The Value Of Vigorous Debate

I'll admit it:  I was a high school and college debater.  Those were formative years and many lessons I learned have stayed with me.  Perhaps the most important is the value of vigorous debate.  Looking for ways to defeat your colleagues' arguments.  We believed that if an argument could survive our practice, it had an excellent chance to survive in the tournaments when rounds were won and lost for real.  The arguments about arguments were loud, raucous and at times vicious.  But never personal.  After arguing like crazy, we were still best friends.

I was reminded of this lesson as I continue to read Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.  Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan make the point that as a leader, "you're trying to promote the ability to intellectually debate important points.  It doesn't matter who wins and who loses.  The fact that the debate happened and resolution occurred is good in itself."

I think that is going too far.  Debate points by themselves don't count for anything in the real world.  But the ability of crisp intellectual critique of an idea is bound to expose weaknesses in the idea, lead to a better idea or generate confidence in the new idea.  Each of these is an inherently valuable outcome.

Blogging serves this purpose outside law firms.  But inside firms, I don't hear much about vigorous debate about firm matters.  Shouldn't there be?

Comments

[Greatest American Lawyer]

Great point Pat. In most of the firms I have been involved with, there were one or two "big dogs" a whole lot of "yes men." Dissent amounted to whispered griping behind closed doors or, in some cases, yelling matches that could hardly be classified as debate.

I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but perhaps the lack of spirited honest debate is one of the reasons why there is also a lack of innovation.

I have never seen spirited discussion like has occurred in the blogosphere. Maybe firms should launch internal blogs (private) where they post ideas and even gripes. But of course, that would be innovative so....