Foreword

I went to business school like so many aspiring professionals to learn how to exchange value for money. That’s when I came across the business philosophy of “Lean.” Lean was developed by Toyota, collaborators and academics over the course of Toyota’s becoming the world’s leading car manufacturer. Businesses across the world of all sizes have adopted Lean, and countless books have analyzed and expanded it, to help themselves and others realize similar success.

However, I came to realize that while companies adopted and authors wrote about Lean methods, a more profound and powerful aspect of Lean had been missed by all - Lean is so effective and widely applicable because it is a modern philosophy - a metaphysics - for business and life today. Lean’s precepts come from its profound truth that extends beyond business, which makes Lean much more powerful, universal, timeless, and profitable once fully understood. From that point forward the direction of my thinking about the creation and exchange of value radically changed.

Law students are told to expect that by the end of their first year of law school all of the different legal courses they are studying will come together in their minds in a single “AHA” moment, synthesizing into a unified understanding of how the legal way of thinking works. I expected my business education to provide a similar overarching insight explaining how all business subjects lead to making money through value creation. When I stumbled upon Lean, I realized that while business school taught the specific details of how money got made from business activity, it taught me nothing about the creation of true “value,” which Lean terminology calls “true-north value,” in order to exchange money for it. I realized that while all business subjects allude to and try to quantify value, none fully described the genesis and structure of value itself, which the greatest businesses do. There was no “AHA” moment coming from business school without something more, and I suspected to find the insight in Lean. I knew then I had a lot of further work to do besides attend classes to graduate with the deep knowledge of value creation I was seeking in order to be highly effective at making money, which was fundamentally an axiological endeavor. My business education became a quest to understand the historical and theoretical foundation of Lean, and expand on it intellectually to realize its full potential as a business philosophy. This book is my attempt to share that learning with you for your own financial and personal success.

Perhaps because my head was spinning with thought from reading so deeply into Lean, the somewhat strange acronym, “U/People” (or “You lean toward people”) came to mind. The acronym also stood for, “Uniquely/Profitably, Extending and Optimizing People’s Lives and Existences.” “U/People” can also mean the universe divided by people, which to me is the only way to measure units of true value. This odd acronym cohered and explained for me the entire value stream in a way the formal business curriculum missed. I relate each letter of the “U/People” acronym to specific business departments and functions of the modern enterprise, and those departments and functions to the deepest levels of true-north value and problem solving, as will be explained later. It also alludes to the deeper premise of Lean as a holistic philosophy - that all value that companies create and consumers pursue ultimately has an ontological basis - whereby existence becomes its own measure of value.¹

U/People was my AHA moment I had sought by going to business school. I went to business school to get the intuitive sense of how to make money that successful entrepreneurs implicitly know and came away with an acronym that everyone ought to know in order to better help others and themselves. While I originally intended just to make a simple pamphlet or diagram explaining how the U/People acronym explains Lean, my thoughts kept growing on the page to become what I hope to be a well-researched book written with fun and style. And this became more than just a book to me because it led me to the most profound and unexpected places, far beyond what most business books cover. By writing it, I kept finding connections between radically different concepts and multiple levels of meaning, seeing similarities and differences across disciplines - including within language itself - which I put back into the book at every turn.

So studying the history, theory and philosophy of Lean led me to books on widely different topics that all seemed to align for one reason or another with the philosophical, humanistic and post-humanistic concepts of Lean, like Douglas Hofstadter’s, “Gödel, Escher, Bach,” Jim Collins’ and Jerry Porras’, “Built to Last,” David Deutsch’s, “The Beginning of Infinity,” and Yuval Noah Harari’s, “Sapiens.” Thus, in this text and through a close reading of books like these, I summarize and extend the business discipline of Lean to its theoretical extreme, unifying everything from physics to the humanities to religion by further intertwining Lean like a golden braid within the themes that form the bedrock of all true-north value. Thus, you might find “Leanism” to be an intellectual companion and counterpoint to all that has been written about Lean.

While I delved into the intellectual foundations of Lean, Lean was only growing more popular in business with its widespread adoption by startups through Eric Ries’ book, “The Lean Startup.” When reading The Lean Startup and the enormous number of other Lean-oriented books that had been produced to capitalize on the “Lean” business trend, they further reinforced for me the proposition that Lean represented a unique perspective on how to achieve success in business and life.

My own research and writing of this book on Lean evolved to become simultaneously academic, literary and artistic in scope and ambition. It became academic because I tried to not only write truly, but to support it copiously with legitimate, well-researched footnotes. I consider it literary because its total meaning requires it to be read to be fully appreciated. And it to me became artistic because I could only articulate true-north value in the space where words fade away, and that sense of the unspeakably sublime that I felt started coming out in the writing methods I used. The fission, fusion, parallelism, coherence and discoherence of its language began to model for me the physics and metaphysics of Lean. I sincerely hope and expect that you will enjoy and learn from it as much as I have writing it.

Leanism is intended to be a linguistic technology to improve your thinking in order to optimize everyone’s life and existence. To forewarn, Leanism does have its own terminology described in its glossary that leverages and extends the Lean vernacular. This glossary is designed to compress and relate the vast concepts within Leanism to make it easier for you to apply it in your own life, existence and work once you learn it. If you read this book end-to-end, you will be able to describe the psychological motivation of all people in ontological terms with this unique terminology. That in-turn will let you efficiently translate everything into scientific, philosophical and even spiritual concepts in a fairly concise way. And by converting between these seemingly disparate worlds of thought, you will be able to better think through and solve people’s problems more effectively while producing less waste than you otherwise would have, which in Lean is the highest form of true-north value creation possible.

Thus, my purpose in writing this book is both ego-centric, in that I wrote it for my own entertainment and benefit, and allo-centric, in that I sincerely hope to pass on what I consider to be useful knowledge to you about the intellectual history and this expanded theory of Lean. By reading this book, I expect that you will learn a bit about history, a bit about economics, a bit about philosophy, and a bit about yourself, which may be like rebuilding a ship you are already on, as the philosopher Otto Neurath famously said. However, by studying the metaphysics of Lean, I hope that you will become more powerful throughout your life’s journey.

Edwin Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation, once said, “Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”² I have often felt that writing a book on the philosophy of business based on Lean qualified supremely on both accounts, and so I thrust myself forward in the open-ended endeavor of trying to produce something of lasting value that in my wildest dreams might it be used by you for everyone’s benefit.

Synopsis

We all live within a lean, “ontological teleology,” which is the innate objective of further being and becoming more – a condition we have been unwillingly thrust into since birth. Darwinism is a specific, biological example of the ontological teleology. The overall goal of the ontological teleology is both self-defining within the universe (the “ontological medium”), and possibly for something beyond existence based upon what some people may believe exists without common agreement, such as a religion.

If we bracket out this speculation, we can see the ontological teleology most clearly across all gradations of life and existence. Existence along these gradations forms degrees of lean, true value. Value can be broken down three ways into that which is universal, process, or personal in nature. Life is created at the point that the universal and process values successfully interact and adapt within the universe to perpetually energize and reproduce. Cognitive and conscious organisms develop the personal type of lean, true value. The mixing of these three value types across the gradations thus creates levels of existence that lean up on top of one another, from raw matter to microorganisms, human beings and corporations.

For businesses to improve their operations and results the most, a business must look at the ontological factors that customers and stakeholders depend on the business for in order to adapt, reproduce and energize. The business must then optimize those ontological factors with the least waste better than any competitors, which is the key point of Lean. This optimization moves stakeholders upward along the ontological teleology - the value curve - toward further and better being, and possibly toward getting beyond the ontological teleology itself. At their best, businesses ought to consider what stakeholders speculate may be beyond the ontological teleology from their personal perspectives since this search for meaning and universalization influences what actions they take in order to best adapt, reproduce, and energize in circular fashion. Improving all of these ontological factors is thus what businesses ought do to lean toward the highest profits, and use as their normative, ethical imperative.

Leanism Further Summarized

The following summarizes, “Leanism: The Philosophy of Business,” before diving into the confluence of business and philosophy within the paradigm of Lean to solve consumers’ deepest problems for a profit.

Value Stream 1: Headwaters

Value Stream 1 describes what the discipline and paradigm of Lean is, while explaining how Leanism extends its reach for you to make money well. Value Stream 1 does this by teaching you the philosophical implications of Lean from both its Eastern and Western traditions to incorporate into a business ideology. Value Stream 1 further introduces you to the U/People acronym and business model that you may use to structure your Lean thinking. Value Stream 1 explains the creative use of language throughout these texts, including capitalized acronyms, homonyms, hyphens -, forward slashes /, circumflexes “^”, and sigmas σ and Σ. Each conceptual fission, fusion and parallelism created through these methods compresses and unifies multiple levels of philosophical and business meaning to quickly capitalize on the far-reaching insights provided across all domains in which this book operates.

Value Stream 2: Money & Economics – Lean Normative, Real and Monetary Value

Any understanding of the metaphysics of Lean necessarily requires a sound grounding in the meaning of money for you to make it well. Value Stream 2: Money & Economics analyzes the secret life of money that you may have missed so you may go up along consumers’ value streams in ways you never expected.¹ You will learn the true, Lean value that makes money meaningful through market transactions, which cross all consumers’ value streams. Value Stream 2: Money & Economics attempts to review some of the intellectual history of money and economics and how that work applies within the balance of the U/People business model. Value Stream 2 prepares you to advance around, up and through the U/People organization chart and business model.

Value Stream 3: Existence – Lean Universal, Process and Personal Values

Following the Lean concept of Genchi Genbutsu directing all business people to go to the source of all production, Value Stream 3 sums up who and why consumers are from their mathematical, scientific, philosophical and personally intuitive perspectives. This Value Stream 3 leans to the philosophical extreme so you may better understand true-north value from the origin of life in Value Stream 4: Lives and human meaning and motivation in Value Stream 5: People’s. Value Stream 3: Existence takes you through the Lean solution space by factoring Eastern and Western traditions that form the intellectual foundation of Lean. This Value Stream 3 provides a new way of organizing this body of work so you may better understand it, slicing across academic disciplines to effectively dissect an HQ. All organizations may also use this Value Stream to form the cornerstone of their Houses of Quality (a Lean term for a company’s headquarters) to interrelate what they know and believe about existence with what consumers most truly value. Since these philosophical and scientific discussions involve the most fundamental questions, such as the origin of the universe and the human condition within it, they do get a bit abstract.²

Value Stream 3 introduces a new, Lean metaphysical concept of the Ontological Teleology, a.k.a. the “OT” or “Ought,” which is the possibly circular goal-directedness of life to further be, but possibly be more, because we live in an open-ended universe – consumers can only intuitively speculate at this present moment what their ultimate purpose is.³ The Ontological Teleology is designed to frame the range of what customers know, believe, and witness actually improving their lives and existences, which they pay to solve.

This Value Stream 3 simultaneously recognizes that customers hold intuitive truths and attempt to eliminate the problem of the seeming paradox of life lived through the OT with a variety of non-circular spiritual, theistic or scientismic beliefs. An organization’s products and/or services may serve these intuitively speculative beliefs in Lean fashion so long as those beliefs do not conflict with falsifiable, intersubjective truths or the deontological ethical and legal rules to which society agrees to cohere for everyone’s eusocial benefit. After reading Value Stream 3, you ought to be able to analyze what consumers will buy through the Lean Ontological Teleology to best extend and optimize their lives and existences by resolving their utmost problems most effectively.

Value Stream 4: Lives – Lean Living Systems

Value Stream 4: Lives applies the Lean true-north values arising from existence explained in Value Stream 3 to the systemic origin of life within the known universe. Value Stream 4 examines these issues against the backdrop of current Lean thinking to develop a Lean metaphysics that brings both business and philosophy back down to Earth. Value Stream 4 identifies the Lean slots from which living systems unexpectedly emerge, with each being a strategically unique degree of sophistication leading to its own Ontological Realization. This emergence is much like how a philosophy of Lean described in this book arises from and supervenes on the Lean meme itself.

Finally, this Value Stream 4 elaborates on the new, Lean concept of “Universalization” as the open-ended, possibly circular, end-goal of life when you bracket out intuitive, non-circular beliefs for business purposes. Universalization analyzes how customers actually live regardless of what they believe, which may be used as a further basis for a Lean true-north value theory of what consumers find most meaningful. Universalization is also largely how busy people discuss true-north value in the workplace, even if not in this same terminology, as I hope you will see.

Value Stream 5: People’s – Lean Ethics, Motivation and Factors of truth-value

Value Stream 5: People’s, extends the previous Value Stream 2: Money, Value Stream 3: Existence, and Value Stream 4: Lives through the disciplines of ethics and motivation in a strictly human context. Value Stream 5 will introduce you to the parameters of metaphysical, true-north value from which Lean originates. You will recognize these parameters as ones used to engage employees and market products and/or services daily. Value Stream 5 proposes a motivational or needs framework based on these Lean parameters to identify the problems customers have to live and exist into perpetuity that motivates them to purchase. This Value Stream 5 thus extends the normative, existential perspective of human meaning to the actual lives of consumers and their universalization by synthesizing who they are with what they ought to buy.⁴

Once this ethic of universalization gets established within an organization’s true-north business ideology, all Lean people in that workplace can then move the organization toward a universalized and collective ethic of extending all life within existence in whatever markets it operates. You will learn how to increase consumers’ and employees’ standard of existence in a possibly infinite universe, so you may monetize more meaning by solving more problems with the best solutions to delight the most people. Numerous, seemingly hubric, corporate credos and business ideologies demonstrate this Lean end-goal, and a few will be cited within this Value Stream 5. The Lean motivational drivers discussed in Value Stream 5 feed into how an organization behaves and what consumers want in the balance of the U/People business model. Finally in the prologue “Channels,” this book will review how the CMO, CEO, CFO, and IDEO best embody the philosophy of Lean in their good work.

Value Stream 1: Headwaters to Leanism

Value Stream 1 A3 Report:

• Lean is a global business discipline used to make money by improving commercial outcomes
• Lean has been applied throughout the business environment to all size companies and extended to all types of organizations
• Lean combines Western philosophies that investigate what is true through the scientific process, along with some aspects of Eastern religious philosophies like Buddhism to determine what has real value
• Many of the most truly successful business leaders today have seriously studied and written about philosophy
• Leanism leverages this tradition by summarizing and extending the philosophy of Lean to explain what “True-North Value” truly means in the context of all Lean business activity and life in general
• Leanism synthesizes and delivers this knowledge through creative symbolism and writing for improved learning
• Leanism provides a people-focused business model and a heuristic called an “ID Kata” that allows you to apply the philosophy of Lean to all business and life in general
• The ID Kata teaches you a method of forward analysis to discover true-north value by pursuing a series of who, why, what, and how questions

The business discipline of Lean is more than a set of manufacturing techniques or a way to start up new organizations. It is a holistic philosophy that can help you identify what to produce that people will truly value and purchase. Leanism shows you the way to wealth in all its many forms.¹ To reach the greatest profit of all, you ought to lean philosophically to reach the highest point of true-north value for your customers using the metaphysics of Lean. You can make money using Lean by meaningfully observing and fervently divining who consumers are, why they may buy something, and what they want to buy from you, so you can delight them the most. Leanism extends your abstract thinking toward better understanding what creates true-north value to help you implement that knowledge in life and business. You lean philosophically so you can make meaningful amounts of money while feeling satisfied that you did good work.

However, like looking at the sun, such high-level, abstract thinking is painful, disorienting, and best done through a conceptual lens for you to see customers most clearly. Leanism filters all complex subjects to help you better see who consumers truly are from their deepest problems up through the universal value stream. You will then discover what they find most personally meaningful in the products and/or services you serve. I suggest that you put on a thinking cap and eye-shades before reading further because these abstract concepts will help you see true-north value if you learn to look carefully enough.

Since commercial value gets measured in money, money is the mythical icon toward which all true-north value in business leans. When deciding whether to buy now and receive meaningful true-north value from you, consumers consider how much money they must pay at the point of purchasing products and/or services. Likewise, you as a business person want to know how much money you can earn through great work. Without clearly understanding why and what consumers want to buy, and how you deliver their greatest satisfaction, you cannot uplift your profits to where you think they ought to be.

While what exactly consumers individually believe to be truly valuable remains beyond what all people commonly agree, philosophy logically coheres and mediates the true-north value of money within our overlapping consensus of the way life is.² Importantly, philosophy will also guide you past any idolatry of money that will blind you to consumers’ true religion. When you lean metaphysically, you will consider how best to create true-north value for all people, which in-turn supports who consumers are and what consumers individually believe to be most worth their money.

Why Lean?

While the concepts behind Lean that lead to producing superior products have a long intellectual tradition primarily formed from the Western “Philosophy of Science” and Eastern religious philosophies, Lean consolidated those ideas and has become the leading business discipline/fad/trend/paradigm used by people to make money in our time. Lean as a formal business discipline was formed from studying what made the Toyota Motor Corporation so successful for so long. In the 1980s, business researchers developed the modern concept of Lean from this intellectual legacy and extensive body of practical knowledge. A gentleman named John Krafcik, under the tutelage of James Womack, first coined the term “Lean” in a 1988 article he wrote for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about Toyota’s highly successful production systems when he said, “[I]t needs less of everything to create a given amount of value, so let’s call it ‘lean.’”³ From that point forward, the term “Lean” represented a modern business philosophy whose tenets organizations continue to pursue and iteratively perfect today, which is well captured by this quote from Antoine de Saint Exupéry in 1939:

From a fundamental metaphysical perspective, Lean business techniques focus on creating the truest value by removing all forms of waste and adding only what most satisfies consumers’ demands, just as Toyota continues to do today. However, while not complex on its face, Lean demands a different way of doing business.⁵ In fact, since one of Lean’s main points is to wash away everything but that which provides consumers with value however truly defined, it is a far more abstract money making methodology than most businesses are used to considering. At the same time, businesses have evolved Lean into a practical philosophy of continuous improvement, which the Japanese word, Kaizen (改善), represents. Kaizen is a portmanteau meaning to restore (Kai (佳)) and make good (Zen (禅)) through thoughtful reflection, and is key to any continuous effort to reduce waste in an HQ.

In the spirit of Kaizen, Lean was iteratively improved in the 1990s and 2000s by intersecting it with more quantitative disciplines like Six Sigma that Motorola (once a division of Google but now a part of Lenovo) developed at the same time. Motorola designed Six Sigma in the 1980s to ensure production of its information technology within six standard deviations of statistical precision. Thus, businesses use Lean to accurately target what people most value, while Six Sigma and other quantitative methods precisely lean organizations of people in that direction. Countless books evidence this intellectual legacy of Lean, Six Sigma and other people-oriented, evidence-focused business insights that are referenced throughout the ten “Value Streams” of Leanism that you can surface with any search.

Thus, Lean is the best paradigm for philosophically analyzing business because it has the highest rate of problem solving power as evidenced by its efficacy in generating consistent profits.⁶ Lean has evolved to become widely used by most companies⁷ of all sizes in some way as part of their organizational DNA — from start-ups to large corporations — just ask any business person whether his or her organization uses Lean in some way!

Lean, like most business theories, must be approached abstractly but applied concretely through specific actions to determine what delights the most customers for the greatest profit. However, if any criticism has been levelled at Lean, it’s the irony that Lean practitioners overly rely on the plethora of tools, diagrams and instruments that Lean consultants produce without espousing an overriding ethos for their detailed implementation in the chaos of everyday business. Consultants promote these tools because customers prefer to pay for repeatable mechanisms than abstract theories that require deep thought to implement.

However, if you move beyond all of the tools, diagrams and instruments provided by Lean, if you study it carefully enough, you will see that Lean represents a history of thought from the Ancient Greeks, the European Scientific Renaissance and the Far East that extends into all we as producers and consumers think about today. In this amalgamation, Lean articulates a good overriding ideology - a good unified philosophy - because Lean accepts the possibility of, desirability for and progress toward an infinitely optimistic future to reach commercial Nirvana.⁸

Why Leanism?

