Is escalation conducive to learning?

At the recent Lean Kanban Benelux 2011 conference, we encountered something that I will describe as escalation.

Escalation at Lean Kanban Benelux...
Don Reinertsen gave the Day 1 morning keynote called "Is it Time to Rethink Deming?" which challenged some Deming concepts and their applicability to product development, does the 95% system / 5 % people heuristic apply to product development, whether Deming really understood kanban, etc.

Dave Snowden gave the Day 1 afternoon keynote called "Practice without sound theory will not scale" which took shots at traditional systems thinking and systems dynamics.

Finally John Seddon ended the conference on Day 2 with a keynote called "It's the system stupid!" where he fired back shots at both Reinertsen and Snowden, as well as at Lean in general.

(Note: Alan Shalloway gave the Day 2 morning keynote "Lean-Kanban is About People" but wasn't really part of this particular escalation.)

The sense I got at the end was that the conference ended on a sour, "I got the last word" note, rather than one of inquiry.  Michael Kennedy, who also presented at the conference on "Set-Based Decision Making", ended his session with a set of questions and I found it a stark contrast.

Is escalation conducive to learning?
So if I step back from the situation and ask myself: What do I predict the outcome of the escalation behaviour to be?  If I imagine that I'm placing a $100 bet on whether this will create an environment more or less conducive to learning, which one am I going to bet on?

My $100 is on less conducive to learning.

Others have also noticed this problem generally in the Agile / Lean software community:

• Escalation is Killing Agile - Can We Please Stop It? by Jean Tabaka
• Escalation is Killing our Healthy Conflict in Agile by Jean Tabaka
• Open Letter to some of our Thought Leaders (regarding bashing) by Stefan Rock

As Jean's second article points out, conflict is necessary for learning to occur but only if the conflict is conducted in an effective way.

Fortunately we already know how to do that...

A code of intellectual conduct
T. Edward Damer proposed a Code of Intellectual Conduct for Effective Discussion in his book Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments. The full list can be found here but let's focus on the first three as standard principles of intellectual inquiry:

The Fallibility Principle: "Each participant in a discussion of a disputed issue should be willing to accept the fact that he or she is fallible, which means one must acknowledge that one's own initial view may not be the most defensible position on the question."

In other words, even though obviously I believe my position to be correct, I will acknowledge that I could be, and given the history of scientific progression, am probably wrong about something.

The Truth-Seeking Principle: "Each participant should be committed to the task of earnestly searching for the truth or at least the most defensible position on the issue at stake. Therefore, one should be willing to examine alternative positions seriously, look for insights in the positions of others, and allow other participants to present arguments for or raise objections to any position held on an issue."

In other words, even though obviously I believe they are wrong, I will acknowledge that it is highly unlikely that they are completely wrong about everything.  Combined with the acknowledgement that I'm probably NOT right about everything, then this suggests we should learn from each other.

The Clarity Principle: "The formulations of all positions, defenses, and attacks should be free of any kind of linguistic confusion and clearly separated from other positions and issues."

In other words, even though the cleverly veiled barbs, ridicule, straw men, and misrepresentations are obviously amusing and entertaining, I will acknowledge that they may also confuse the issues and cloud our ability to see what is actually being said.

So what am I asking for?
The Code of Intellectual Conduct is not easily to follow.  It's intended as something to live up to rather than describe how we currently behave.

To all who read this, I ask you to remind me when I don't live up to it so that I can continue to improve.

To all who read this, you have the right to say and behave as you like.  I ask you to consider the consequences of what you say, how you say it, and how you behave… and then make your choice.