Should #Lean Conferences Have a “Code of Conduct” for Speakers and Attendees?

I’ve really enjoyed learning from Eric Ries and the “Lean Startup” community since late 2009. I had the opportunity to attend and speak at Lean Startup Week recently.

I get to attend many conferences throughout the year. Most of them are framed as “Lean” but sometimes I get to speak at an “Agile” event or something outside of usual Lean Manufacturing or Lean Healthcare circles. It gives me exposure to different practices that we could consider bringing back to broader Lean events.

Codes of Conduct for Tech Events

One element that seems to be the norm these days at tech conferences is a formalized “Code of Conduct” that applies to staff, presenters, and attendees. This code is communicated to attendees during registration and, for example, I received numerous emails about it for Lean Startup Week. A reminder was also made at the start of the main days on Thursday.

This site suggests some standard language for such codes.

Before sharing the benchmarking about solutions or countermeasures, we should probably also have a discussion about “what problem is being solved?” Is there a problem? Is there a need for pro-active countermeasures and prevention?

The tech-driven VC community has had many sexual harassment and sexual assault cases (some of which most likely occurred at conferences).

Agile and Lean Startup events draw heavily from the tech community. Tech conferences have been criticized for a lot of sexist behavior. For example, having “booth babes” is now no longer the accepted practice, being banned at tech conferences in recent years. One person I talked to recently said that “booth babes” and even more egregious sexist or sexualized behavior was the norm at some manufacturing conferences going into the 1980s, but was curtailed as times changed.

Not that men are the only harassers, but it’s fair to say that men typically outnumber women at tech conferences, just as it seems men outnumber women at most Lean events… I don’t have data to back that up, but it seems true based on my attendance and observations.

Lean Startup Week

Here is a link to the full text of the Lean Startup Week code.

As I’m politely reminded in the speaker email I received:

CODE OF CONDUCT: Please make sure you’re familiar with our code of conduct before arriving at the event. We like to ensure everyone has a positive experience at Lean Startup Week.

The code starts by saying:

“Freedom of thought and the open exchange of ideas are key to lean startups and central to Lean Startup conferences and events.”

I think the same need for an open exchange of ideas holds true for Lean events, like the Lean Transformation Summit, the AME annual conference, Lean Frontiers events, the Shingo Prize Conference, etc.

“That kind of exchange can happen only in an environment that recognizes the value of each person and fosters mutual respect. That’s why we’re dedicated to providing badges with your names and a harassment-free conference experience.”

Being “dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience” doesn’t mean 100% error proofing against bad behavior. But, it seems to follow good Lean thinking that reporting small problems helps prevent bigger problems from occurring.

The code continues:

“Put another way: if we create an atmosphere in which anyone can say anything, we have not fostered an open exchange of ideas, because conference participants who don’t like or can’t tolerate offensive comments and hateful behavior won’t participate. To help ensure that conversations at Lean Startup conferences are focused on entrepreneurship and that the atmosphere encourages participation from as wide a range of attendees as possible, we do not tolerate harassment based on race, gender, religion, age, color, national origin, physical appearance, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.

When we say “harassment,” we’re talking about unwelcome or hostile behavior, including speech that intimidates, creates discomfort, or interferes with a person’s participation in the conference (speaker presentations fall under this category and should not use images or examples that would violate the code of conduct); unwelcome physical contact; unwelcome sexual attention; deliberate intimidation; and stalking. Sponsors should not use sexualized images or activities, and sponsor representatives (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes.”

They encourage people to speak up about problems and this seems like an important point: their staff “have been trained to respond to violations of this code of conduct.”

Lean Startup Week also promises to take action, including expelling somebody from the conference without a refund.

So What About Lean Events?

Again, forgive me if I’m jumping to a solution here, but I think this is an important thing to discuss.

Do Lean events have similar problems of harassment and sexist activities (or other discriminatory behavior?) Not that I’ve seen but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore this countermeasure, even if it’s proactive and preventive. I’m a white guy, so I’m unlikely to be directly victimized by discriminatory, hateful, or uncomfortable behavior. I haven’t heard of problems or incidents, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.

It seems that “Codes of Conduct” are also intended to prevent problems. Proactively asking “what could go wrong?” and coming up with proactive countermeasures is a good example of Lean thinking (building on the ideas of respect, FMEA, and other practices).

We don’t need to wait for some sort of ugly incident or scandal in the Lean community to take some steps forward (or steps I suggest are a step forward).

Do you think the major Lean conferences should adopt this countermeasure, as a reactive or proactive measure? Do you think a Code of Conduct is not necessary or has any downside?