The intersection of Lean tools along with the sound business philosophy of Lean can generate radical wealth in this domain.⁹ Yet, despite countless business books falling into the Lean canon, a gap still exists in the Lean literature due to these proponents failing to identify what true-north value businesses actually lean toward. “Leanism: The Philosophy of Business,” attempts to fill this void by embodying the intellectual legacy of Lean in a set of high-level steps you can take to make money meaningfully in-line with all consumers’ value streams.

While philosophy is said to “bake no bread,” the metaphysics of Lean helps you analyze what bread you ought to bake and how to bake bread that gets bought and broken. For example, baking either a wedding cake, Communion bread, or table bread requires you to satisfy consumers’ very different fundamental needs in Lean fashion. Knowing who consumers are and why and what they most truly value further determines how you will bake bread that helps customers better become who they want to be, whether that is either married, saved or well-nourished. If philosophy is dead, why not put it to practical use within Lean to find the true-north value of life and business and make money meaningfully? Lean metaphysically if for nothing else than to more effectively guide you to consumers’ point of physical, emotional and intuitive satisfaction.¹⁰

Leaning metaphysically toward consumers is not about endless speculation, but rather about analyzing data with continuously new metaphysical perspectives in a unified way to make real decisions about how to make money well in all business environments. This isn’t science fiction, but rather the best knowledge available about reality itself. It solves the problem of explaining what true-north value is and how to create it for money. It does that by explaining who and why consumers are in the grandest scheme of things for you to apply specifically to business. Knowing how to analyze business data implies that an organization knows what realistic, true-north value that data reflects and why the data means anything at all to consumers and other stakeholders, which philosophy explains. Thus, organizations lean metaphysically to extend and optimize their businesses through their data about consumers’ lives and existences and what they personally find meaningful.

However, analyzing valuable data without continuously knowing who consumers are and what they find most meaningful prevents an organization from reporting as much money as possible inside its headquarters.¹¹ Getting to this point of profit in the metaphysics of Lean requires both deeply respecting humanity and always improving, such as how Pfizer’s upper management periodically does within so within its global HQ.¹²

Thus, the two pillars of any Lean HQ are Sonchō (尊重), which is Japanese for “Respect for People,” and Kaizen (改善), which means good change and has evolved to further mean “Continuous Improvement” in Lean parlance. To help you visualize these concepts, here is a diagram of a corporation’s HQ with a Lean management system up top using profit as its foundation and bottom line:¹³

Getting Around “Leanism”

Leanism structures its chapters, which I call “Value Streams,” around the “U/People” (again, “You lean toward people”) acronym. U/People stands as a meta-heuristic, upper ontology and business model¹⁴ for use by an organization to Uniquely/Profitably Extend and Optimize People’s Lives and Existences.¹⁵ “Lean” (aka “/”) within this “You lean toward people” acronym stands as an adjective indicating those people and organizations that lean metaphysically toward other people. Lean also acts as a verb implementing the philosophical imperative to make money the right way toward what consumers most truly value. For example, Toyota Motor Corporation leans metaphysically as a fictitious person,¹⁶ through its employees and other stakeholders as natural people, and toward its customers’ true-north value in an open-ended universe, which I will explain further as we go along.

Leanism runs quickly through each part of its main acronym, from one Value Stream to the next, by synthesizing the essential qualities of each for you to better relate subjects and build a personal “AHA” moment and organizational House of Quality (an HQ (舎)) and ideology from its two pillars - Respect for People¹⁷ and Continuous Improvement. This business model and vocabulary - as supplemented by all the work cited within this book - allows an organization to point its own “True-North” value compass leading out from its “House of Quality” toward profitably analyzing data to increase consumers’ standard of existence. “True-North” is the metaphorical direction of all true-value in Lean terminology, and an HQ / House of Quality / Head Quarters is where true-north value is reproduced and a profit is reached.¹⁸ As you can see here, “Lean” symbolism gets conveyed in the geographical direction of “True-North,” around which the earth circles while moving forward in time.

And “True-North” is where you chart your way to the greatest profit, slightly off-center, up and to the right.

As you might anticipate, this monograph on the philosophy of Lean could never be exhaustive within a single volume, much less a part, Value Stream, section, paragraph, sentence and/or word as may be devoted to any given aspect of this universal subject of true-north value that defines all problems, which ultimately makes all money meaningful as well. The further analysis and research I could do for this book is necessarily limitless, since like every thing, it could be infinitely improved. My end-goal is to provide you with a fountain of knowledge that always allows you to identify and improve who consumers are by intuiting, inferring and possibly inducing why they buy, and then assumptively deducing what should be reproduced and how you ought to create truly valuable products and/or services for them.

To help with this stretch assignment in plain-language philosophy so you may better understand the genesis of true-north value, this discussion cites the brilliant¹⁹ work of those who understand the contents of this book so well. The biblical amount of footnotes and further commentary ought to supplement your own personal discovery and learning while building a Lean HQ and ideology for making money meaningfully. I footnote where I can recognize prior thoughts, but given the breadth of this discussion bridging together diverse disciplines, please forgive inadvertent omissions that I am sure you will surface! I strongly encourage you to use the references and footnotes as best fits your reason to lean philosophically that you have in an HQ. The footnoted references support all that I write by providing you from the ground up with even better explanations that will give your own research further reach.

The business concept of Lean, as philosophically expanded by this book, is a vector of discovery by which you may synthesize existing, well-regarded Eastern and Western philosophies, ideologies, -isms, and business concepts in an HQ toward the ultimate goal of delighting customers for a profit. If you must call this something, you might call it a “Universal Optimism,” which anticipates the panglossian future value consumers and organizations will receive by your doing the right thing.²⁰

Further Reasons to Leanism

If you need some further reason to lean metaphysically toward making money meaningfully, the following six reasons elaborate on why you ought to do so:

1) Consistently Reach Higher Profits. You can help an organization meaningfully differentiate the products and/or services it creates to reach a profit the right way. Ideally, a profit represents the true-north value in customers’ lives and existences created with products and/or services over and above the economic cost deducted in order to produce and provide for them. In a competitive environment, a profit also represents the true-north value provided to consumers in excess of the similar value consumers could have received from competitors.²¹ However, as you know, you must qualify this idea of true-north value’s association with financial profit since it comes with many caveats, like the “Tragedy of the Commons” where people free-ride on public goods like natural resources.²² Nonetheless, ideally, you profitably uplift customers, employees, investors and society best while avoiding such pitfalls by leaning up toward true-north value. In the end, you must lean metaphysically so you can consistently understand what will be truly profitable for all.

2) Develop a Core Ideology, Purpose and Values: You ought to adapt the U/People acronym and business model to an organization’s core value theory to make money meaningfully by leaning through all business fads/trends/disciplines/paradigms, including Lean itself that will eventually fade away given sufficient time.²³ Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, writes, “… adopting pre-packaged principles without much thought exposes you to the risk of inconsistency with your true values.”²⁴ Ultimately, an organization must relate customers’ true-north values to what they pay so a business can more effectively serve them products and/or services that expand and optimize the profits that rain down on managers and other stakeholders.

3) Evidence Long-term Efficacy. Beyond zealously producing short-term profits, applying humanities-focused business models like “U/People” and concepts such as “Corporate Social Responsibility,” improves business performance and increases stakeholder returns in the long run.²⁵ Common justifications for humanities-focused value streams flowing within such business models and concepts include reputation management, risk management, employee satisfaction, innovation and learning, access to capital, and financial performance.²⁶ Collins and Porras in “Built to Last” said that they did not find a profit motive to be the dominant explicit motivation of successful companies, but rather found that profits were generated by successful companies as a consequence of their seeking to provide the greatest value to consumers.²⁷ The authors found that organizations pursuing consumers’ greater purposes are better able to motivate employees and other stakeholders while uniquely expanding and optimizing their profits over the long-run as an indirect effect.²⁸ This concept has been reinforced by numerous other studies as you see referenced throughout this book.

In regards to how a business treats internal stakeholders, scholars Jeffery Pfeffer and John Veiga wrote a well-received article in 1999 titled, “Putting People First for Organizational Success.” Pfeffer and Veiga compiled a number of studies correlating the efficacy of well-run people-services programs and organizational profitability.²⁹ A number of subsequent studies confirmed this as well.³⁰ These authors’ research suggests that corporate cultures that self-organize themselves around what people most value perform better overall in the short, medium and long-run.

4) Innovation. Chiat\Day art director Craig Tanimoto asked each of us to “Think Different” in Apple’s same titled 1987 ad campaign.³¹ By pursuing the philosophy of Lean in the practice of true-north value discovery, you too will think differently about how you may build wealth by upgrading consumers’ lives and existences. Where the metaphysics of Lean really takes off is in pursuing orthogonal innovation because this solution space is where you can become unmoored from organizational constraints.³² As André Gide wrote in, “Les Faux-Monnayeurs,” in 1925, “You can’t discover new lands without losing sight of the shore.” When you lean metaphysically, your business analysis reaches further heights to allow you to experience greater consumer insights. Philosophical, abstract thinking allows you to draw lines between science and the fundamental human needs being addressed, providing a way for you to exchange competitors’ solutions for truly novel ones that are at least ten times better. Philosophy thereby allows you to evaluate Lean and all business theories organically from first principles to reach new outcomes to make money meaningfully at a workplace.

An organization ought to lean toward who consumers are to identify how to improve their basic human condition for a profit. Clearly understanding what consumers believe is phenomenally valuable and allows an organization to pivot flexibly toward what better solves consumers’ problems for the widest margins. As Steve Jobs said to the BBC in 1990, “No market research could have led to the development of the Macintosh or the personal computer in the first place,” However, I believe that Jobs used a combination of his intuitive empathy combined with the Japanese religious philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as evidenced by the correlations between his quotes and the philosophy of Lean espoused within this book.

Innovating requires an organization to find the confluence of what is possible, practical and demanded. Data analyzed through metaphysics toward what consumers most meaningfully value can help you find this intersection. By leaning philosophically, you may iteratively reconfirm that your Lean thinking remains on this side of non-sense (or non-cents) as you develop and market products and/or services. You can then incrementally test whether customers really experience a revelation of true-north value from the products and/or services you reproduce. Through this process, an organization coheres its business ideology with what consumers will actually purchase so they increasingly congregate at its stores.

5) Increase the Probability of Profitability. The principles described in this book increase the probability that you will make profitable business decisions despite fickle markets. While empirically studying whether you make more money when you lean toward what consumers most meaningfully value is outside the scope of this book, these principles cohere with well-regarded advice from scores of renowned tycoons, scholars, philosophers, theologians and poets who are all liberally quoted here.³³ Leanism improves the chances of effectively achieving its obvious yet often disregarded main point that an organization ought to fervently seek true-north value to make money meaningfully. This book provides the fundamental structure for you to answer for yourself why and how that occurs.

You may quickly measure how effectively you lean metaphysically by analyzing how consumers respond when you follow this book’s precepts with what they purchase. While predicting human behavior always involves some degree of randomness due to consumers’ rational irrationality, which limits the accuracy of any business projections you make, Leanism allows you to better identify the difference between what is tactically correct and what is not for the greatest chance of achieving profitable success. Or, as John McKay the founder of Whole Foods Market that was sold to Amazon says, “Values Matter.”³⁴

6) Meaningfully Analyze Data. Most importantly, observing true-north value in life and business allows you to guide your business methods, particularly when clean data is lacking, as increasingly large datasets improve the ability to quantify and understand what consumers most truly value beyond what they purchased. Leanism connects metaphysical abstraction to how consumers actually live, exist and confess their deepest needs within whatever blessed consumption data you may obtain.³⁵ Lean is the philosophy of business, and business remains the most legible of all the social sciences.

The best, most recent attempts to quantify true-north value outside of economics and marketing have been in the fields of psychology and neurology. Behavioral economics and “marketing neuroscience” increasingly identify what consumers most truly value before they pay a price by quantifying consumers’ systemic biases and responses. However, to complement these studies and balance a dogmatic focus on obtaining data, Leanism leverages conjecture through theory to discover what matters most both before it can be counted and when it cannot be counted at all. While the management consultant W. Edwards Deming famously said, “In God we trust; all others must bring data,” Leanism helps you get the right data and make sense of the data you receive by asking the right questions in the first place.

This mentality of approaching business through profound interrogatories is similar to what the famous management guru Peter Drucker wrote about the Japanese, the same Asian culture that produced Toyota’s Production System, when he stated that the most important element in decision making to them is defining the questions to be asked.³⁶ Likewise, Jeffrey Leek, Ph.D., professor of data science at Johns Hopkins said, when further quoting Dan Meyer, that asking the best questions goes to the heart of the philosophy of data science itself.³⁷ Or, as Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld wrote in their 1938 book, “The Evolution of Physics,” that the formulation of a problem is more essential than its solution, which the philosophy of Lean helps you to do.³⁸

The philosophy of Lean truly excels at asking the best open-ended business questions to discover the highest value. Since all problems are solvable within the universal value stream,³⁹ Leanism allows you to properly infer and deductively question the meaning of and correlations within data as it applies to consumers’ lives and existences. Leanism bridges gaps in business analysis so you may ask beautiful questions and answer wicked problems with what good data you can obtain.⁴⁰ To reach the greatest profit, you ask the biggest questions to reach the deepest problems you can find that customers will pay you to resolve. Thus, Leanism’s Socratic method represents a form of Design Thinking by leading with empathy and crossing all business disciplines within the U/People business model. This allows an organization to wholly identify why, what and how consumers will buy goods and/or services. You ask “who” to maintain an empathetic customer-centeredness, “why” to define problems, pierce ambiguities and achieve more “AHA” moments, “what” to ideate and produce, and “how” to prototype and test really tangible benefits that may be exchanged for money.⁴¹

Thus, by normalizing how you discuss true-north value across an organization through “Design Thinking,” “Systems Thinking,” and altogether “Lean Thinking,” you can better connect all topics and disciplines to holistically identify and quantify how you can meaningfully make the most money by doing good from analyzing the data you have well. For example, of any business fields, finance excels at gathering and synthesizing big data sets, and yet, finance still shows limited (though still highly lucrative) success in accurately predicting true-north value creation.⁴² As I hope you will see, all financial analysis boils down to philosophical perspectives as well and could be improved through these same Socratic methods.

Every organization must ask beautifully inspired intuitive, inferential, inductive and deductive questions⁴³ to create true-north value with either a lot, little or no data by knowing why and how its business leans toward who consumers truly are.⁴⁴ Once a business determines who its customers are or who they ought to be mostly by what they do, it then can relate why consumers value those activities to what it can satisfy them with the most. It deduces what metaphysically related products and/or services, functions, features or benefits consumers will actually buy. This allows a business to better hypothesize how to make the most meaningful amounts of money by identifying and relating these metaphysical factors to consumers’ lives and existences to enter, expand or create new markets. This process will naturally transform an organization’s upper-management into chiefly functional, meaningful and innovative officers. Once this is done, its HQ will uniquely/profitably extend and optimize consumers’ lives and existences from analysis to execution.

Why Lean More Specifically?

You lean in business by developing customers to consume products and/or services that you efficiently reproduce in exchange for the money on which every corporation’s very existence and identity depends. Given the basic use of Lean principles in business, let’s look at the common definitions of Lean to understand why the term “Lean” philosophically applies to business. And since the formal use of Lean as a business term is relatively new in the history of the English language, I suggest that you ought to use all of its ancient meaning as a vehicle for a people-oriented, business ideology to pursue the greatest profit.

In the common vernacular of Old English, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “Lean” as “Reward, recompense,” which accords with the modern spelling of “Lien” as meaning a right to a debt to be repaid in exchange for a product and/or service that has been provided. A Lean business owes its customers and society at large true-north value for the money it charged, deducted and now gets to redistribute to shareholders, employees, contractors, vendors, philanthropies and politicians.

The Oxford English Dictionary also defines “Lean” as, “The act or condition of leaning; inclination.” This definition means that whatever or whoever leans, does so against something or someone else, just like how any business organization fundamentally supports itself by leaning on its paying customers, and just like how shareholders do in-turn by leaning on the organizations in which they invest.

Lastly, the Oxford English Dictionary defines Lean as, “Wanting in flesh; not plump or fat; thin.” This definition indicates that whatever or whoever is lean efficiently processes energy, much like any effective organization maximizing stakeholder value; however, this definition of “Lean” does not mean gaunt, but rather athletically tautological as you will see.

With all this intellectual heritage, Lean can be summarized in formal terms as meaning the creation of “value” by removing waste from an organization’s production system on which stakeholders depend. Any waste that does not create true-north value is referred to in Lean as “Muda” (無駄). The other forms of Lean waste are “Mura” (斑), meaning any unproductive variance in reproduction such as those caused by bad performance metrics so often employed by companies, and “Muri” (無理), meaning waste caused by overburdening production systems and not fully respecting people. This Lean legacy of waste avoidance can be traced to the Buddhist and Shinto concept of Mottainai (もったいない), which is a term of Japanese origin meaning to reproduce, re-use, recycle, and reinspect wherever possible. Leanism synthesizes these forms of waste by defining Lean waste as activities that do not reduce consumers’ existential pains.

Lean, like most business theories, determines what most profitably satisfies the most customers and how to do that best. Like the formal discipline of “Lean” in quotes, the U/People business model directs you to bow from within an organization’s HQ toward uniquely/profitably extending and optimizing consumers’ lives and existences by solving their greatest problems for a profit.⁴⁵ The world’s largest companies lean philosophically in this way, since “Lean” is, as we have discussed, also a term-of-art commonly used in business to mean a set of principles organized from studying of what made the Toyota Motor Corporation so successful for so long by being amazingly prophetic about the future of the automobile industry.⁴⁶

Academics have further developed and defined Lean principles. James Womack and Daniel Jones in their well-regarded 2010 book, “Lean Thinking,” established the five fundamental principals of Lean as:

1. Identify value: “The critical starting point for lean thinking is value…Value can only be defined by the ultimate customer. And it’s only meaningful when expressed in terms of a specific product (a good or a service, and often both at once) which meets the customer’s needs at a specific price at a specific time”; ⁴⁷
2. Identify value stream: “The value stream is the set of all the specific actions required to bring a specific product (whether a good, a service, or, increasingly, a combination of the two) through the three critical management tasks of any business…problem solving…information management…and the physical transformation”;⁴⁸
3. Flow: “In short, things work better when you focus on the product and its needs, rather than the organization or the equipment, so that all the activities needed to design, order, and provide a product occur in continuous flow”;⁴⁹
4. Pull: “You can let the customer pull the product from you as needed rather than pushing products, often unwanted, onto the customer”; and
5. Perfection: “As organizations begin to accurately specify value, identify the entire value stream, make the value-creating steps for specific products flow continuously, and let customers pull value from the enterprise, something very odd begins to happen. It dawns on those involved that there is no end to the process of reducing effort, time, space, cost, and mistakes while offering a product which is ever more nearly what the customer actually wants. Suddenly perfection, the fifth and final principle of lean thinking, doesn’t seem like a crazy idea.”⁵⁰

While Krafcik, Womack, Jones and others established Lean as a business discipline following Krafcik’s coining the term, a lot more has been written about Lean processes and application to making money since then, even if not a lot has been written regarding “Lean Thinking’s” item number (1) Identify Value. For example, the entrepreneur Eric Ries applied Lean to early stage product and/or service development by coining the term, “Lean Startup,” in his same titled book, “The Lean Startup.” Ries described how he built an online avatar business, “Instant Message Virtual Universe” (“IMVU”), through iterative user testing. However, Ries’ para-scientific, “Build-Measure-Learn” methodology focused entirely on people’s revealed preferences without philosophically identifying the meaning of the data being received from end-users. Observing what people do and the how they pay for it follows a process of trial and error correction, but without any guiding insight as to what to ask and how to identify meaningful revelations. This leads to waste and missed commercial opportunities.⁵¹

Thus, despite Lean’s various applications to date, very little has been written to fully identify true-north value, other than this iterative process of offering minimally viable products and/or services to see what consumers purchase. This is because people have somewhat ignored the historical and philosophical legacy of Lean that consistently points in the proper direction. By better understanding the history and philosophy of Lean, organizations may quickly apply Lean to all their operations, while improving their insights with market testing. For example, people ought to know the origin of the Lean Japanese term “Jidoka” (自働化) to apply Lean best. Jidoka originated from Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Group, when he installed a device called a “jido” on an automatic textile loom that allowed human operators to make autonomous judgments to improve production.⁵² Jidoka is thus a historical process of human trial and error correction in the context of the industrial revolution, which Toyota has now modernized to mean automation with a touch of guiding human knowledge.⁵³ True-north value identification through Jidoka comes from the integration of human philosophical insight (in Lean terms, “Genchi Genbutsu” (現地現物)) and error correction (in Lean terms, “Poka-Yoke”) to create the greatest true-north value for consumers. Jidoka is the best measure of quality that any Lean system of management can apply as it iteratively tests whether its products and/or services fit its markets well.

