates, flirting, weekend strolls, dinner with the parents,
proposals on dended knee and an exchange of solemn vows of fidelity.
That is, lots of folks, especially would-be peers, should spend lots of
time with janitorial and senior-engineering prospects alike-in a 
variety of settings over several days or weeks.  In the process,
there is little doubt-based on my 30 years of experience and observation-
that the habitual sbustance abusers, malcontents, deadbeats, and
ne'er-do-wells will be rooted out.

Is my recruiting model expensive?  Yup.  But what's more important
than recruiting?  Recruiting is strategy-though too few firms,
large or small, play it that way.

What holds in hiring obviously holds 10 times over after arrival on
the scene:  "Welcome aboard.  Let's work together to create something
special. To grow each day.  To cuddle our customers.  And, incidentally,
be prepared, on demand, to take a whiz in a bottle, slimeball."

No, that doesn't cut it.

What does cut it, once Ms. or Mr. New is aboard, is delivering your
promise of a trusting, committed, nuturing environment-with sky-high
ecpectations for performance and accountability.  In such settings,
the best "enforcers" by far are the employee's coach-mentor-peers.
And such peers, in my experience, are merciless toward those who 
violate the group's trust.

The answer I've given so far is clinical.  Let me be more personal: I'm
a Bill of Rights freak-and a privacy freak.  A line in the anti-Vietnam-
war musical "Hair" goes:  "I'm not dyin' for no white man."  My equivalent
in this case:  "I'm not pissin' in a bottle for no corporate cop."
It's how I feel personally-and, by extension, as a business
owner/leader.

I run a company with about 25 employees.  They are wonderful people
(that's why we hired them!)  I would no more consider asking them
to submit to a drug test as a condition of employment that I would
try to fly to the moon without a rocket.  I am disgusted by the
very idea at my place-or yours.

"But your place isn't some fast-food franchise with a bunch of
poorly raised kids as employees," you rejoin.  Maybe not.  I suppose
we've got more degreed and multidegreed folks than the average fast
food place.  But what's that got to do with the price of fries?  If
I owned a fast-food franchise, I'd take the same approach I do now.  
I'd only want neat folks on board-age 17 or 67.  And I'd be out to
build an environment of trust, and respect-as much as in my own
professional-service company.

"But what if you owned 200 franchises?"  So what?  If I owned 200
my priority would be the folks who manage them.  I'd want to get a
charge out of being around each of them.  I'd get very directly
involved in their hiring, and I'd make sure my People Department
(that's what Southwest Airlines calls its human-resources function) 
got the point:  Hire neat people you like; you can teach the rest.

No, I'm not pissing in a bottle.  And nobody who works for me is going
to be forced to do so either.  And if there were a law that required
me to ask them to do it, I'd close my place down before I'd comply.

If you want an environment of trust, care, compassion-which is the only
kind of environment that will breed trust, care and compassion for
customers-then stay out of people's personal space.

The End.

All typos are mine.  
This article is probably the best anti-drug testing article I've seen
in the last five years (how long I've been lurking around here).  I
think that someone should try to recruit Tom Peters as a spokesman
for DPF or something.  As the lead guru on Excellence, Mr. Peters would
be a formidable spokesperson.  Any comments?  Enjoy.