Have you ever personally experienced or witnessed conduct that would violate such a code? Remember, you can post comments anonymously and I will protect your confidentiality.

I’ve reached out to some of the major Lean events I’ve attended for input and feedback and their responses and views are below.

AME — U.S. and Australia

I could not find a Code of Conduct online for the annual AME conference that’s held in the U.S. The Australian AME Conference has one posted (they are an official AME affiliate).

Guy Bulmer, the AME national president in Australia gave me this statement to share:

“We introduced a ‘Code of Conduct’ in 2015 as a result of feedback that we received after our annual conference from both the attendees and our staff. The feedback was that we should in future make clear our expectations with respect to attendee behaviour at our conferences. As part of our current event management process, we ask both attendees and support staff to give us their feedback after each conference so that we can continue to improve the standard of our conference offering year on year.

However, since the code of conduct issue was raised we have had no further feedback from the attendees on this topic, either positive or negative.

That said, we have seen a positive change in behaviour at our annual conference since the code of conduct was introduced, and on that basis we would highly recommend, and encourage others to develop their own code of conduct.”

George Saiz, the President of AME (here in the U.S.) replied to my email inquiry and said:

“AME does have a Code of Conduct in place for our volunteers and we are examining implementing an event-based [code]. It is important to have this in place to protect the learning environment we are working to create.”

Catalysis — Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit

Rachel Regan, the Director of Events and Payment Initiatives shared this statement that I’m sharing with her permission:

“We have a code of conduct for Catalysis employees and our event management process that is rooted in our Catalysis guiding principles. For our Summit attendees we do not have an explicit code of conduct, nor do we think we need one. However, with our processes we promote the conduct we want and expect, such as open sharing, collaborative learning, connecting, and respectful dialogue. We work very hard on improving these processes year over year and proactively cutting potential bad behavior off at the pass.”

Lean Frontiers

Jim Huntzinger, the founder and president of Lean Frontiers sent a statement after we discussed this question:

“Lean Frontiers simply expects professional behavior from everyone, which includes respectful dialog, interaction, and such. If everyone merely expected and showed professionalism there would be no issues the vast majority of time, which Lean Frontiers has maintained over the years.”

Lean Enterprise Institute

Josh Rapoza, the Customer Strategy Officer for LEI, provided a statement after our email exchange:

“We have been discussing having a “Code of Conduct” for the Summit. We have one for our team at the event, and are thinking one for our customers would be helpful, in that it can help inform them of atmosphere / environment we are trying to create at the event.”

Shingo Prize Conference

A leader at the Shingo Institute, replied to my question by pointing me to their Utah State University code of conduct, which covers their personnel. They are going to extend this to include their speakers. As Ken Snyder, executive director of the Shingo Institute, said:

We have language in our speaker agreements to ensure that conference speakers maintain certain decorum. We decided to add a clause to that agreement. The purpose is to make it clear that if there is anything in the presentation that we deem to be inappropriate, then we can terminate the presentation.

As for our official code of conduct, we elected to keep it simple and positive — and based on principles. Our official code of conduct is “We respect every individual.”

I asked a follow up question about conduct expectations for attendees and did not get a direct response. My guess is that attendees are expected to abide by the “respect every individual” principle.

My Final Thoughts & Summary

To summarize the responses:

• AME Australia — has a code and recommends others do the same
• AME U.S. — considering adoption of a code
• Catalysis — no explicit code is needed
• Lean Frontiers — expectation is treating others with respect
• Lean Enterprise Institute — having discussions about this
• Shingo Institute — “respect every individual” is the code

Though my conversations with these conference organizers and some other friends… and thinking this through, I see many sides to the issue.

For one, I have not heard complaints about bad behavior at Lean events. But, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen but goes unreported.

Secondly, I can see how people would question the need for a “code” that might be a countermeasure to a problem that isn’t there (or isn’t known). I understand concerns that a code could be overly broad.

Third, I understand that a code doesn’t full prevent people from behaving badly. That said, I think it’s fine to have a proactive code that clarifies expectations that an event doesn’t want certain types of bad behavior (even if you’d like to think it shouldn’t need to be stated).

Finally, I think the most important factor in these various codes is the way organizations ENCOURAGE people to speak up, TRAIN their staff members on how to best respond or investigate, and SPECIFY how people should contact event organizers if there is any disrespectful or bad behavior taking place.

What do you think? Feel free to post a comment and share your thoughts. I guess the “code of conduct” for blog comments, as always, is to keep things respectful.

This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared on LeanBlog.org.