As you extend the iterative process of Jidoka out toward consumers and business in general, you ought to:

1. Follow the Western philosophical tradition of empathizing who consumers truly are called “Phenomenology” (which is best described in Lean terms again as, “Genchi Genbutsu”);
2. Conjecture, hypothesize, and theorize what creates the most true-north value for them with your guiding intellect (which is best described in Lean terms again as, “Jidoka”); and
3. Then criticize through market tests whether a solution provides at least an adequate profit (which is best described in Lean terms again as, “Poka-Yoke”).

Thus, to align value streams toward a horizon of commercial possibility, you must fully lean toward consumers by empathizing with the best evidence you can gather from the start. Then, from this universe of empathy, you relate the unlimited problems consumers have to the price you may charge them for their resolution. The Japanese company Nissan reflects this notion in its implementation of a variety of Lean called, “Nissan Production Way” (“NPW”). NPW pursues the “Two Neverendings” of: (1) “Douki-seisan” (同気生産)) which is a perpetual synchronization with the customer, and (2) the, “never ending quest to identify problems and put in place solutions” for a price.⁵⁴ You can see where the value streams of problem and price meet at the point of empathy with the customer in the logo for Nissan’s luxury car brand, Infiniti:

Leanism’s four primary interrogatories of who, why, what and how complement the never-ending, iterative development processes of Kaizen and Jidoka by uniquely guiding product and/or service ideation, innovation, design and monetization.⁵⁵ These lean interrogatories will lead you toward products and/or services that are practically useful, aspirational and profitable. I summarize the Socratic questions of who, why, what and how in the shorthand form of “3WH.” Since these interrogatories are critical to the philosophy of Lean, here are their definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary:

• Who, pron. (and n.), As the ordinary interrogative pronoun, in the nominative singular or plural, used of a person or persons: corresponding to “what” of things;
• Why, adv. (n. and int.), In a direct question: For what reason? From what cause or motive? For what purpose?;
• What, pron., adj., and adv., int., conj., and n.:
  1. As the ordinary interrogative pronoun of neuter gender, orig. sing., in later use also pl., used of a thing or things: corresponding to the demonstrative “that”;
  2. Of a person (or persons), In predicative use: formerly generally, in reference to name or identity, and thus equivalent to “who”; in later use only in reference to nature, character, function, or the like; and
• How, adv. and n., Qualifying a verb: In what way or manner? By what means?

Notice that the interrogatory “what” flows through all these definitions, and that “who” and “what” are essentially equivalent by their reciprocal references to one another in their above definitions. All of the 3WH interrogatories are interrelated to derive “what” matters most as a whole in ontological, and thus metaphysical terms, much like the four interlocking rings of the Audi automobile logo:

By following these interrelated, four-word steps of 3WH, you will consistently reach epiphanies about what you ought to produce to most uniquely, profitably extend and optimize consumers’ lives and existences in all commercial environments.⁵⁶ However, instead of only reviewing what consumers say or reveal, Leanism’s 3WH method of analysis abstracts Lean value theory toward philosophically framing true-north value in life and business within which all consumers’ preferences best fit. 3WH is a reformation of true-north value when you recognize that consumers ultimately seek true-north value beyond what is immediately known. Thus, the power of a Lean business ideology is to apply this abstract knowledge to identify specific solutions across all business problems you may face.

Leanism, through the 3WH process, makes Lean applicable to all aspects of business by further intersecting Lean with the Western study of true-north value called “Axiology.” Axiology may be considered the combination of what attracts consumers to buy through aesthetics, and what consumers ought to do through ethics. The Japanese term, Kinobi (機能美) standing for the principle that aesthetics (and by extension ethics) equate with utility, is used in Leanism to channel both sides of Axiology through sound Lean value theory within business to help you make money meaningfully.

Philosophically Leaning Your Business Ideology

Those attempting to philosophize like me often paraphrase the famous 20th Century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead⁵⁷ as saying that the whole of Western philosophy was, “… a series of footnotes to Plato.”⁵⁸ Whitehead captured the notion that trying to build a true-north value theory is like attempting to add your own deeply buried footnotes to countless thinkers before. Similarly, you lean metaphysically by collecting ideas together and applying them within your own context. You use Lean as a vessel to navigate through channels of timeless value streams.

By explaining who consumers are, and why and what they most value, Leanism enhances the art and para-science of business. Like Eric Ries described with his, “Build-Measure-Learn” methodology in “The Lean Startup,” business as a whole is a para-science because while science tests the causes of various effects, the desired effect of producing a profit in business is plainly obvious.⁵⁹ The challenge is causing such a financial outcome by universalizing true-north value for consumers as exceptionally complex people. You as a businessperson have the difficult task of optimizing consumers’ standard of existence to the greatest extent in all domains, leaving neither markets untapped nor money on the table.

Philosopher Kings and Queens

As Jim Collins wrote in “Good to Great”, “The good-to-great leaders… They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.”⁶⁰ World famous business people today most often describe their own, “business philosophies,” with modern philosophical and scientific principles. For example, the famous entrepreneur Elon Musk advocates for all people to reason from first principles when he said during a 2012 interview,

First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, ‘What are we sure is true?’ … and then reason up from there.

However, none of these business people seem to provide other people with a way to think effectively from first principles without thoroughly educating themselves in esoteric philosophy and similarly dense subjects – this Leanism book is enough! Thus, business philosophy often devolves either into vague aphorisms that do not lend themselves to functional analysis, or into logically weak insights that eventually become entangled in their own reasoning when rigorously applied, leaving other business people frustrated when trying to borrow from these billionaires’ brilliance.⁶¹

However, quite a few examples of rigorously philosophical billionaires exist. Billionaire trader George Soros writes with diligence and vigor when describing his philosophical concept of “Reflexivity” in his 1983 book, “The Alchemy of Finance.” You can also see Soros’ concept of reflexivity in Alfred North Whitehead’s and Nicholas Rescher’s, “Process Philosophy.”⁶² Carl Icahn earned a B.A. in philosophy at Princeton, having written his senior thesis about the definition of meaning from the empiricist tradition.⁶³ These philosophical concepts from Soros and Icahn even play themselves out in the tautological economic models of Revealed Preference Theory proposed by Herbert Simon, which is widely used by mainstream economists today.

For further examples of self-made philosophical billionaires, Dr. Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, earned a masters degree in philosophy at Oxford before joining Apple.⁶⁴ Michael Bloomberg studied philosophy at New School after graduating from Harvard Business School.⁶⁵ Steve Jobs, CEO and one of the principal founders of Apple Inc., studied, practiced and was influenced by the Eastern religious philosophy of Zen Buddhism.⁶⁶ Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, described his value theory in his manifesto, “Principles,” where he begins by instructing all to start their business analysis by asking the epistemological and ontological question, “Is it true?” like Elon Musk.⁶⁷ Apple Inc. espoused this epistemological sentiment when the company designed its logo to be a piece of fruit from the tree of all knowledge with a byte taken out of it.⁶⁸

While each of these business people lean philosophically in some way, try as they might none provides a broadly applicable, logical framework for organizing the first principles of the human condition from which all meaningful true-north value, and thus all consumer demand, ultimately originates. Business people write business books that invoke philosophy, but what may be more helpful in making real progress is a philosophy book about business, particularly one that places the philosophy of science at its core while synthesizing ancient wisdom through the modern business discipline of Lean. I present what I consider to be the philosophy of business within the paradigm of Lean, and hope to channel the thoughts of these great leaders for you to lean an organization’s business philosophy forward in their homage.⁶⁹

Supporting this approach, Collins and Porras in “Built to Last” stated, “Contrary to popular wisdom, the proper first response to a changing world is not to ask, ‘How should we change?’ but rather to ask, ‘What do we stand for and why do we exist?”’⁷⁰ Collins and Porras described their pragmatic idealism as one that companies built to last use in the Yin and Yang symbols, adapting while preserving core values and purposes around a figurative fly wheel.⁷¹ Steve Jobs said when introducing the “Think Different” advertising campaign to Apple employees:

All these great business leaders propose a Yin/Yang approach to business, mixing oriental with occidental philosophies together as a business ideology to make money consistently. Thus, oriental religious philosophies, like Confucianism, Shintoism and Buddhism, combine in tension in a Yin/Yang with the occidental Philosophy of Science and Western consumerism to great effect. Lean is a philosophy of business grounded in ancient wisdom while always changing in the face of new demands and discoveries. Likewise, Lean is the existential core of every business, and what essentially changes is its implementation. Or, to paraphrase Aristotle from the 4th century B.C.E., “[Lean] philosophy begins in wonder, seeking the most fundamental causes or principles of things, and seems the least necessary but is in fact the most divine of [business] sciences.”⁷³ Or, as Marcus Aurelius more recently said in 167 A.C.E., “No [organizational] role is so well suited for [Lean] philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.”⁷⁴ [the bracketed additions are my own of course].

By going beyond what a company certainly knows, the philosophy of Lean can help an organization determine what ought to be its core true-north values whatever it decides best extends and optimizes all people. Alfred North Whitehead, the previously referenced philosopher and mathematician who wrote “Mathematica Principia” with Bertrand Russell, said, “Philosophy is the critic of cosmologies, whose job it is to synthesize, scrutinize and make coherent the divergent intuitions gained through ethical, aesthetic, religious, and scientific experience.”⁷⁵ I would add that the philosophy of Lean also upends false assumptions and enhances a business’ perspective to guide an organization’s quantitative and qualitative insights into what consumers and all stakeholders find most meaningful.

Going one step further, Greek philosophers such as Cynics, Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics analyzed: (1) what was truly valuable and what was not, and (2) how one could find true-north value and protect oneself against longing for false, valueless things.⁷⁶ Further in time, the Roman Cicero said that, “To study philosophy is to prepare oneself for death.” This means that you ought to use the philosophy of Lean to discover what consumers truly value for the most meaningful amounts of money before a business meets that same fate.⁷⁷ Thus, I hope you agree that the philosophy of Lean is the formal study of true-north value in life and business, and that the exchange of Lean value for money is (or perhaps ought to be) all organizations’ ultimate source of viability.

In the end, Leanism does not see philosophy so much as a means toward an independent truth (though philosophy can be a leading indicator for science), but more as an effective way to bridge your understanding of consumers’ personal perspectives with what you know about them from math and science, or otherwise emotionally intuit.⁷⁸ Philosophy in this way helps guide you toward best satisfying consumers’ basic needs so they will be shattering the doors of stores to become customers!

The Philosophy of Lean in the Grand Design

However, to make clear philosophy’s role in analyzing true-north value, let’s play devil’s advocate with the great, late Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking was a famous theoretical physicist, who once derided traditional philosophy as having lost its ability to answer the bigger questions of existence given recent scientific advancements toward that goal.⁷⁹ He said that philosophy has nothing to say regarding the origin of what consumers most truly value, and thus says nothing about how an organization may make money meaningfully.⁸⁰

Presuming for argumentative purposes that Stephen Hawking was and still is correct, which he could very well be, and theoretical physics succeeded philosophy (and religion for that matter) as the tool with the greatest explanatory power for consumers’ lives and existences, I propose that philosophy’s rigorously analytical tools developed by tremendous minds over millennia can and ought to be repurposed to frame the analytical questions of what Lean true-north value in business is so it can be most effectively monetized by you. Summarized well, philosophy can structure products and/or service innovation and guide business processes toward profitable and ethical success to make meaningful amounts of money over generations, which is all that truly matters to the ultimate viability of an organization.

In sum, mathematical, scientific, philosophical and intuitive insights into who and why consumers are provide the logical underpinnings of Lean true-north value theory, and thus, the foundation for organic growth. The philosophy of Lean acts both as the middleware between an organization’s scientific and intuitive business analysis, and helps you identify true-north value at the intersection all reason and speculation. By implementing these insights, an organization will make money meaningfully when the currents of science, economics and philosophy intersect at the fjord of satisfaction that products and/or services ought to produce for consumers. Leanism thus approaches Lean true-north value from its very inception and streamlines it for business success.⁸¹

So while modern philosophy and the rest of the humanities respect mathematics and scientific knowledge as the most widely shared and predictable true-north values, the humanities still function to illuminate and speculate what are the overall ultimate processes leading to consumers’ lives and existences and the associated meaning their lives may have. In the end, the humanities inform the existential limits an organization and consumers inevitably run into, bounded by their ignorance, circularities, infinities and paradoxes.⁸² No matter how intelligent they are, consumers and organizations are surrounded by marginal event horizons and cosmic censorship, left only to hope for something more. Where neither science nor philosophy fully informs who consumers are and why they buy products and/or services, consumers’ individual agnosticism, intuitive spiritualism or speculative scientism fulfills the third rail in businesses’ value worship. As Steve Jobs famously said,

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.⁸³

From the modern, post-modern, or post-post-modern (sometimes referred to as “pseudo-modern” or “meta-modern”) perspectives, you can see levels of validated, commonly shared beliefs about consumers’ reality in the golden braid of mathematics, science, philosophy and intuition. These domains identify Lean true-north value with decreasing levels of common agreement among all potential customers as you move up the universal value stream:

Mathematics and science provide the most technically validated and commonly agreed forms of information.⁸⁴ On the other end of this spectrum, religious, spiritual and scientismic intuition fills a void where science and philosophy do not qualify as commonly agreed values. Consumers realize these latter forms of true-north value by what they intuitively/religiously/spiritually/scientismically speculate, even if what they believe is not commonly held by all people. In contrast, philosophical principles function as abstractions that may be used to reach better solutions to business problems by seeing through to the truth (“Is it true?”) underlying all technical detail. The Lean business philosopher thus ought to have a competitive advantage to more effectively reproduce and monetize true-north value for this reason. So, you will walk away from this text with new, Lean philosophical acronyms and analogies that you may use as rules of thumb to monetize meaning regardless of the origin of your ideas.

An excellent question exemplifying a point where science, philosophy and intuition intermix to determine what consumers most truly value is, “What created natural, physical laws, consumers, and the universe in the first place?” This question is represented by the question mark “?” at the beginning and end of the above value stream running through fields of inquiry. I’m sure consumers have some intuitive belief, faith, or agnosticism marking that question, and their attitudes toward it particularly determine why, what, and how they purchase. Let’s look at this question briefly from the respective perspectives of science and religion to see what role the philosophy of Lean plays in mediating between these fields today to identify true-north value and the secret meaning of money as we move along all fields of knowledge to reach the greatest profit.

Science

Physicists generally attempt to describe the origin of consumers’ existences, and thus all true-north value, by statistically analyzing theories, or they theorize classical notions of what the universe is or is not to get to that same point. Scientists generally make these physical explanations for why consumers exist intentionally circular since they base these explanations on physical laws of unknown origin.⁸⁵

For example, a certain classical theory in vogue is multi-verses specifying that the universe consumers personally know is one of an infinite number of them, and they are but one variation of infinite possibility. The laws in such universes are randomly created with whatever probabilities might exist in such warped domains. Within some variations of this theory, each black hole holds a universe unto itself, each with its own variation of the laws of physics. Another theoretical variation demonstrates the multi-verse by explaining quantum mechanics itself as a consequence of the coherence and discoherence of the subatomic units of parallel universes within the multi-verse. These theories hold that each parallel universe is well designed in its own unique way while remaining fungible at its most basic level, much like the multiple meanings simultaneously arising from the homonyms, symbolism and acronyms.⁸⁶

Alternatively, consider that if consumers could see past the limit of the speed of light racing toward them from the edges of the known universe, they might find further cosmoses within the same spacetime continuum if only they could lean far enough to see them. Finally, if you project far enough into the future, you might conclude that video games, like Eric Ries’ Instant Message Virtual Universe, or The Sims, would improve to such a degree with each new version that this universe you know so well might itself be a simulation.⁸⁷ We might be characters within IMVU at this very moment. Who is winning?

While these scientific theories are all grand, consumers must recognize that no such purely physical or computational theory to date conclusively answers in non-circular fashion why the physics (or programs) guiding their lives exists at all- what explains why anything exists at all, and thus why consumers live and buy anything at all other than to subsist. The ongoing faith an organization has that consumers will find the products and/or services it provides truly valuable leaves open all forms of intuitive speculation by upper management.⁸⁸ Ultimately, consumers’ true religion is hard to define, but Leanism diagrams its contours for you as you will see below.

Religion

To begin understanding what creates Lean true-north value, you cannot ignore the very personal topic of religion. It must be discussed for this conversation to be complete. To address it head on for your Lean business ideology, look at one of the most widely adopted academic definitions⁸⁹ of religion that was proposed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Geertz described religion as a system of symbols that acts to:⁹⁰

1. Establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people;
2. Formulate conceptions of a general order of existence;
3. Give these conceptions an aura of factuality; and
4. Make these moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Not coincidentally, Geertz’s definition of religion leans a business metaphysically through the 3WH value creation interrogatories of who, why, what, and how. Like the four parts of Geertz’s definition, consumers’ true-north values determine:

1. Who consumers are as emotionally motivated people;
2. Why consumers buy products and/or services to better exist;
3. What consumers conceive as factually valuable; and
4. How consumers really get uniquely and emotionally motivated to buy products and/or services with money.

Thus, religion, just like science, also seeks to answer who, why, what, and how, except with intuitive speculation rather than scientific investigation. “Why” in religion speculates a general order of existence from a higher power, while “what” grounds religion in the soil of experience by what people actually believe. “Who” in religion divines who people are by which deities they ultimately follow, while “how” in religion determines the beliefs held, rituals followed, sacrifices made, indulgences paid, or lives lived to reach Nirvana. We will explore further these 3WH interrogatories as you proceed up through the U/People business model with a religious devotion to all consumers whatever they may believe.

Limits to Business Quantification

You as a business person reasonably tend to rely heavily on the quantifiable aspects of true-north value measurement, such as with accounting, finance or econometrics. Monetary or other quantitative measurements provides a fairly uniform way to discuss business processes globally. However, the common expressions, “Not everything that counts can be counted,” and, “Businesses measure everything and understand nothing,” articulate the fact that, significant, unresolved, and often under-appreciated limits exist in money’s ability to quantify and measure what people truly find meaningful in an absolute sense. In the difference between science and religion, you come to the natural limits of what the four-step Lean 3WH value interrogatories can quantify and predict since no one has a firm grasp on what permits or limits open-ended, infinite intuitive, spiritual, scientific and/or religious speculation.⁹¹

Leanism will clarify and explain those limits more precisely for understanding exactly what money and other metrics do and do not measure and mean. Understanding the difference will not only improve a business for societal profit, but will also improve financial profits by taking you to the edge of what an organization can monetize so you can focus on what you have reason to believe is most profitable.⁹² The difference between making meaningful amounts of money and making money meaningfully is that while the former immediately satisfices, the latter allows you to achieve greatness and build a company that will carry your legacy onward and upward.

So while money reasonably accurately quantifies people’s preferences, accounting, finance and econometrics cannot entirely direct research, development and marketing toward what best satisfices and optimizes consumers – many things are difficult to measure well, due to incomplete information and knowledge, which are often referred to as business intangibles. In fact, the more knowledge we as people have and apply toward our own ends, the less we can predict the future.⁹³ Thus, despite very well developed financial measures and operational metrics, businesses still pray for epiphanies as to what meaningfully making money means through the Lean value stream, and how such insight might further guide quantitative analysis toward blue oceans of profit in an unchartered universe.

The U/People Business Model

By constructing a comprehensive true-north value theory to apply Lean thinking to an organization, you ought to be able to understand the context in which an organization measures true-north value for all of its stakeholders regardless of their religious beliefs. By all stakeholders, I mean customers, employees, board members, shareholders, and/or society. Thus, a Lean business ideology ought to be a universal system of thought grounded in true-north values, but also related to the apparent paradoxes inherent in all stakeholders’ lives and existences. It ought to bring together a wide range of ideas and disciplines in a unified structure for analyzing and predicting what all stakeholders find most truly valuable and therefore will want to buy.

By way of example of Leanism’s flexibility for building a meaningful true-north value theory, references to businesses, corporations, or organizations may likewise be read throughout this book to include governmental or not-for-profit entities. You can replace “customers” with taxpayers, donors, or congregants, since they are all ultimately “consumers” of existential solutions. For example, in the charitable context, charitable recipients and society are the indirect beneficiaries of charitable activities. Charitable beneficiaries are part of the products and/or services actually sold to donors. Donors in-turn indulge in the satisfaction of, possibly receive some prestige for, and certainly universalize their influence as a result of naming buildings and institutions after themselves.⁹⁴ That is a very real way to look at the business of charity, but making abstract theory really applicable to what consumers most truly value is why you lean philosophically toward people.

Synthesizing Subjects

Hopefully, given this introduction to Leanism thus far feeding a Lean analysis of what matters most to stakeholders, you can appreciate how an overarching true-north value theory that philosophically organizes business information ought to be useful to you. Quite commonly, researchers at the highest levels of different fields independently examine the same concepts from different perspectives within their own disciplines. Authors generally write in one discipline or another without interrelating their disciplines to others with which their domain of expertise intersects. However, as you have seen, the philosophy of Lean will help you do just that for remarkable business insights.

For example, as Fred Gluck, the founder of McKinsey’s strategy practice, said that strategic planning is an exercise in continuously evolving the most effective rules of thumb that yield the greatest business results.⁹⁵ Philosophical metaphysics and strategic metadata create these rules of thumb exceedingly well if brought down to Earth. For example, consider all knowledge from the top down. Philosophy was the intellectual parent of modern physics, which in turn determines chemistry, which informs biology, which affects psychology, which combines chemistry and biology into psychopharmacology that can change who consumers are and their philosophical perspectives on life and existence. At some point, all these fields of knowledge intersect and inform one another in circular fashion, since all academic subjects ultimately reduce themselves toward the goal of best understanding and improving consumers’ lives and existences, which is philosophy’s ultimate domain of inquiry as well.

Steve Jobs consistently said as much, as further evidenced by his interview with the Smithsonian Institution on April 20th, 1995 while he was running NeXT Computer:⁹⁶

I actually think there’s actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest caliber… They’ve just been to me people who pursue different paths but basically kind of headed to the same goal, which is to express something of what they perceive to be the truth around them so that others can benefit by it.

However, the polymath- a person who could truly excel across multiple disciplines- is increasingly rare if not already extinct due to the fact that the quantity of knowledge needed to enhance any part of the body of knowledge of any given general field of knowledge stands beyond what any one person is currently capable of understanding in a lifetime.⁹⁷ This has been truly said for some time, and will only become truer as our knowledge exponentially increases, and sub-disciplines of knowledge continually grow, while we increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to cross these domains.⁹⁸

Making a genuine contribution of knowledge to any given subject these days consumes a person’s entire intellect and a lifetime of dedication, so seeing beyond existing knowledge and interrelating the collective body of knowledge in general, particularly in business, becomes increasingly difficult even as the information within sub-disciplines becomes more effective at addressing specific problems. This situation is sub-optimal for leaning an entire organization toward all that consumers most truly value because of the difficulty in knowing and synthesizing all this information intelligently.⁹⁹

Leanism thus becomes a type of product and/or service of its own, a philosophical and pragmatic body of knowledge for a corporation, constituting the sum of the expertise that went into creating and aligning it with what consumers truly value, allowing you to lean across multiple disciplines, and ask AI better questions, to serve them best. Likewise, think about what consumers truly value when they employ chemical and mechanical engineers the next time they use a toothbrush. Think about the expertise of the aerospace engineers consumers hire the next time they fly. Consider the cumulative medical knowledge gathered through millennia of trial and error in the process of Jidoka and Kaizen that doctors currently lean on and re-transmit when a consumer enters a doctor’s office for a check-up.¹⁰⁰

While Leanism provides this intellectual leverage, an organization will never make money rotely with the philosophy of Lean and the U/People business model.¹⁰¹ Even though Leanism is not a deductive formula for success, I guarantee that you will gain confidence from knowing when you are on the right path if you flow that embodied expertise about customers’ lives and existences through your own business ideology. You will have the confidence that you are providing the products and/or service you ought, which ought to produce for you the greatest profit of all.

For example, if making money meaningfully involves understanding consumers’ lives and existences, then even the financial industry can make more money by following these precepts when they intuitively understand the human condition and why people enter into economic exchanges to live and exist. While financial engineering does not require understanding people’s lives in all the ways described in this book, the negotiations and strategies used to execute financial transactions require understanding the counter-parties engaging in those transactions and all that they truly value, which the money being negotiated reflects.¹⁰² As another example, leverage aside, private equity does actually depend to a great extent on effectively operating companies as much as mathematically engineering their acquisition and divestment to produce financial gain.¹⁰³ This means that even private equity firms and hedge funds must have a business ideology to understand what and how products and/or services get bought and sold to produce satisfactory returns most days.

While the U/People business model and acronym may describe what creates wealth and what you ought to lean toward in greater detail, and describes how wealth gets generated by higher order economic activity, it will fail to identify how to make money meaningfully in mechanical fashion, since money making is of course an open-ended endeavor.¹⁰⁴ The philosophy of Lean is about your developing a value theory of continuously improving and pursuing perfection however unattainable it might be. The U/People business model by no means automates economic advancement, but it will provide you with a universal set of true-north values, processes, and methods to guide you to make the money you earn genuinely meaningful for everyone’s benefit.

Quantifying Lean Abstraction and Analogies for Sales Success

In addition to the foregoing benefits to studying Lean, the analogical (or dis-analogical) reasoning that is pervasive throughout the philosophy of Lean allows you to differentiate between partial and impartial truths that drive sales efficiency. Analogies, similes, metaphors, phrases, proverbs and fables all go into telling the sales stories of true-north value that get products and/or services bought and sold. You can in-turn use mathematics to produce precise descriptions, probabilities and measurements of these partial or impartial true-north values to determine the corresponding accuracy of analogies and similes in consumers’ minds. Examples include any time you compare a new business initiative to others and see the differences in how you served people’s true-north values from one period to the next. Once you identify the analogical comparables, you may ask questions like:

The philosophy of Lean provides a business ideology with tools to see the organic essence of any given situation and analogically reason from there to provide a greater return on customers’ investments in a product and/or service. True-north value originates from existential dichotomies in the difference between one period in time to the next, and how you reason analogically between those periods to identify and classify what has Lean value and what does not for consumers. This is especially true when comparing two different points in time from the present state to a future state, which lets you readily communicate and quantify the change in that true-north value to consumers.¹⁰⁵ You lean metaphysically through a binary business ideology of what has true-north value and what does not toward an infinite sales potential.

From Zero to One¹⁰⁶

Consumers make analogies and use binary computers to improve their human condition and better describe themselves in relation to what is or is not in the universe. In dichotomous fashion, they compute 1 as being not like 0 just like they self-reflexively identify their I as not being like not into infinite, counterfactual detail.¹⁰⁷ In fact, consumers do this to determine how best to ontologically realize themselves being in the universe. Through the processes of time, however, the data of life and existence defines consumers and describes their behavior in some of these ways, which allows you to attempt to predict what consumers truly value. Both analogy making and mathematics converge to illuminate the fundamental, binary condition of consumers’ existence in all of its probability of “being” or “not being” to help you determine what might get bought by and sold to people.

Since Leanism improves analogical thinking, it also sharpens your business acumen by helping you make more sense out of markets, since abstract concepts in consumers’ minds shape their behavior, to which you can relate. The better you understand the abstractions consumers are thinking, the more fully you will be able to explain who consumers truly are.¹⁰⁸ For example, the modern sociological researcher James Flynn, famous for the “Flynn Effect” demonstrating rising IQs across time, presented significant data showing that your own IQ score will increase once you increase your capacity to abstract and analogize between yourself and other people.¹⁰⁹

As abstraction increases your own intelligence quotient, it likewise increases your appreciation of consumers’ and all other stakeholders’ IQs as well. Absorbing new true-north value streams grows your mindset¹¹⁰ toward abstracting a metaphysical business ideology to more intelligently serve your markets. Leanism is thus like the abstract artwork you pass by everyday in the hallways of an organization, which serves as a palette for your imagining ways to grow your future profits by meaningfully providing true-north value to customers.¹¹¹

The U/People business model and acronym - Uniquely/Profitably Extending and Optimizing People’s Lives and Existences - and all the acronyms I use throughout this book, are acrobatic rules of thumb for you to use in a metaphysical business ideology to compress and unify widely divergent information together to lean toward consumers more profitably.¹¹² The multiple definitions, word combinations, acronyms and phrases derived from Leanism’s meaning demonstrate that the business model’s concepts exceed the individual letters, symbols and words composing it, allowing you to reach across all value streams.¹¹³ At its very best, Leanism might even be analogized (or dis-analogized) to a long poem, since actual poetry represents the most compressed and extreme example of analogy making between concepts, thereby further abstracting and re-categorizing life, value and meaning for all people.¹¹⁴

You will in-fact find quite a bit of actual poetry interwoven throughout Leanism. With this, hopefully, you will see how analogy making is a powerful tool for abstraction that complements quantification to guide an organization’s faith toward better learning, understanding and predicting what really works.

For example, much of the premium you place on an employees’ work experience originates from their generally large set of examples of past problems, failures and solutions so they may efficiently analogize toward an iterative, Lean solution to present business problems. A business ideology will allow you to better see how employees lean their past experiences toward solving consumers’ problems by serving their fundamental true-north values. Think of the last time you were at work or took a test and you recognized familiar problems and were able to more effectively propose solutions or answers – that is how you analogically lean philosophically.

Analogy making from past experiences particularly relates to the details of the industry in which you operate. Look at how an organization asks interview questions of candidates’ past experiences, like the Gallup-style tests for employee selection repeatedly questioning interviewees from different perspectives.¹¹⁵ Look also at the interaction of qualitative and quantitative analysis when employers decide who to hire based on their own past experience within an industry. Analogy making is especially important in day-to-day situations in organizations that seek to continually improve, and a true-north value theory enhances an organization’s ability to analogize when it does not have the ability to quantify every decision.

The Symbols - The Forward Slash, Circumflex, and Sigmas

To facilitate the highly conceptual and artistic nature of this discussion, you will notice some instances where I use homonyms, homographs and homophones, and refine standard English with additional symbolism as listed in the Glossary. For example, I use the forward slash / to mean Lean, which is a segment of the spiraling value curve of the ontological teleology. I use this symbolism because while I write in American English, you lean philosophically in a sign-language that all consumers comprehend, such as through the trademarks that businesses use.¹¹⁶

I look to reveal the implicit meaning within the words we use in business every day regardless of whether a word’s etymology explicitly supports that meaning. So, using symbols like “/” will likewise help you universally improve the lives of all people for a profit. I also hope to reveal how business vocabulary itself guides the direction of true-north value when you pause for a moment to examine and deconstruct it carefully.¹¹⁷ As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in 1953 at paragraph 129 of his, “Philosophical Investigations”:

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity… — And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

Consider for instance the circumflex carrot “^” over the o, like so Ô. In the parlance of Lean, the Ô generally symbolizes a true-north value compass described by the Japanese principle of Hōshin Konri (方針管理). Hōshin Konri is a combination of Hoshin (方針), meaning policy or plan like a guiding compass, with Kanri (管理), meaning management, administration or control. So together the symbolic Ô is generally interpreted as “Compass Guided Management” leading toward true-north value. Ô also happens to be the diacritical pronunciation of the “ah” sound (as in “aha”) carried throughout words like “ôntology.” Furthermore, Ô is also similar to that used in statistics to indicate the necessary, actuarial estimation of reality that a metaphysical business ideology must take.

So, to emphasize all these points from here on but make things a bit simpler, please consider the word “Truth” to be an interchangeable portmanteau of “True” and “North,” and representative of “Ô,” with “True-North” being the metaphorical direction of all that is uniquely useful in the Leanism vernacular. To further show Lean symbolism in the real world,¹¹⁸ you can see the Hōshin Kanri “Ô” in the logo of the Acura® luxury division of Honda Motor Co., Inc.:

In fact, here is an actual slide from a presentation that Toyota Motor Corporation gives exemplifying this symbolism used in Toyota’s real-world business environment of Toyota’s Production System (a.k.a. “TPS”). This slide fairly presents both TPS and Lean as business ideologies geared toward customer satisfaction and human development, representing a people-focused, true-north value theory:¹¹⁹

Lastly, the capital sigma Σ you may see reflected in various places within this book either in its normal orientation or turned up, represents the paradoxical summation of open-ended value inherent in the human condition. I hope all these symbols will become as clear to you as a well-fed spring by the time you finish reading Leanism.

U People / Toward 6σ

For another example of this symbolism, Leanism compresses the term Lean Six Sigma, into “/6σ.” The forward slash “/” naturally represents all Lean true-north value theory in addition to a metaphysical focus on what consumers’ most meaningful problems are; the six “6” represents the attempted quantification and measurement of what people value; the sigma “σ” represents the necessary estimation of what true-north value is in the universe. Since the infinity symbol “∞” is the elusive, circular perfection we all pursue, “/6σ” overall represents the pragmatic pursuit of perfection.

The “U” in U/People is partially inspired by the U-shaped work “cells” implemented by Toyota when it developed the Toyota Production System (“Toyota Seisan Houshiki”), and the office cubicles where office workers sit. Beyond Toyota’s U-shaped work cells, the U in U/People also applies figuratively as a universal condition of people either at work as a core concept of /6σ efficiency, or in serving customers, which the U shape facilitates. The “U/People” business model is thus both ego-centric to an organization and allo-centric to consumers at the same time. All people lean philosophically toward all other real or legally fictitious people by providing them with meaningful true-north value. “U” is thus open-ended organizationally, logically and ethically.

For example, philosophers use “U” to mean abstract concepts like Universal Egoism, economists use it to mean Utility, and academics use it to mean learning at a University. All of these meanings around “U” align and cohere within U/People sitting in cubicles, working in U-shaped cells, and serving as optimistic, upwardly mobile, white- and blue-collar people creating what moves consumers up along toward who and what they most want to be.

U/People in the Lean True-North Value Stream

The application of the philosophical principles embodied by the U/People business model is not new, as you might expect. People-oriented business ideologies have been advocated since the dawn of management science. The entire history of business theory applies notions of true-north value to people’s everyday lives within well-known concepts that you may have studied. For example, IBM’s “Three Basic Beliefs” stated by Thomas Watson Jr. in 1962 are strikingly similar to Lean principles:¹²⁰

• Respect for the individual,
• Superlative customer service, and
• The pursuit of excellence

And in 2003, IBM employees in a ValueJam revised these Three Basic Beliefs to be:¹²¹

• Dedication to every client’s success;
• Innovation that matters—for our company and for the world; and
• Trust and responsibility in all relationships

The philosophy of Lean thus reconstructs old concepts in new ways because businesses like IBM still struggle to learn from and implement them with each new technological change, which is no easy task.¹²² Furthermore, the field of management science as exemplified by the Lean-oriented books continuously improves on and expands Lean concepts below,¹²³ such as Lean’s intersection with Six Sigma. An extremely small sample of recent business titles focused on “Lean” each year over the last couple of decades includes:

• “AI-Powered Lean: How to Apply Artificial Intelligence to Improve Processes, Cut Waste, and Deliver Faster Results” (2025)
• “Lean in Government and Education: Applying Lean Thinking Beyond the Factory” (2025)
• “The Lean Brain : How Neuroscience Can Supercharge Continuous Improvement” (2025)
• “Lean for CEOs” (2024)
• “The New Lean” (2024)
• “Lean Project Management” (2023)
• “The Lean Supply Chain” (2018)
• “Lean Strategy” (2017)
• “Lean Six Sigma” (2016)
• “Lean Enterprise” (2015)
• “Lean Customer Development” (2014)
• “Lean Analytics” (2013)
• “The Lean Mindset” (2013)
• “Lean for Dummies” (2012)
• “The Lean Startup” (2011)
• “Lean Thinking” (2010)

As of 2025, Amazon.com lists an excess of 30,000 books on the topic of “Lean” with over 10,000 in the business genre. Leanism adds to this discussion by encompassing all of these domains, moving beyond start-ups or any other single aspect of business to provide the best explanation and goals for all business activity so you may deploy Lean most powerfully in an HQ.

Elaborating on Lean as a philosophy though requires knowing what Lean really is as a business discipline in the context of all this history. While James Womak and Daniel Jones delineated one of the most widely revered descriptions of Lean in the book, “Lean Thinking” in 2010, despite all this time and effort, no universally recognized, internally consistent definition of Lean exists. To provide some symmetry between how Toyota Motor Corporation defines Lean and all the other definitions of Lean generally, I broadly define Lean within Leanism as:¹²⁴

1. Fairness and respect for people;
2. Viewing the customer as the “true-north”;
3. Elimination of waste to add true-north value; and
4. Creating scientific, knowledge-driven continuous improvement.

Leanism’s item (1), “fairness and respect for people,” describes how business workers in Lean processes are as dignified as the organization’s own customers. Leanism’s item (2), “viewing the customer as the ‘true-north,’” emphasizes that since an organization exists most fundamentally to serve the interests of customers who pay money, stakeholders receive that money only as a consequence of that service toward what customers ultimately value. For an example of this Leanism item (2), “viewing the customer as the ‘true-north’,” in a business context, consider what Tim Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple, Inc. and is one of the world’s foremost experts on Lean manufacturing and supply chains, said in his keynote at the company’s 2016 developers’ conference:

I would like to take a moment to talk about why we do what we do at Apple. Our North Star has always been about improving people’s lives by creating great products that change the world.¹²⁵

Just as importantly, Leanism’s item (3) of its definition of Lean, “elimination of waste to add value,” along the lines of Muda, Mura and Muri, explicitly states that the overall mission of Lean is to eliminate work that does not directly or indirectly create true-north value for the customer. The philosophy of Lean revolves around optimizing opportunities by avoiding misallocating resources. Leanism’s item (3) can thus be summarized as optimizing efficiency to enhance profits while avoiding overly exploiting people.¹²⁶

Leanism’s item (4), “creating scientific, knowledge-driven continuous improvement,” emphasizes the empirically iterative nature of Lean arising both from the Buddhist presently experiencing self and the Western Philosophy of Science to discover and reveal what most philosophically leans an organization toward consumers’ highest values and thus leads them to sustain and enhance their being.

Pay Us over the Pay Wall at the Margin of Existence

You must recognize that while all definitions of Lean emphasize maximizing true-north value for consumers, none identifies true-north value beyond what customers actually purchase or use. Lean to date has focused on identifying true-north value by what people purchase at the point of sale. This Lean method of analyzing what consumers reveal they prefer is the most direct and efficient method of understanding their greatest problems, since they are by and large what they do. However, when you lean further philosophically, you reach deeper, beyond what consumers do or say, to more accurately conjecture, hypothesize, theorize and identify who consumers are by better interpreting their data that you receive. This greater insight leads you to why customers truly value a product and/or service beyond what I call this “pay wall,” “pay us wall” or “point of purchase.”¹²⁷

A pay wall is generally used by online media and information services to indicate the content that consumers must purchase with money. However, even in cases where media companies provide information without charging money, they generally do so in exchange for selling the viewers’ data and attention to advertisers, which forms its own sort of “pay us wall.” As the economist Herbert Simon said, “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of… attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”¹²⁸ The “pay us” wall gets viewers to spend their attention and personal information viewing the advertisements instead of money as its own form of value to other businesses.

Advertisers in-turn directly charge people for their own products and/or services. The pay us wall represents the often unclear boundary between what people actually do that leads to meaningful monetization, and what organizations provide that creates true-north value for people in exchange. You likewise can use a U/People-oriented business methodology within an HQ to define what pain points consumers pray that you sooth at the pay us wall. A business creates points of purchase by predicting what true-north value customers shall be blessedly given by consuming its products and/or services.

Identifying the Four Steps to Lean

To get out of an HQ and move past consumers’ pay us wall, you must develop an overarching understanding of who consumers are and why they value products and/or services up along the Rubicon¹²⁹ of their value streams. You must reach toward the firmament of true-north value in its most intangible, abstract sense and work back down to the specific activities, instruments and tools used by an organization to realize the specific details of those true-north values in consumers’ lives and existences through the products and/or services an organization reproduces. Where within this outcome space products and/or services satisfy consumers depends on the intersection of who, why, what, and how they are.

Along this Lean line of thinking, Peter Drucker¹³⁰ said in, “The Practice of Management,” in 1954:

If we want to know what a business is we have to start with its purpose. And its purpose must lie outside of the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society since a business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.¹³¹ [emphasis added]

This image of creating a customer reminds many of Drucker’s commentators as well as me of an unfinished sculpture Michelangelo created in 1525-30 CE titled, The Awakening Slave.¹³² This image depicts the body of a slave half-way carved out and created from the stone, as if the sculptor is in the process of bringing the slave to life.

However, I believe that organizations often misapply Drucker’s quote by only considering his statement regarding, “creating a customer.” This implies that organizations can artificially develop who consumers are and push products and/or services to them as if they were somehow slaves to an organization. However, if you read Drucker’s full quote, it says that organizations create a customer by meeting people as they are in front of the pay wall before they make a purchase. As Peter Drucker says a paragraph further down in, “The Practice of Management”:

It is the customer who determines what a business is. For it is the customer, and [s/he] alone, who through being willing to pay for a good or for a service, converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods.

The metaphysics of this statement— “[I]t is the customer who determines what a business is.”[emphasis added] — since “is” is a form of “to be,” ought to become apparent as you lean metaphysically through the U/People business model, toward those people who want to buy from you. With this customer-oriented business model, you may reach over the pay us wall to reproduce profits from who, why, what and how customers are as consumers, which leads to all consumption.

You thus speculate with every personal and business decision you make as to whether you can improve who customers are (or want to become) to satisfy them. The only way for you to increase the probability of success is by sufficiently aligning your speculative, intuitive beliefs about value with what consumers value. You ought to consider consumers less like slavish minds to hack, and more like Rodin’s, “The Thinker,” leaning toward what you ought to produce for them to better be.¹³³

The Para-Science of Business and Lean

Besides deploying radical empathy, the best way to discover consumers as they are is to test them like Eric Ries did for his product, “IMVU” with his “Build-Measure-Learn” process. By doing this iterative testing, you too will surface consumers’ deepest demands that you in-turn philosophically analyze. Because all business value flows up through people, who still exceed anyone’s complete comprehension, business analysis still requires this philosophical synthesis of qualitative and quantitative information. Business cannot yet be managed by numbers alone for this reason. Thus, business is a para-science to which you may apply a scientific process of testing who consumers truly are with degrees of confidence in their revealed preferences.

As a contemporary of Fredrick Taylor, Walter Shewhart was one of the first, modern people to apply scientific empiricism to business to achieve customer success. Walter Shewhart invented the para-scientific, “Specification-Production-Inspection,” Shewhart Cycle¹³⁴ in the early 1900s. Following Shewhart’s lead, Edward Deming famously modified the Shewhart Cycle into, “Plan-Do-Check-Act” as the “PDCA” or Deming Cycle. Deming introduced his PDCA Cycle to Japan in the 1950s.¹³⁵ Through Toyota’s initial leaders like Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno, Toyota most particularly internalized PDCA in the 1950s within its industrial processes to create the foundation of the industrial Kaikaku (改革) that we now call Lean (厘). Kaikaku is the Lean term meaning a revolutionary improvement in a value stream to quickly create more value with less waste by up-ending the status quo. This cross-breading of Western, para-scientific business analysis with the legacy of Japanese theologies and philosophies is the pedigree and evolutionary beginning of the Lean meme.

In 2003, the venture capitalist Steve Blank in his book, “Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win,”¹³⁶ refined and applied these Kaikaku cycles toward starting up new businesses. In “Four Steps,” Blank described the four steps necessary to reach a commercial epiphany as a “Customer Development Model.” Blank’s Customer Development Model applies the Shewhart and Deming Cycles, and Drucker’s notions of customer development, toward building viable, new businesses. The Customer Development Model for new businesses follows the four steps of:

1. Customer Discovery;
2. Customer Validation;
3. Customer Creation; and
4. Company Building.

You can see the cover of Blank’s book here with Michelangelo Buonarroti’s, “The Creation of Adam,” painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Blank notably added a light bulb between God¹³⁷ and man who has an exclamation mark over his head.

Eric Ries further consolidated the Shewhart, Deming and Blank cycles with his, “Build-Measure-Learn” process, and applied it to start up businesses as described by his book, “The Lean Startup.”¹³⁸. Even though Ries skipped over initially intuiting what he thought ought to be built before he had something to measure and learn from, he applied this line of empirical thinking that reached back not only to Deming, Shewhart and Taylor, but also to the philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) during the European Renaissance. All of these empiricists emphasized testing rather than making deductive assumptions based on an abstract ideal. To emphasize how old this concept is, one of the first people to even think this way was actually the Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham from 1000 C.E. Thus, Ries’, “Build-Measure-Learn,” methodology received wisdom from old masters and applied it to startup companies.

Reis was lauded for reintroducing empiricism to new product and/or service development since too many early stage business decisions were being made with bad effect based only on mental models of who consumers were and why they would purchase - mental models that were only created by analogy from empathy without any real data. However, true-north value is found at the pragmatic intersection of both conjecture from intuition and criticism from market testing in a virtuously para-scientific business cycle.¹³⁹ Both are necessary to triangulate and truly know what consumers value.¹⁴⁰ All these cycles, methods and models are all part of Leanism and the philosophy of Lean.¹⁴¹ They all require deeply empathizing with consumers’ pain points that you abduct from an intuition, infer from the problems they state, induce from their behavioral data, and deduce from the products and/or services they already purchase. Thus, you can reach commercial epiphanies by following the universal, Lean 3WH interrogatories as seen here:

1. Who: Customer Discovery - Discovering who consumers are;
2. Why: Customer Validation - Identifying why consumers are;
3. What: Customer Creation - Constructing what makes consumers become who they want to be; and
4. How: Company Building - Deducing how consumers become who they consider themselves to be as customers for the greatest profit.

Any organization may pursue this 3WH customer development process by discovering who consumers are, identifying why they value who they are, learning what they want to consume that makes them further be, and understanding how an organization ought to charge for what consumers will actually buy that cyclically supports their further becoming who, why and what they are and want to be. Or, as Eric Ries wrote, “If we do not know who the customer is, we do not know what quality is.”¹⁴²

The ID Kata

Better discovering, identifying and quantifying the money you can make requires that you engage in Hansei (反省) by repeatedly reflecting on who consumers truly are in-line or on-line at stores, why they wish to purchase, and what will delight them most. How you reach your greatest profit through Eastern and Western philosophical traditions gets determined by continually improving your respect for people and revitalizing your competitive advantage through a traditional Lean process called a Kata (型 or形).¹⁴³ Kata is a term of Japanese origin describing a repetitive method that links certain thoughts and behaviors together in parallel. In essence, a Kata is a logical system. You will better align the seemingly disconnected portions of consumers’ value streams by creating a mental Kata of the highest order, one that allows you to abduct, infer, induce, and deduce what value you can exchange for the most money.¹⁴⁴

For those unfamiliar with logical systems, I will review and explain these terms so you have them in your head. Abduction and deduction are the technical terms for when you rely on your intuition or a law to tell you what creates the most true-north value for consumers.¹⁴⁵ Deduction comes from a specific principal or fact, but abduction comes from having a hunch, leaning forward with your best intuition, and deeply empathizing with consumers’ lives and existences while bracketing all else you think you know. For the sake of simplifying our Lean lexicon, we will use “intuition” to simply mean abduction going forward.

Inference and induction, on the other hand, allow you to hypothesize and theorize a general maxim from evident and specific data you have observed, rather than from any gut feeling (abduction) you may have. Rarely, if ever, will you have all possible data to make an true induction - though statistics carries a lot weight here - so you usually are inferring why or how much people value something in order to hypothesize how much money you will make. The best hypothesis to test is the one that not only delineates how you will make money, but also distinguishes between why you will achieve one result rather than another.¹⁴⁶ And regardless of whether you conjecture, hypothesize, or induce, you must always test and deduce how you will make money. You may only deduce what consumers will value without making an assumption when you already know what consumers pay for, and you are absolutely confident that a product and/or service will be perceived by them to be a perfect solution, which is the ideal goal you always strive to perfect but will never achieve.

If you look closely at the capstone of a metaphysically HQ as shown below, you will see that beyond twin pillars of, “Respect for People” and “Continuous Improvement,” the Lean Management portion is composed of increasingly plentiful values, systems, processes, methods, techniques, and activities that ultimately result in the products and/or services delivered as you move toward your customer base. Through this process, a Lean HQ forms a temple, pyramid and/or steeple-shape above its foundation like the Greek delta symbol (“Δ”). It forms a symbolic, traditional Kata that fundamentally aligns its twin pillars of Respect for People and Continuous Improvement with all the people truly value as seen again here:

Following this pyramid principle,¹⁴⁷ I likewise graphically represent “Lean Management” as an “ID Kata” in a delta “Δ” shape with “/” representing why, “_” representing the what, and “\” representing how. The sum of this ID Kata represents the entire exchange of who customers were in the present state for who they will become in the future state by purchasing the products and/or services that a Lean business provides. With the ID Kata, a Lean management team in the C-Suite can gain penetrating insight that might help an organization become something special, like a rocket ship or unicorn.

Using this traditional ID Kata, once you discover who consumers are largely by what they do, you intuitively, inferentially and/or inductively theorize through conjecture why consumers’ deepest problems cause them to truly value your goods and/or services. You match up why customers will buy anything at all with how you expect to exchange a solution for the greatest profit of all. Between why and how extending from who customers are around this ID Kata, you identify the solution by determining what products and/or services an organization ought to produce to serve their Freudian ids, egos and super-egos. The difference between why and how is the problem space that you resolve. A solution ultimately represents all of the values, systems, processes, methods, techniques, activities, and ultimately, products and/or services that remove customers’ problems in exchange for the price you charge and deduct from them.

Using the ID Kata, you can triangulate any given side or angle from the other two. You can determine who customers are in the difference between why they actually purchase now and how / how much they will pay for it - e.g. if customers pay a lot of money for potable water, it means they are thirsty. If they pay a lot for a sports car, there is a deeper psychological need. The difference between who customers are and what they want to buy can be extrapolated from the delta of why they want to live and exist and how they currently pay to do so. To begin this process, you must engage in customer discovery and identification with an n number of why’s along the left-side, rightward leaning y axis, as seen here.¹⁴⁸

Along the y axis, you then proceed with a downward progression of increasing precision by intuiting, inferring and/or inducing what specific products and/or services solve consumers’ utmost problems until you conjecture a value theory. The right-side, leftward leaning line reflects how consumers will value each activity that produces the products and/or services they purchased with the price they paid. In the philosophy of Lean, if any activity reflected in the ID Kata does not support a profit, then it is considered one of the many forms of waste (in Lean terms, Muda, Mura, and Muri) and must be diverted from this organizational structure.

Finally, along the bottom x axis, you specifically determine what products and/or services best support who customers are and why customers will exchange anything for them at all. Since this x axis is a cost base that determines the bottom line, the closer you align why and how in parallel, the leaner an organization will be, the closer to customers you will become, and the greater the profit margins will be as you increasingly make a dent in the universe like the skyscrapers of companies’ HQs.¹⁴⁹

To follow the four steps of the ID Kata, you ought to trace them as follows:

1. Who - From the top of the ID Kata, ask who you have reason to believe potential customers are based both on intuition and data, by empathizing with why, what and how they wish to purchase solutions that solve their problems to further and better be;
2. Why - Going down to the left, ask why values, systems, processes, methods, techniques, activities and products and/or services provide true-north value to a target market, solving their problems to further and better be, so you may intuitively conjecture, inferentially hypothesize or inductively theorize what you will sell them and how you will make meaningful amounts of money;
3. What - Rounding out the bottom, ask whether what products and/or services you wish to offer in-fact delights and satisfies consumers with the most narrowly tailored solution possible with sufficient margins for error correction; and
4. How - Heading back toward potential customers, ask how all the line-items of the products and/or services, activities, techniques, methods, processes, systems and values that you construct and provide lean back toward supporting the greatest profit, in perfect alignment with the human problems they resolve, with the least waste possible.

In between the four steps of 3WH are three acts of empathizing, conjecturing and criticizing tying the ID Kata together:

1. Empathizing with consumers through data;
2. Conjecturing from intuition, hypothesizing from inference, theorizing from induction, and/or legalizing from deduction (whenever possible) what best solves consumers’ problems for the greatest profit; and
3. Criticizing whether products and/or services produce the greatest true-north value by rigorously testing whether they will generate the highest profit.

Here you can see the addition of these three elements around the ID Kata here:

These degrees of explanation align with the para-scientific methods of analysis you will employ in your business ideology (a.k.a. your ‘ID’eology). These explanations follow certain patterns of reasoning with decreasing degrees of confidence, from deductive laws to inductive theories to inferential hypotheses, and finally to intuitive conjectures. These patterns of reasoning originate from the entire tradition and legacy of the Western Philosophy of Science. The correlation between these Methods of Analysis and Degrees of Explanation used in the ID Kata are organized in this table.

As you better learn to apply these Methods of Analysis and Degrees of Explanation around the ID Kata, the more you will engage in the Lean process of Shu-ha-ri (守破離).¹⁵⁰ Shu-ha-ri is a Lean term of Japanese origin meaning: (1) learn from tradition, (2) iteratively improve tradition, and (3) transcend tradition in the process of mastering Leanism.¹⁵¹ The traditional ID Kata will eventually flow through your practice of Shu-ha-ri, so that you may intuitively apply Lean principles toward making money by creating the truest value.

High Flying Mamas

For a fairly obvious example of using this complete ID Kata and Shu-ha-ri process, presume you own an airline and wish to market services to mothers who often have a large say in how a family’s travel budget gets spent. You have learned that these mothers purchased large, safe, but otherwise unremarkable minivans (in their own opinion) that they use to transport their children in one piece. Your data gives you reason to believe that why these mothers live and exist is in large part for their children as a physical and emotional extension of themselves. Naturally, this is a universal, true-north value, and thus a very powerful one. Given this knowledge, you theorize from this data that these mothers will most value a specific class of airline service that will keep their families seated together, near a bathroom, with diapers and other sanitary items provided in a large seat-pocket in front of them. You believe it will induce them to purchase higher priced seats at the back of the plane than they otherwise would have knowing they will have these conveniences handy. You may now transcend this speculation and test your profit conjecture with a few sample consumers to hypothesize whether this new tier of service increase profits when all is said and done. Based on those test results, you can then iteratively improve your family-oriented flight offer until you confirm that it best extends and optimizes the lives of the mothers who fly, and thereby increase your runaway.

I recommend that you extend this Lean ID Kata technique through the Lean process of Shu-ha-ri to consumers’ much more obscure identities and motivations. By following Shu-ha-ri, you apply the ID Kata by carefully observing and applying it to what consumers physically and virtually say and do in relation to who they are. You always analyze how you can make an effective difference in consumers’ lives and existences for the greatest profit in a semi-circular, U-shaped pattern around the ID Kata, moving first from either why customers have a problem or how they will pay for a solution. Once an organization identifies who customers are in this difference, the ID Kata flows naturally to explain why, what and how that organization intuits, infers, induces and/or deduces what customers most truly value to conjecture, hypothesize, theorize, and in some cases legalize what they want to buy from you.¹⁵² The best explanation for how a business will make money is the one that can be tested at each point in the ID Kata’s abstract stream of causes, and the better the explanation for how that business will make money, the more universally profitable the business will become.

In the early stages of explaining who customers are and why and what they most truly value, you may choose to use intuition instead of inference or induction even if it may require more second guessing from you later on. This analytical process will be more fully elaborated as Leanism proceeds. Most importantly, how you apply the ID Kata toward making money meaningfully defines the core ideology around which your business interests revolve.

For example, you can see the structure of the ID Kata represented in Toyota’s Lexus division’s, “Relentless Pursuit of Perfection,” advertising campaign made famous in the 1980s and 1990s. The image from the advertisement below shows a temple of champagne glasses standing up on the engine of a Lexus luxury car while it spins its wheels inside Toyota’s HQ.

Once Toyota discovered who its target market of luxury buyers were, it used an inference engine like the ID Kata to abstract why people wanted to buy anything from them at all. Before determining who would become its customers, Toyota first needed to determine who were consumers of transportation and why. With who and why firmly in mind, Toyota then identified what form of transportation to reproduce just in time to make their future customers become more of who they wanted to be. In the process, Toyota deduced how to charge for why and what its customers really wanted to buy in Takt time. Takt time is a Lean term of German origin meaning a perfect pace of production designed to meet customers’ ongoing demand just-in-time to provide their utmost satisfaction.

Toyota’s competitors and all organizations adhere to these same developmental processes and spacetime constraints for developing products and/or services in Takt time. You can see this measurement of Takt time symbolized broadly by the calipers within the Acura logo for Honda’s luxury division, in the Infiniti logo for Nissan’s luxury division, and the similar, pyramid shape of the ID Kata. As you remove the space and time constraints of organizational processes by eliminating waste, you increasingly make more money with increased margins in Lean fashion by creating narrowly tailored solutions upwardly focused on who, why, what and how consumers ought to be.

Toyota’s Lexus division’s Relentless Pursuit of Perfection advertisement with its champagne glasses stacked upward was made at the same point in time that John Krafcik first coined the term “Lean” to describe Toyota’s own “Production System.” Toyota’s luxury Lexus division demonstrated the concept of Lean in this advertisement by accurately inferring why Lexus’ target customers had a problem with the cars currently in the market, theorizing what to precisely produce and deliver, and then assumptively deducing how to price those benefits in exchange for the greatest profit. That is why this ad made luxury car buyers want to purchase and pay Toyota’s price.

Following the ID Kata around like you see reflected in the Infiniti and Acura logos, your true-north value theory should intuit, infer and/or induce why consumers want to buy from who you discovered they are in the context of their real lives and existences. You abstract and then assume why consumers are from the problems they have to hypothesize what and how to reproduce meaningful goods and/or services that they will buy. You deduce what specific processes, methods, activities, instruments and people that consumers ought to be paying for to serve their highest values, which is how you make money meaningfully, as seen again here in detail for reference.

Once you transcend the ID Kata through Shu-ha-ri, you will reach even greater commercial heights.

UP in the Air

For example, consider this ID Kata as an analytical process for investigating the provision of business class airplane service to consumers up in the jetstream:

1. Who are the target customers?: They are age 35-60 professionals who travel frequently and upgrade classes whenever their companies will pay for those seats;
2. Why do they value travel?: They value safely accomplishing business goals to earn a living to support their lifestyles and families; potentially meeting other business people and experiencing some prestige; possibly experiencing new or favorite places (i.e. fun); and hopefully escape the daily grind a bit - those are their valuable problems;
3. What do you produce that serves those values?: They consume safe movement from one location to the next; preferred member lines for prestige and convenience; lounges for mingling with other business travelers and working; and travel guides to encourage discovery at destinations;
4. How do you price these products, services, methods, and systems to align them with why consumers fly so you may reach the greatest profit?: An organization’s value and profit gets built from the mechanics and pilots employed; the schedules kept; the destinations served; and the lounges staffed, which all contributes to the price charged. You ought to align the price you deduct from customers to exchange who they were as a person present in one location, with who they wish to become as the same person delighted to be at the destination of their choice.

Clearly though, airlines could do a lot more to serve who their business-class customers are and why they value business class travel to better monetize their becoming more of who their business-class customers want to be and become. Airlines ought to lean right toward consumers to discover who their customers are and why they value being to most accurately reproduce what their target markets wish to further be and become, which is well-travelled, in a virtuous business cycle.

Leaning up toward people’s true-north values through the ID Kata and Shu-ha-ri considers both the source and satisfaction of consumers’ demands. At this point your perspective dramatically changes, and you circle around and call it a business revolution and change in business paradigm.¹⁵³ In Lean terms, you call this, “Kaikaku,” which again, is a revolutionary improvement of a value stream to quickly create more value with less waste. Given how meaningfully a Kaikaku business revolution affects consumers’ lives and existences, and an organizations’ prospects for producing profits, take a moment to reconsider and reflect on The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of Revolution:¹⁵⁴

***Revolution • (noun) Brit. /ˌrɛvəˈl(j)uːʃn/ , U.S. /ˌrɛvəˈluʃ(ə)n/:

I. A circular movement
II. Change, upheaval
III. Consideration, reflection***

Consumers are Always Right

Clearly, you ought to lean an organization toward consumers’ highest values by aligning who customers want to be with what an organization will provide throughout the U/People business model. Taking the U/People business model one step further: If you think of the ID Kata in three dimensions at each level of an organization, you can see below a depiction of this parallel alignment on its side facing rightward, with the flow and pull of the ID Katas running across each division of an organization’s value stream. You can see again Auguste Rodin’s, “The Thinker,” standing in for consumers on the right, who are themselves lean thinking, trying to extend and optimize their own lives and existences, in Figure 1.21:¹⁵⁶

<< (1) an organization infers who consumers are<<

>> (2) an organization flows matter and energy represented by products and/or services up U/People’s true-north value stream, which are pulled forward by customers’ demand as a last step>>

Notice that when you focus on how right customers are by testing what they most value, each ID Kata within an organization leans so that its y-axis becomes the hypotenuse of each division. However, when the price charged customers is larger than the problem they perceive a business to be solving, then that organization leans away from customers in the wrong direction, which is not good. As you know, in a Lean HQ, profit is its bottom line, but the aim of Lean Management is always toward customers. In fact, many factory rooftops share this same pattern like you see on these here in New York.

All organizations ought to likewise lean philosophically not through false profits but rather toward consumers through the U/People business model to, Uniquely/Profitably Extend and Optimize People’s Lives and Existences. A profit arises only as a consequence of keeping U/People in mind, rather than being self-caused by its own pursuit, which is an important point many managers miss.

Thus, an organization’s profit represents an oracle of business, to whom you refer when seeking consumers’, and by extension an organization’s, highest values. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, in their 1994 book “Built to Last,” agreed with this when they quoted David Packard, one of the founders of the multi-billion dollar information technology company Hewlett Packard (now called “HP”), who said in 1960:¹⁵⁷

I want to discuss why [emphasis his] a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately—they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental… You can look around [in the general business world] and still see people who are interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else—to make a product—to give a service—generally to do something which is of value. So with that in mind, let us discuss why the Hewlett-Packard Company exists…. The real reason for our existence is that we provide something which is unique [that makes a contribution].

Collins and Porras summarize this discussion by David Packard as:

[W]e see David Packard ruminating about what we can best describe as corporate existentialism, pondering about the philosophical, noneconomic ‘reasons for being’ of his company.

You use the U/People business model to better discover a company’s reason for being based on what you already know about how to make money. You may use the U/People acronym to aggregate and unify all the information you have access to beyond the ability of any single person to completely understand it. Yet you may universally apply U/People to decisions because the explanations it provides reach toward Hellenistic levels of abstraction so you may deduce and measure how much something is really worth to the customers you serve. To do this, you must balance the problem you ought to solve with the price consumers will pay to exchange their dissatisfaction for delight.

This form of pragmatic idealism satisfies consumers’ normative and true-north values as well as possible within any given circumstances since intuition, inference and induction are pragmatic, while deduction is ideal for knowing why consumers will pay the price for products and/or services. Pragmatic idealism reflects the tension in the history of thought between rational, logical progress and moral and aesthetic values.

As Collins and Porras wrote in “Built to Last,” “The dual nature—the pragmatic-idealism—of many of the visionary companies in our study. They are not purely idealistic; nor are they purely pragmatic. They are both.”¹⁵⁸ Collins and Porras go on to write, “Marriott Corporation, like Motorola and HP, explicitly embraced the paradox of pragmatic idealism,”¹⁵⁹ which means they strive to be perfect as far as they can be within the universe even if that perfection is ultimately unattainable. Toyota itself creates this paradox by using Lean within its own organization by requiring cooperation and coordination while encouraging independent thinking and action.¹⁶⁰

The business ideologies proposed in “Built to Last” and by Toyota using Lean reconcile what really is with what ought to be. This tension between the pragmatic and the ideal, the Yin of all existential problems and Yang of prices representing perfect solutions, is the same philosophical problem described by the famous philosopher David Hume in the 1700s, which he referred to as the, “Is-Ought” problem. You will use U/People from here on to attempt to reconcile the Is-Ought problem in your business ideology, between intuitive, inferential, inductive and deductive methodologies, to expand and optimize all organizations’ profitability. Ideally the ontology of your business model is what ought to be to most profitably serve customers’ lives and existences. This concept is much like what Stephen G. Simpson, Mathematics Research Professor at Vanderbilt University said regarding certain mathematical proofs, “There’s this ongoing tension between the idealization and the concrete realizations, and we want both.”¹⁶¹

U/People and Michael Porter’s Value Chain

Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and one of the most widely respected business strategists, described the ideal business model ontology with what he called the, “Generic Value Chain.” In a way, you can see the U/People value stream simply as a reformulation of Michael Porter’s Generic Value Chain from his seminal strategy book, “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.”¹⁶² Here is a diagram of Michael Porter’s Generic Value Chain for reviewing and comparing the departments of the U/People business model to Porter’s own chart:¹⁶³

The U/People business model aligns with the traditional business functions and academic disciplines of Porter’s value chain by similarly providing an overall diagram of these concepts, breaking each out separately throughout this book’s Value Streams. Margin in Porter’s diagram as reflected above gets made by what an organization leans toward in the balance of revenues minus expenses, or in the terms of Leanism, the solution to consumers’ complaints over the economic cost to all people.

However, distinct from Porter’s value chain, the U/People business model flows beyond the borders of an organization both to all economic activity and to the source of all true-north value from consumers’ perspectives.¹⁶⁴ As you lean metaphysically, you advocate for Lean value streams based on customers’ fundamental human needs at a deeper and more integrated level than even Michael Porter describes. Instead, you lean philosophically at an intuitive, metaphysical and physical level in addition to all else you know about who people really are beyond Porter’s Generic Value Chain. A Lean business ideology more specifically describes how you identify and exchange ideally normative and pragmatically personal true-north values for money.

By extending Porter’s Generic Value Chain to its most extreme, you could instead perceive margin on the right side of the diagram as matter and energy flowing toward customers in the opposite direction as money, from which you would subtract the economic cost of producing the energizing material (i.e. products and/or services) provided from the left. As you learned from elementary physics, matter and energy (or “ME” like in “MEaning”) are equivalent when units of matter are multiplied by the speed of light. Energy is simply matter actually (or with the potential) to move through spacetime due to universal, physical forces. For ease of reference, I may periodically refer to matter / energy just as “energy” moving upward along the crooked arrow of time.

This idea around energy relates to a highly abstract, naturalistic perspective of business applicable to all people-oriented value theories like Lean.¹⁶⁵ From this perspective, utility is a direct or indirect satisfier of fundamental human needs like matter and energy, and money is the contractual right to consume that matter and energy based on the social contract to which an organization is soundly bound. Since the term “Lean” also means the efficient use of matter and energy, I propose that is why people intuitively gravitate toward Lean as a universal business principle, which you now know as a business oriented metaphysics.

By uniquely/profitably extending and optimizing people’s lives and existences, you may abstract these concepts within your own business ideology like within Porter’s Generic Value Chain. You may also apply the U/People framework to an organization without over-simplifying or over-complicating its execution. You may understand each word of the U/People business model as an element of a Lean business ideology from which you can reproduce metaphysical profit at each stage of the business cycle that eventually gets realized from the order-to-cash process that a CFO maintains, or as equity gains or dividends promised to stakeholders. Here again is each level of the U/People organizational chart for you to review:

Per the above, you may relate Uniquely to an Information, Innovation and Design Officer, the IDEO; Profitably to the accounting and finance divisions through a Chief Function Officer, the CFO; Extending to the primary manager of all stakeholders through a Chief Energizing Officer, the CEO; Optimizing to a Chief Optimization Officer, the COO; People’s to a meaningful marketing department through a Chief Meaning Officer, the CMO; Lives to consumers as living systems that you support with products and/or services; and Existence to why you, organizations and customers are here and consume anything at all.

Leanism first emphasizes that all true-north value starts with who you discover consumers are and why they want to buy as living systems through mathematics, science and intuition. Once you intuit, infer or induce why customers buy based on who they are, an organization must then lean toward and attempt to deduce what increasingly tangible methods, techniques, activities, products and/or services will extend and optimize consumers’ lives and existences for which they spend, buy and invest that will generate the greatest profit. From marketing to accounting and finance, money is the bridge between these activities. Along these lines, understanding consumers allows you to lean an organization up toward what consumers most value beyond everyday matters to create uniquely competitive advantages for a company to get consumers to choose your products and/or services first.¹⁶⁶

Like the U/People business model, this corporate hierarchy is not new. In “Built to Last,” Collins and Porras also noted that Johnson & Johnson did the same in 1943 where they said,

J&J has periodically reviewed and slightly revised the wording of the credo since 1943, the essential ideology—the hierarchy of responsibilities descending from customers down to shareholders and the explicit emphasis on fair return rather than maximum return—has remained consistent throughout the history of the credo.[emphasis added]¹⁶⁷

Like Johnson & Johnson, you will find that U/People organizational chart provides a people-focused value system identifying what stakeholders find most meaningful in philosophical, scientific, psychological, economic and monetary terms. Leanism advances this arrangement by placing the CEO in the middle of the Gemba (現場), which is Lean parlance for the center of an organization, as shown in the U/People organizational chart above.¹⁶⁸

L-Shaped Reflection of What U/People Value

If you were to lay the U/People business model out horizontally from left to right again like Porter’s Generic Value Chain as you can see in the chart below, the horizontal alignment of what people truly value across customers’ value streams reflects who customers are and what customers’ demand to support themselves through an organization’s people, functions, and products and/or services in exchange for large amounts of money representing the legal right to direct the consumption of other products and/or services - of other matter and/or energy - procured further up along the economic value stream.

Starting with consumers flowing demand as information to an organization, an organization in-turn reflects that demand in “L” shaped fashion at the bottom of the (rightward facing) “U” by sending products and/or services back to customers. The L-shaped logo of Toyota’s luxury Lexus division as seen below demonstrates how an organization ought to lean toward its customers to reflect their demand, flowing products and/or services back up to them in the pragmatic pursuit of their perfection:

(1) << Information flows from consumers’ highest values from right to left

(2) >> Around the “L” so customers may pull products and/or services back up their true-north value streams

As an organization provides products and/or services in exchange for money, you might modify the above value stream to something curling into a six “6,” and eventually leaning into something that looks like a sigma “σ,” as seen here in a Lean Six Sigma “/6σ”:

As consumers think about your products and/or services, and you receive further feedback, the reproduction cycle begins to form a single figure eight, which when oriented on its side, is the symbol for infinity. This symbolic dynamic will become critical as you proceed to iteratively pursue customers’ perfection “/σ∞”:

You Leanism When Marketing Toward People

Given that Peter Drucker said that marketing as well as innovation are the two primary entrepreneurial functions of business,¹⁶⁹ marketing naturally stands as a business discipline explicitly charged with both: (1) measuring consumer demand for products and/or services; and (2) communicating what innovative products and/or services get offered to best provide what customers want and need. Marketing formally executes in both directions of the production cycle like a palindrome informing both what you produce and communicating the true-north value of products and/or services to customers in the end. Marketing may be perceived as just being an advertising and promotion function, or it may be seen as a place of central analysis synthesizing production with demand, matching products and/or services to the appropriate consumers, and engaging in Lean, metaphysical thinking.

For an analogy that helps describe this marketing process through the business functions, consider an organization bowing toward customers based on what you provide them (/), and customers needfully leaning back (\) to hand an organization money based on how those products and/or services further support who they are. The intersection of an organization and consumers through the exchange of products and/or services forms a fulcrum (Δ), or delta, over the point of purchase in the center of the business cycle. This fulcrum stands between the production of products and/or services as structured matter / energy and consumers’ willingness to exchange money¹⁷⁰ over this “pay us” axis so it springs forth and trickles down in return.

For companies to most effectively focus on the end-goal of customer satisfaction, each employee in a business ought to at some level understand why customers decide to exchange money for what an organization offers across the point of purchase. Modern, creative employees’ greatest intrinsic motivation depends on their understanding what they contributed toward producing customers’ lean satisfaction, however indirectly, because they identify themselves as good, productive people. Employees’ highest form of motivation will come from caring about improving customers’ and stakeholders’ lives and existences. While this can be highly intellectual, Leanism is not dealing in vague aphorisms, but rather real science and philosophy supported by substantial evidence and the intellectual history of humankind.

By understanding employees’ intrinsic motivation, you may in-turn provide them with the resources to understand why customers consume products and/or services as opposed to competitors’.¹⁷¹ Once employees understand their contributions to customers’ lives and existences, an organization as a whole can communicate more effectively throughout the business cycle to achieve business objectives for the short and long-term success of stakeholders and society-at-large.¹⁷²

Everyone at an organization ought to be able to relate each of his or her daily tasks to the specific wants and needs of customers and think through how they, their departments and/or organization may change to do so more effectively. Everyone ought to better understand what customers truly value, and be able to relate that insight across all organizational functions. While it is a truism that maximally effective businesses execute well on assessing consumers needs and delivering relevant products and/or services, I doubt that even executives at Toyota Motor Corporation would say that their entire organization simultaneously leans forward toward all consumers’ needs and backward in applying that understanding to address those needs most profitably.

Some executives might say that not every employee in his or her organization needs such a heavy intellectual burden. However, to the extent this converged philosophical perspective can be effectively reduced to easy to grasp acronyms, it will benefit every employee’s engagement and efficiency in serving customers. Furthermore, acronyms like U/People can help employees understand the value creation process for their specific products and/or services better, which would increase intrinsic motivation and improve change management. A lean, business ideology ought to provide an organization with a common dialogue about true-north value that focuses everyone on the true end-goal that the best businesses pursue.

While a form of “consumer oriented marketing” has been proposed and used for some time by marketers to measure and iterate the development and purchase of products and/or services based on consumers’ express or implied demand,¹⁷³ I am proposing for an organization’s business ideology something far more expansive. I am proposing a business model and method for taking that customer centric analysis to the back of an office and forward into consumers’ lives and existences. I want to make it easy for you to go to the furthest reaches of space, time and all intuitive speculation so you may make some sense of it all to apply it universally across all cultures for a profit.

I am asking you to empathetically conjecture who and why customers and stakeholders are down to the first principles of knowledge, and then to test how an organization can reproduce that true-north value throughout the production cycle. I am asking you to use those insights to supplement and guide quantitative and qualitative business measurements to achieve it. From the top of this mountain of knowledge, you will transcend existing knowledge to see true-north value streams manifestly heading into blue oceans, extending toward a universal horizon, reaching a profit you never thought you would meet.¹⁷⁴

Products and/or Services > P. and/or S. > PAOS > Pay Us > SOAP.com

The products and/or services (“PAOS”) all organizations reproduce embody the Lean true-north value that floats upward. “PA/OS” sounds like, “pay us,” and represents all problem resolution, and thus all true-north value.¹⁷⁵ “PAOS” may be easily remembered as, “soap,” spelled backward.¹⁷⁶ The term “PA/OS” thereby abstracts all the structured matter and energy you and customers consider and connote with consuming. You can see the concept of PA/OS synthesized in Amazon.com Inc.’s subsidiary, SOAP.com®, as shown by its logo here:

You can also see the concept of PA/OS within the Purity line of philosophy® brand soap:

From here on, for the sake of simplicity and ease of reference, I will refer to products and/or services as “product.” People generally use the word “goods” to refer to “product,” but perhaps after reading Leanism, you may find that adjective goods presumptive of products’ true-north value. You almost certainly find now many products are in fact bad. This makes the term “goods” a bad one to use since we have so many alternative words available that scrub out value judgments.¹⁷⁷

People often use the terms “good” and “best” as nouns, adjectives and value qualifiers, and economists often describe products as goods as well, which tells of their own mind-set in regards to economic value theories. So Leanism does not refer to products as goods, so as not to falsely presume that a product is good when in fact it may be not. Referring to goods as PAOS if you so choose helps you launder any preconceived value judgments you may have about how much PAOS ought to cost. It allows you to freshly perceive and measure how truly meaningful products are to people. It forces organizations to analyze whether they consider a product to be better than the status quo, or no good at all. All good product must fundamentally reproduce true-north value within customers regardless of form. When you lean philosophically, you consider what a good actually means to more effectively create truly valuable product that customers really do consider to be and are in fact good, and for which customers willingly exchange their money for over the, “pay us wall.”

Analyzing why customers buy from concrete actions¹⁷⁸ to first principles¹⁷⁹ in a business ideology requires you to understand what and how product effects them. In a true-north value theory, you must understand the context that product will get used in consumers’ lives down to the scientific, philosophical and irrational levels.¹⁸⁰ You must know why in the confusing confluence of consumers’ minds they decide to trade their money for product. You must understand what they value and how product leans toward them with equal or greater potential effect on their lives and existences than what the money spent with you could have otherwise purchased from competitors. Thus, the division over which you reach to get product purchased with money guides all value streams in commerce.

Value Stream 2: Money & Economics as True Value

The following Value Stream 2 will now take a brief tour through money and economics. Value Stream 2 focuses on money as the common medium of value exchange across the Rubicon of all true-north value streams. Money is the basic basis of self-organization for companies, and for the most part, society. Understanding money allows you to best lean into how consumers better live and exist due to who they are and what they truly value. To get this straight, Value Stream 2 will review some theories that will relate the various forms of philosophical, scientific, ethical and personally speculative values to money. Value Stream 2 will put money in the proper academic, historical and economic context for developing a business ideology as you move on up within the philosophy of Lean. It will also guide you through some caveats as to what makes money truly meaningful so you better understand what direction money takes to lead you to true-north value.

Value Stream 2: Money & Economics

Value Stream 2 A3 Report:

• Monetary value may be measured through the “U2” framework of Usefulness and Uniqueness of any given PAOS
• Money represents the legal right and economic power to direct the flow of matter and energy in the form of goods and/or services
• Whether this right and power represents true-north value may be effected by creative financing, cognitive biases, bartering, substitutions, unpaid labor, legal regulations and criminal activity
• True-north value in business is the intersection of normative value, real value, and monetary value at consumers’ point of purchasing a product and/or service that is uniquely useful to their lives and/or existences
• Energy is the fundamental element of money’s power, as evidenced by gold and silver being the direct and indirect color of sunlight, and some cryptocurrencies being limited by the amount of energy necessary to produce them. All fiat currencies likewise reflect these fundamental power constraints that include governments’ power to enforce them
• Consumers optimize their spending choices in neo-Darwinian fashion, constantly adjusting their budgets against their evolving survival needs
• True-north value measurement will never conform to Pareto-optimal models because of the above effects, and because optimization itself requires a degree of irrationality to stochastically discover what may be most beneficial in an open-ended universe

In Value Stream 2: Money & Economics, I remove the veil covering what makes money meaningful by introducing the categories of truth-value that lean metaphysically. This Value Stream 2 describes how money represents the true-north value that is derived directly from the conditional fact of consumers’ lives and existences, which most fundamentally defines who they are. Going one step further, this Value Stream 2 specifies that money, once received, gives you the contractual and economic power to redirect the flow of matter and energy back to yourself, customers, organizations and/or society through taxes and philanthropy. To manage cash flows well, you must keep in mind that while matter and energy move inversely to money, financial mechanisms like saving, investing and philanthropy can complicate that relationship.

In this Value Stream 2, I further relate the existential and physical value of money to what you commonly consider economics that in turn reflects itself in the money people pass along. Governments, businesses and investors quantitatively measure, model and report real value, but the secret meaning of money is found in truly normative value, which money on its face only partially reveals. This is because we generally monetize the real value that we need to live in order to seek the normative value that we live for. Thus, in the philosophy of Lean, normative economic value relates to customers’ metaphysical existences, and real value relates physically to customers’ real lives. The sales, marketing, operations, product development and strategy departments of organizations must understand these nuances of truly normative and real value to best support the prices they charge for product.

The prices charged to customers support who customers are at the point of purchase by intersecting why they buy and what they most truly value at the other end of the value equation. Since money measures the relative tradeoffs customers make among all available choices for best extending and optimizing their lives and existences, you must analyze these tradeoffs in the context of consumers’ overall real needs and all possible substitutes they have available to extend and optimize themselves. “Economics” as an academic discipline is simply a theoretical slot into which we place our ideas on how to estimate and quantify that true-north value best. Thus, separate and apart from money, real value is relative to a consumer’s wealth, his or her alternative means of consumption and individual preferences – real value is not directly correlated with the price of a product set in the marketplace that business people often confuse as being true-north value to an individual customer. This makes money two steps removed from Lean, true-north value.

So while the philosophy of Lean generally defines “value” by how much money people willingly pay for some product, money is iconic but not wholly representative of the true-north value of life and business.¹ As the well-respected Institute for Managerial Accounting recently confirmed, money is only the meta-language of economic activity and not the activity itself.² But to create satisfactory models, economists tend to equate relative prices wholeheartedly with the relative normative value of all life and business, even though we know that is not always the case. In economic terms, these relatives prices of product at any given point in time are referred to as their monetary values. Start-ups and established companies usually describe the process of exchanging value for money as monetization, which can be seen here:

Through this monetization, the transacted value that customers most abstractly experience as the price of product is established in terms of money as follows:

In this Lean equation, you can determine the money supply, the supply of product, and the price of product in the market to approximate what people find meaningful by analyzing what they bought for the most money within their budgets. Note here that “People’s Real Value” is also a measure of product’ usefulness to people. You can reformulate this equation as the monetary supply over units of utility per product. Since this is a measure of supply (money and product) and demand (utility), this formula may be simplified into a “U2” formula, which is the measure of a product’s Uniqueness (supply) and Usefulness (demand), with the value in money being the final measure. To determine how much products are worth in money, one must simply measure its degree of Uniqueness and Usefuleness with this graph:

This makes perfect sense when you consider that there are many Unique things that are not useful, like “bad” art that no one cares to see. At the same time there are many very useful things that are not particularly unique, like the air we breath. The things we spend money on are both to some degree unique and useful to us. It is nonetheless a hard task predicting exactly what people most believe is unique and useful, and thus valuable, before they actually make a purchase. The IDEOs, CEOs and CMOs in all established businesses and start-ups try to do this each and every day when they decide what to produce and how to market their products.

Lasting, true-north value depends on normative value, which is both an economic and philosophical term meaning the true-north value that ought to be. Let’s define true-north value now in real value terms by saying that real value is the degree that consumers believe, rationally or not, that product will be uniquely useful. This means that a product will uniquely improve their lives and existences from their own personal perspectives in some way. On the other hand, truly normative value is that which actually makes a constructive difference in consumers’ lives and existences toward what ought to be within the universe, which businesses attempt to objectively measure via real and monetary value.³

When considering normative true-north value and money, this side of common sense says that while monetization is a para-scientific litmus test and one of the highest forms of value exchange, not everything worth something can be bought and sold with money. Much of economics is actually studying a subset of all normative and/or real value that gets exchanged in the market transactions that use money. It is common sense that not everything that is unique and useful can be exchanged for money, like the emotion of love. Likewise, other things are traded without using money at all. Barter represents the transacted true-north value of product without using money as a medium of exchange. For example, a significant portion of the global economy is in the form of unpaid, domestic labor from family members who freely work at home. Thus, money captures a large but incomplete portion of all transacted value as a lagging indicator of all that people find meaningful.

At the same time, as everyone well knows, not all money exchanged produces lasting, normatively true-north value. The real value for which businesses charge customers may possibly normatively affirm consumers’ lives and existences, but not necessarily. For example, eating may be normatively valuable for consumers to get energy. But eating junk food because it tastes delicious is not necessarily normatively valuable and useful in the long-run because other than the short-term matter and energy it provides, it harms consumers’ bodies and may cause illness. Consumers’ intervening factors like their physiological needs, their psychologies, ignorance or perverse economic incentives often create divergence between truly normative and real value.

Differences between normative and real value result because while normative value serves as the origin of all true-north value, consumers only experience normative value to the extent they really live and continually exist. While consumers only consider real value in the context of their real lives, their lives are only actually sustained by normative value as the only thing that truly matters. Real value just serves that need. Any real value that does not align with normative value will eventually fail on its own accord because it does not positively reaffirm consumers’ lives and existences.

However, consumers can sometimes be deluded by marketing tricksters to produce short-term profits.⁴ Consumers’ psychology within the context of their lives and who they are mediates - sometimes well and sometimes not - between monetary, real and normative value. Just like the divergence between normative and real value within consumers’ lives and existences, money as the narrative motif of true-north value may diverge symbolically from normative value. For example, do you know of a time when something was paid for when neither normative nor real value was fully received, such as when there was wasteful spending (i.e. Muda)? If you experienced that, then you or your organization transferred its money to the vendor, and along with it a right to direct the flow of a certain amount of matter and energy, but did not receive the normative or even real value bargained for in exchange. The money the vendor received likewise did not represent either the normative or real value it ought to have as determined by the deal you made with the vendor. Thus, ideally, real value is synonymous with normative value, which becomes moments of true-north value realized by organizations and customers at the point of purchase during a meaningful exchange of money - but that does not always happen the way it ought.⁵

To illustrate these moments of true-north value, here is a chart and equation showing the values as realized by consumers at their points of purchase within the possibly circular nature of their lives and existences:

* Money Value (monetary, actual prices)
—————————————————————-

= Moments of True-North Value at the Point of Purchase

You can actually see these types of value realized in why consumers’ demand for what is uniquely useful flows down into organizations, and how customers pull out what organizations produce to satisfy those needs in return. Inversely, corporations pull their organizational information from consumers, and flow the product customers demand back up to them in Takt time. Organizations do this by comparing what customers demand to what organizations believe customers will value and purchase. They faithfully align their product with what they believe customers normatively and really want to buy now. In exchange, customers hope that the products they pull from an organization matches what they normatively and really value and find most uniquely useful to extend and optimize their lives and existences.

As described in Value Stream 1, you can see again below the pull and flow of these types of value reflected across the ID Katas for all the Value Streams of the U/People business model. In this picture, you can see who consumers are on the right and what they really value emerging from right to left in item (1). An organization ought to reflect what real value customers demand from left to right in how it produces and delivers product to customers in item (2). In item (3), customers return money in exchange for products across the point of purchase from right to left by faithfully believing that the products will give them real (and hopefully normatively) true-north value:

(1) < < An organization observes who consumers are from right to left<<

(2) >> It demonstrates why it understands what consumers truly, normatively value with the product that gets bought from left to right >>
(3) << Customers return money back to the business in exchange from right to left based on their perception of the value generated for them, which is itself largely driven by the products’ normative value <<

Ideally you want products reproduced in (2) to provide the fundamental, long-term, normative value demanded in (1). You want products’ real and hopefully normative value to support the meaningful money you receive in (3), which completes the infinite sigma σ around and through U/People as you can see above.

Since this intersection of normative, real and monetary value has the highest probability of being supported by society and law, an organization will be built to last if it focuses on this fundamental value exchange well before reporting season. When people speak of producing products that customers want, they largely mean providing products that builds people upward toward why people are in a normative sense, as may be adjusted by the circumstances of consumers’ real lives. That is the only legally and environmentally sustainable business value, as is fairly well recognized in this age by enlightened leaders, but is still extremely difficult for these leaders to justify and execute well in the face of short-term cost and competitive pressures from markets.

The Brazilian Real

Brazil’s economy during the 1980s and 1990s serves as a useful story to describe the relationship between normative and real value acting out within the secret life of money. During the last two decades of the 20th century, Brazil experienced hyper-inflation in all six of its currencies it issued during those decades. Prices in those currencies diverged significantly from the growth rates in real value based on the amount of products Brazilians received in exchange for their Brazilian currency. For example, Brazilians during that time might have been able to afford slightly more food for their families with what currency they earned, but that food cost many times as much in the prevailing Brazilian currency than they had on hand to pay for that food.

Inflation in Brazil became so extreme that in 1994 the Brazilian government began the “Real Plan.” Brazil began listing prices for basic commodities, like food, under the Real Plan in a fictitious currency called Units of Real Value, or URV, unlike the actual currency that was then in effect. Brazil invented Units of Real Value so that its citizens could see what monetary value they could use for basic commodities if Brazil had a stable currency like URVs. These fictional Units of Real Value became so powerful in the minds of Brazilians that they eventually named their currency the Real, which is still used today in Brazil. If you wanted to, you can exchange U.S. Dollars (U.S.D. $) for Brazilian Reals (R $). Below is a picture of a Real with the Effigy of the Republic wearing a Roman-style crown of bay leaves and a phrygian liberty cap. Notice that she is leaning toward people while looking back on economic history.

Precious Metals and the Locke-Lowndes Debates

Going back farther in time, The Great Recoinage of 1696 in England explains well why money functions mainly as a conduit for normative and positive real value within the channels of consumers’ value streams. The English government in the late 17th century decided to maintain a fixed rate of exchange between silver and gold. The great debates about this decision revolved around the writings of the famous philosopher John Locke, who is the same philosopher that conjectured many of the political theories supporting the American Revolution during the 18th century. To decide this issue, John Locke engaged in the “Locke-Lowndes Debates” with William Lowndes about England’s exchange rate between its pound sterling and gold bouillon.⁶

The reason for the great debate regarding the silver/gold exchange rate, was that England couldn’t keep people from physically shaving off their silver coins to less than a full “pound” of sterling and passing them forward as if they were. The silver Pound’s physical attributes literally diverged from the exchange value stamped on its face. Thus, the principle arguments of the Locke-Lowndes Debates revolved around two options for money: (1) whether money is best fixed to a specific physical element that people universally valued like silver or gold; or (2) whether money should be denominated in fictional units like the Brazilian Units of Real Value supported only by the government’s willingness to take it for payment and support its true-north value so people can exchange it for things they need to live and continue to exist.

Ultimately, John Locke successfully argued that the government should recoin its silver bullion to its official weight, making it truly represent what it purported to physically be. However, Locke’s arguments for the true-north value of money within the Lowndes-Locke Debates actually settled very little because centuries of similar debates have not resolved this issue. In case you didn’t know, the book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” originally written in 1900 and filmed in 1939 with its Technicolor yellow brick road is an allegory of this debate. Dorothy’s shoes were silver in the book, rather than ruby colored as they were in the movie, when she went to see the wizard of true-north value to get home to the golden wheat fields of Kansas that produce real food for people to consume.

The currency debates represented in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” culminated in meetings held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States after World War II. The meetings resulted in channeling the value of the U.S. dollar through gold like the Lowndes-Locke debates. However in 1971, the U.S. government shifted the value of its currency to its own full faith and credit, thereby making the U.S. Dollar a truly “fiat” currency for people to believe in, so that the U.S. government could artificially regulate its monetary supply beyond what was possible with physical commodities like gold.⁷

Despite the U.S.’s and other nations’ currencies becoming “fiat” in modern times so governments can manipulate the money supply, gold and other precious metals still form the standard, physical “thing” that many governments hold in reserve to support the full faith and credit people have in those currencies. Investors likewise still hold precious metals to maintain the value of their investments during times of crises. After centuries of debate from Lock-Lowndes to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, precious metals still stand as the most universal means of exchanging and storing true, economic value, and are what the U.S. Dollar would depend on if necessary. This begs the fundamental question:

They can sell precious metals for use in jewelry and dental fillings. Some electronics and chemical applications use them. However, in regards to the vast majority of the needs for consumers’ lives and existences that they normatively and really value, gold is an odd choice. Gold cannot be eaten other than in some liqueurs and chocolates as far as I know. Unless they were King Midas or Scrooge McDuck, consumers couldn’t possibly own enough gold to clothe or shelter themselves.

So, what is the normative and positive real value of precious metals that generally makes them the most popular basis for money? Consider the not very subtle coincidence that gold is the direct color, and silver the indirect color, of sunlight. Both symbolize consumers’ fundamental source of energy, which consumers subconsciously equate with beauty and ethics, which is technically referred to as, “Axiology.” Consumers’ lives and existences depend on capturing and converting matter and energy to live and exist with real and normative value, and precious metals simultaneously represent both. Energy is the uniquely useful thing any living system needs to exist, and precious metals represent it best.

With Money Comes Great Power

Thus, the very concept of making money is quite strange since it’s generally not used for anything but exchanging value and meaning. Who or what makes money a reliable source of meaningful, lean value for this exchange? Can you can make money simply by digging precious metals out of the ground? Can governments produce money merely because they enforce exchange value? Can a computer programmer make money meaningfully by trading a digital currency whose scarcity is in part dictated by the amount of computational energy required to make it, as is the case with BitCoin?

Since precious metals can only be mined to a limited extent, and only governments can make fiat money literally at will, modern business people clearly do not make money in any real sense, but rather, they make money truly valuable instead. An organization only makes money valuable by exchanging it for products that supports customers’ lives and existences. People only make money meaningfully valuable by transacting with it in this transcendental exchange. This is the classic question discussed by John Locke, John Maynard Keynes, and many other philosopher economists as to whether governments give currency true-north value in commerce.

Generally, these mainstream economists agree that, in the long run, money’s true-north value only gets made from the usefulness of the products exchanged for it – a usefulness measured by the extent it uplifts who and why consumers are toward what they most value and how they live and exist. However, in the short run, because prices coordinate when, where, how and how much people work, buy and trade, the quantity of money and the manipulation of financial instruments like interest rates really affect how consumers perceive the value of the products they consume. Denominations of money attempt to accurately symbolize this perceived value nonetheless.

Customers in an open economy ultimately make currency have meaning by trading, lending and/or investing it in exchange for products to live and exist. This in-turn allows customers to some extent use money to measure the real and normative value that products provides. On the flip-side, organizations make money valuable by solving problems that help people live and exist in normative and real value terms. Outside this customer-producer relationship, society measures an organization’s worth by how much currency customers exchanged for its products. The net volume of this exchange determines how much right an organization has to redistribute power throughout society, which is what society truly adores.

At the highest level of this discussion, not accounting for the many valid qualifiers in how things occur in the “real economy,” customers measure an organization’s normative and real value with the money they give to it. Thus, from a basic business perspective, people largely make money by affirming other people’s lives and existences to a greater and greater degree. The value of money gets “made” in the economy through this process to the extent that each person’s life is in fact improved in normative value terms. Real wealth gets made in the knowledge of the difference between what was, is, and ought to be. This affirmation thereby imbues money with ever increasing normative value because people’s lives and existences become increasingly sophisticated with its exchange.

Cash flowing through the economy makes money meaningful in upward fashion through customers’ specific wants and needs to live and exist. Even financial services create normative value through saving, lending, risk-shifting, and investing by altering the time and division by which people consume energy, thereby helping them become upwardly mobile within the cardinal order of the economic value stream. This economic value stream, which is the ever increasing volume of exchange of money for more products, makes money have true-north value as customers’ lives become improved by consuming more structured matter and energy to further exist in the real world. Thus, customers’ standard of living gets measured in-part by the flood of money exchanged overall.

Evidencing the physical origin of true-north value represented by money, even before John Locke first used “currency” to mean money, currency simply meant “run or flow” in old English.⁸ Locke applied the term currency to the units of cash or money to further emphasize the flow of Pound sterling silver and gold Bouillon though the economic value stream for the sole purpose of normalizing the standard ratios of exchange.[^122] In this way, money flowed from Locke’s perspective similar to how Toyota Motor Corporation perceives its Lean production processes flowing to Toyota’s customers in response to their pulling demand in Takt time, making Toyota’s customers rain money back down on the company in return. Thus, turning back to the original question, customers make money meaningful by exchanging it for products that makes the biggest positive difference to who they believe they are and wish to be. People refer to this market as the real economy.

Caveats to Measuring Money

Despite money’s surprising effectiveness in measuring the wealth of true-north value captured within all products, the process of making money meaningfully through a lean business ideology within an HQ requires you to consider some caveats to how money making actually works in the real world. I will now outline three major caveats to the ability of prices to semiotically reflect nominal and real value as:

• Supply and Substitutes;
• Barter and Self-service; and
• Other Market Distortions.

(1) Supply, Substitutes and the Warhol Paradox

Money’s ability to measure what consumers truly value in Lean terms depends on:

• The degree to which all customers believe all products exchanged for money in commerce will expand and optimize their lives and existences, or in other words, will be useful;
• The relative abundance of all products that can be bought with money to serve customers’ physical, emotional, and spiritual wants and needs, which more fundamentally energizes and optimizes customers’ lives and existences, which measures uniqueness; and
• The availability of substitutes (like barter or using one’s imagination for entertainment), for the satisfaction that all products bought with money delivers to all customers, which again is a measure of uniqueness.

To the extent customers believe that certain products with limited substitutes will extend and optimize their lives and existences, they must then set their budgets and spending priorities for that product accordingly amongst everything else they need and want to consume. Just like you, consumers estimate how product will affect their lives and existences and will adapt their consumption priorities accordingly.

Consumers adapt their spending priorities to best optimize and extend their lives and existences each time they consume. Thus, consumers behave like the finches on the Galapagos Islands, which optimize their beak sizes through successive generations to reach more food and water and thereby re-energize the lives and existences of their species. Like consumers, Finches on the Galapagos Islands right-size their beaks (i.e. consumers adapt their spending priorities) to consume the right amount of food and water (i.e. consumers adjust their spending budgets) to extend and optimize their species overall.⁹

However well adapted people might be, while some product may be really necessary for people’s lives and existences, like food and shelter, a critical product may be in such abundance that customers need to exchange very little money in order to obtain sufficient quantities of it, like water. The H20 molecule that is water may itself be unique, but water molecules as a whole exist in such quantity that they are (thankfully) not especially unique to most consumers. Water thus exemplifies well the relationship of transaction prices to normative value given that people need water to live, and nothing can substitute for water, but they must generally still pay for it, at least in the developed world. Consumers must generally exchange something to get drinkable water because unlike air, water usually gets monetized. We might though want to pay the Matsés people of the Amazonian rain forests to maintain its ecology so we all may continue breathing air well in the future. However, people generally assume that water will always be available at low cost, even though each person’s life and existence generally depends on other people to provide it consistently.

Should water become extremely scarce, assuming water was only available on an open market without governmental intervention, consumers would be forced out of necessity to exchange all of their money for it to the extent they needed more of it to live. Water at that point would be far more valuable and useful in normative and real value terms than any money in a person’s possession, as if an alchemist had turned water into gold. Water can thus be considered one of the most disproportionately inexpensive products that consumers purchase relative to its normative and real value to who and why they are.

The famous economist Adam Smith, while chairman of the Moral Philosophy Department at Glasgow University, recognized this dynamic in what has come to be called his, “Paradox of Diamonds and Water.” Adam Smith first described the seemingly contradictory and divergent values between water that people need to live, and diamonds, that consumers do not need in any immediate sense to support their lives and existences. Adam Smith wrote that the prevailing price of water does not reflect the extent that consumers need it to live and would pay for it if really needed.¹⁰ Adam Smith used the terms “value in use” and “value in exchange” to differentiate between these differences in normative, real and monetary values.¹¹

In economics terms, the relatively low market price of water tells you nothing about the price elasticity of water, or what consumers would pay for water should they really need it. Consumers’ biological needs in relation to their existences tell you that water would have one of the lowest price elasticities of demand, or in other words, customers would generally consume the same amount of water even when its price changed.¹² Water’s price elasticity of demand tells you everything about its true-north value to consumers’ lives and existences in real and normative value terms and what consumers would be willing to pay you for it if necessary. Water is core to consumers’ being, and thus its demand is tremendously inelastic from a true-north value perspective.

In contrast to water, diamonds largely get demanded because they are both extremely reflective of sunlight and are abundant enough to be widely used for ceremonial purposes, such as for weddings and other gifts. And yet diamonds are kept scarce enough by the diamond industry to command high prices, even though artificially manufacture diamonds in laboratories do compete. I speculate that if only one diamond was ever found, its monetary value would be less than the prices for large diamonds today because nobody would be able to relate it to the one they, their loved ones or ancestors had on their fingers, or associate it with the religious ceremony of marriage. Thus, the diamond industry attempts to maintain an optimal level of scarcity for diamonds by providing neither too many nor too few of them, so the De Beers cartel maintains an optimally sloping supply curve in order to maximize the prevailing price of diamonds that you pay to them in exchange for love.

Substitutes, on the other hand, work in tandem with supply to mitigate the extent to which money accurately reflects the normative and positive real value of product to consumers in the context of their real lives.¹³ Consider this alternative. If water became scarce, its exchange value would exceed diamonds at some point, becoming higher than diamonds ever would as supplies of both diamonds and water reached zero. We can see some hypothetical demand curves for diamonds and water here as available quantities increase or decrease:

To illustrate the difference between use and exchange value in the philosophy of Lean, suppose that customers consume a liquid that provided every benefit of water as a perfect substitute.¹⁴ The prevailing market price of water and the price elasticity of demand against a changing price of water would be effected by the supply and resulting price of that other liquid in relation to water. Consumers’ demand curve for water would change because they now had a substitute to quench their thirst.

For one other comparison of this diamond-and-water paradox for a business ideology, I ask you to think about the differences in the relative monetary, real and normative true-north value between the Andy Warhol painting, Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato), Lot 12, Sale 2355 (1962) that sold for $9,042,500 USD recently at a Christie’s auction house,¹⁵ and a picture taken by me of a Campbell’s soup can you might find at a local grocery store selling for $1 USD.

(2) Barter and Self-service

As a second caveat to the meaningful money making process that you should consider for a Lean business ideology, consumers only serve a certain proportion of their wants and needs in the process of purchasing the products you sell them. In other words, even in well-developed market economies, customers often serve their normative and positively real values by bartering for products with other people without using any money, just like how members of a family constantly renegotiate who does which household chores without paying one another for the favor. Consumers may serve their wants and needs through their own thoughts and labor, and directly exchange their own product with others through barter rather than with money. While neither barter nor consumers’ own thoughts or labor involve financial transactions, these activities that do not involve money effect the price of product consumers will pay you. Barter either substitutes for or displaces the product you sell due to the limited time people have to consume within their day-to-day lives and existences.

Books like, Leanism, exemplify this second caveat well by illustrating the limited ability of prices to measure the normative and positively real value, i.e. the full usefulness, of books. Consumers can often trade or lend physical books to other people instead of exchanging money for the same books from sellers. Also, consumers may write their own books, which would take a lot of the time they would have had to buy and read more books. Also, the satisfaction consumers receive from reading - the normative and positively real value received - largely comes from the intersection of their imaginations, knowledge, memories, and intentions with the books’ contents, which can only be truly determined after they buy and read a book.

Books’ prices do not effectively capture all of this true-north value to consumers since they may have a much richer set of experiences related to one book rather than another due to their life experiences, demographics, educations, interests and imaginations - essentially all that affects who and why consumers are. The price of a book may only reflect the normative and positively real value of that book in the aggregate if all the people who read such book then decided that reading experience was worth a specific price to pay among everything else they could have bought with the same amount of money. However, books’ prices, like for nearly all other product, do not adjust themselves in retrospect based on each customer’s individual circumstances and experiences from consuming them.

(3) Market Structural Distortions

The third caveat to measuring normatively and positively real value by prices paid considers factors such as monopolies, governmental interventions, structural market inefficiencies, and crimes. These factors often distort the connection between normative and positively real value, and the money exchanged for business’ product. For example, if you found that to do business someone asked you for a bribe, the “price” of the product you charged would then exceed that which would otherwise be set on balance by the market if you wanted to keep the same profit. On the other side of this analysis, if someone stole product from an organization, it would force the exchange of product for less than what would have otherwise been exchanged in a free market, which may drive up costs for all other customers. Likewise, addictive product like nicotine nearly eliminates customers’ ability to decide whether consuming that product best extends and optimizes their lives and existences once they identify themselves as being a smoker. All these factors keep the markets in which you operate from accurately reflecting consumers’ purely normative and real values.

Structural inefficiencies inherent in certain tax codes, political processes and financial institutions – each hopefully designed to combat other ills – inhibit the free operation of the economy in a way that would allow prices for product to more accurately reflect the normative and positive real value that customers consider product having in their lives and existences. For example, financial institutions and governmental intervention, while possibly useful, can also distort the ability of prices to measure what people truly value accurately. The collusion of government incentives and financial engineering, such as in the most recent global housing bubble, exemplify this point. Further, some industries like utilities tend to structure themselves into monopolies or oligopolies, either naturally from economies of scale, through collusion, or by governmental edict (think public utilities), thereby affecting prices through the monopoly’s or oligopoly’s purchasing power.

While not by any means exhaustive, all three of these major caveats exemplify the limited extent you can say that money’s nominal value exchanged for a product reflects its normative and positive real value to consumers’ lives and existences. You must understand these limitations to the process of making money truly meaningful to reach the greatest profit in the philosophy of Lean, unless you are a crook, which you are not.

Economics throughout history has addressed all of these subjects in some form or another, some of which you could find by procuring any economics textbook. I only mention these caveats to reemphasize how limited money prices are in identifying Lean normative and real value. You must understand what ultimately guides consumers’ consumption of product that indirectly leads to an organization’s functional profitability, making CFOs happy. I will now further explain the secret life of money as follows, due to money’s central importance in the philosophy of Lean, people’s notion of value and how money gets made meaningfully.

People’s Money Veil

Economists call these caveats about prices’ ability to measure true-north value a “Money Veil.” This money veil presents a significant problem with accurately pricing product and optimizing what people will buy. Prices will increase or decrease in the long run in response to changes in supply and substitutes serving consumers’ fundamental human needs, and changes in the supply of money, holding all else constant. Why? Because prices at their best merely reflect the amount of real value you provide that ought to contain the normative value that supports consumers’ lives and existences, and thus who and why consumers are. The money veil never ends because the only way you can measure the units of normative, true-north value you produce is by dividing the infinite universe by the finite number of people you serve, which leaves you endlessly speculating what units of product are truly worth. As our equation earlier in this Value Stream 2 describes, measuring the value of money simply sub-divides the universal demand to live and exist among all people currently buying and selling products to do so, which is the only value that truly matters for making money meaningfully.

Critically, the philosophy of Lean as described in much of this Value Stream 2 and the balance of this book brings this fundamental economic utility back into the business conversation like “The Lean Startup” did with empiricism. Leanism aligns true-north value with the rigorous test of normative and real value on their own terms. As demonstrated in the paragraph above, units of true-north value (i.e. universe / people) may not be measured in discrete units, but only through degrees of confidence as to what those units either may be or are not. Thus, however useful neoclassical economic models might be with their presumption of Pareto optimality neatly factoring what all people prefer, they do not explain how the Lean value that those models attempt to measure actually gets made, and thus how the greatest profit gets reached in an infinite universe, because rationality does not entirely contain what matters most.¹⁶

Off to See the Wizard

I will now further elaborate on the foundations of money’s use in commerce for you to get more meaning out of it regardless of how difficult it might be to measure money’s true worth. Most plainly, money has both tangible and intangible qualities. Tangibly, money assumes the form of coins, paper, or other commodities like precious metals. Intangibly, money forms accounting entries, and more recently, digital certificates like BitCoin. These digital currencies on their own exemplify money that is disconnected from a tangible commodity like gold. BitCoin takes money to the fictional extreme as a digital asset whose only use and support is its ability to facilitate exchanges of the contractual right to receive energizing product – exchanges that consumers somehow find meaningful to their lives and existences. Whether virtual currencies will succeed in the long-run given that they lack deeply rooted customs, governmental support, widespread acceptance as payment, and carry technological risk, remains to be seen.¹⁷

However, the only difference between a digital currency like BitCoin and a governmentally issued fiat currency like the U.S. Dollar at this point in time, is that a government enforces its own currency’s use as legal tender, accepts it as payment for taxes and government fees, has substantial reserves of tangible commodities like gold, and supports it with a military if necessary – most digital currencies have none of these qualities.¹⁸ These qualities of governmental fiat currency vastly differ from any privately created digital currency disconnected from any legal or military enforcement or commodity with normative and positive real value like gold, diamonds or water.¹⁹

Still, even digital currencies have some normative and positive real value, which they share with fiat currency. First, they create economic flexibility by allowing efficient online storage of true-north value that does not require any intermediaries like governments or private institutions. They provide the same psychological benefit of possessing money by providing a sense of security, opportunity or superiority. They improve on barter by keeping records, facilitating value comparisons, and allowing saving, credit, investment and speculation. But all money, in the form of digital currencies or otherwise, mainly serves as a conduit for normative and real value supporting who, why, what and how consumers are.

In contrast to digital currencies, people trade things that they can feed, shelter or clothe themselves with in exchange for precious metals so they may see the gold, silver and other beautiful colors they present. Precious metals serve people’s need for beauty, and for relating to other people by showing them off as status symbols. Also, the transferability, natural scarcity, and permanence of precious metals supports their longevity and ubiquity as a lean, global medium of normative and real value around the world.²⁰

Funny Money

You can see further how funny money really is by looking at the seemingly counterintuitive relationship between currency, inflation, and productivity. Assume that a generic product costs one Unit of Real Value today, and new technology suddenly allows you to produce twice as much tomorrow with the same matter and energy. Keeping all else constant, the product’s price in URV would decrease in half. With this increase in productivity, holding all else constant, the price of the product has achieved disruptive deflation. People could then use their extra money to consume other product besides that generic product to better fulfill all of their wants and needs supporting who and why they are.

However, in the real world, while organizations constantly increase their productivity with new technology, you generally experience inflation in the product for which there are no substitutes, such as certain commodities like electricity. Despite our constantly reproducing more, you generally exchange more money for commodities like milk, rice, corn and water that does not change in character.²¹ Why should that be when we are producing most of these things more efficiently with less labor? The answer generally lies in understanding that over the course of history, governments increase the quantity of currency in their economies either by acquiring precious metals or by producing fiat currency in various proportions to the demand for and supply of product in their economies. Countries’ treasuries and central banks attempt to actively make enough money to control inflation in response to changing productivity, populations and demand, among other factors. But again, why?

Nations generally try to create some inflation to incentivize people to spend money sooner rather than later. By creating some inflation in tension with the deflationary forces of technological and business model disruption, people generally get more for the same amount of money today than they would tomorrow, which encourages consumers to spend rather than save. Deflation disincentivizes people from spending, which leads to what economists call the “deflationary spiral” leading to a vicious cycle of reduced spending. Thriving economies must encourage people to trade currency for the product they think will best satisfy who and why they are. The economy overall would decrease if everyone excessively waited to spend. The complete reasons for central banks’ attempts to maintain an inflation rate in the prices of product are beyond the scope of this book, but this illustrates governments’ manipulation of the ratio of currency and normative and real value being provided, and the divergence between prices and productivity.

Traditional, neoclassical economists and their books model in great detail the regulation of the supply of currency in equilibrium, and the tying and decoupling of currency to precious metals such as gold along with rising populations and living standards. In the end though, for purposes of this book and fundamentally understanding what lean meaning money has, you should understand what fiat currency is in relation to those things with material value, like precious metals. In the long run, setting aside any of the relatively minor practical uses of precious metals, the quantity of money really does not matter but for people’s using prices to coordinate the relative trade-offs they must make between their options to consume product to better live and exist within the context of who and why they think they are and want to become. Ultimately, customers don’t care about the cost of products, but rather only what opportunities they can realize or threats they can diminish with all the money they have at any given point in time to extend and optimize their lives and existences in relation to all other consumers in the marketplace. Prices only determine what solutions consumers must trade to best resolve their problems within their given situations, and if a price drops they simply shift that calculus along the slope of their demand curves.

However, as the famous economist John Maynard Keynes pointed out, even if money was just a medium of exchange, meaning very little by itself in the long run, prices affect many consumers’ short-term decisions.²² Further, the neoliberal Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek famously showed that people used the prices of product to coordinate what they bought across the economy, which is how prices change people’s behavior in the short run. Thus, central bankers adjust their short-run policies about money to align money’s value with what consumers really need to better live and exist.

Traditional and Modern Measurements of Money

Mainstream neoclassical economics, which has done as much as any field to try to measure and quantify the true-north value of money as utility²³ or revealed preferences,²⁴ has generally abdicated the task of understanding the foundation of money’s value to others. Neoclassical economists reasonably decided that they could not peer into consumers’ minds with any precision given the complexity of people’s thoughts, emotions and actions in the context of their real lives.²⁵ Instead, mainstream, neoclassical economists chose to examine people’s purchase decisions retrospectively, to consider only what they reveal as being truly valuable with the money they spend. These economists do not try to measure what people will buy or pay based on underlying positive real value (or much less normative value) measurements other than what people have bought in the past.

Economist Paul Samuelson introduced Revealed Preference Theory in 1938, which mainstream economists have used ever since to quantify what people truly value through what they buy, rather than peering inside people’s needs, motives, morals and ethics.²⁶ Samuelson mathematically modelled his Revealed Preference Theory as being logically circular or tautological toward customers’ end-goals, since he assumed that people only act to maximize their own utility as expressed by what they reveal they prefer.²⁷ In other words, Samuelson believed that people buy simply to further be without any further objective supposed, which is important philosophically as you will see. Please keep this circular perspective on Revealed Preference Theory firmly in mind as we go through the balance of this book because it is a conundrum that the metaphysics of Lean attempts to delineate.

Not coincidentally, on the cover of Eric Ries’ book, “The Lean Startup,” you can see the Zen symbol of ensō of a near-circle created by a single brush stroke that symbolizes minimalism, strength, elegance, and the universe. This symbol also represents Ries’ “Build-Measure-Learn,” mythology, and the seemingly tautological empiricism of Samuelson’s Revealed Preference Theory:

Similar to the ensō duality as a near-circle, Revealed Preference Theory and most mathematical economic models fail to completely predict actual economic data since they do not account for consumers’ bounded rationality. For example, economists have shown limited ability to accurately predict countries’ Gross Domestic Product,²⁸ even though a little additional accuracy can be highly profitable.²⁹ The fact that marketing departments and advertising agencies do not widely use these econometric measurements like GDP at the micro-economic level to predict what consumers will want to buy evidences econometrics’ general lack of both accuracy and precision at the micro-economic scale, boiling up to a similar lack of accuracy and precision at the macro-economic level.³⁰

Thus, in practice, neither marketers nor financiers primarily base their decisions on neoclassical economic models like Revealed Preference Theory, though they might use them within a stream of larger analysis. Governments’ central banks rely on neoclassical economics to a much greater degree. Central banks’ use of econometrics leads to the irony that what business people use to measure what people want is largely done under economic policies set by completely different value measurement methodologies.³¹ Due to these known deficiencies in neoclassical equilibrium models, we are witnessing today a thoughtful, and empirically based reintegration of new forms of true-north value analysis into them. Behavioral economics represents one of these new fields, but other fields such as anthropological, evolutionary and agent-based economics are increasingly employed as well.

The problem with Revealed Preference Theory is that people’s choices in determining how to best be who and why they are, such as choosing a lean diet because they consider themselves to be health nuts, are often contextually influenced by both physiological and psychological factors that exceed simple calculation, which reflects the imperfect relationship between real and normative value discussed earlier. For example, physiological factors may include ones such as varying nutritional needs, such as if you were otherwise deprived of nutrients provided by certain food that your body craved. Psychological factors could include suggestive advertising such as from the orange juice industry that made you associate the color orange with good health due to the vitamins in tropical fruits. The interplay between consumers’ psychological and their physiological processes influences what they decide to purchase and prefer to reveal.

Despite those psychological distortions to measuring normative value, the purchases consumers make still reveal their normative preferences to a large, though imperfect, degree. Normative value originates much further back from the point of purchase than is usually understood as “value” since normative value emerges from consumers’ fundamental living processes. Thus, people’s revealed preferences could be measured in front of the point of purchase if you knew every possible detail regarding consumers’ physiological and psychological processes in choosing, say, between apples and oranges, cashews and almonds. We loose the ability to directly measure normative value in customers’ sheer complexity. In contrast, consider how much simpler insects’ revealed preferences are to model than people’s since you can more easily map the value streams leading to who insects are, and what insects demand.

The problem with measuring and predicting utility through revealed preferences is not only a matter of accurately measuring the pathways of all of consumers’ physiological processes, but also the part of people’s physiological processes that generate psychological meaning and ultimately their preferences. Psychological meaning created by what cannot be proven or readily measured often causes consumers to act irrationally. Hopefully, consumers act predictably irrational³² so as to optimize their lives and existences, but we know they do not always succeed.

In recent decades the field of behavioral economics and increasing amounts of digital information have provided some insight into the pathways leading to human preferences beyond just what people bought with money. Behavioral economics attempts to explain how people value things through the intersection of the fields of psychology and economics to move past traditional, mainstream neoclassical economists’ default position that positive real value can only be measured in any meaningful way through market transactions and equilibrium models. Behavioral economists do not assume that people always make rational decisions when consuming in the confusing confluence of life.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman and economist Amos Tversky produced some of the best known of this work when they elaborated on the rational biases people have when making decisions.³³ Kahneman and Tversky won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating something called “Prospect Theory”³⁴ that people would rather not risk losing more than they would chance gaining when they know the specific probabilities of realizing each of their choices. However, in real life, people very rarely know the specific probabilities of the outcomes of their possible choices, as they would when gambling or playing a lottery. Prospect Theory can only tell you what people would rationally decide to do based on what they prospectively believed or guessed the probability of something was holding all else equal. However, since people are very bad at guessing the true probabilities of events, most of the time consumers must still attempt to measure what best extends and optimizes their lives and existences with limited data and bad guesses. Prospect Theory and other behavioral economic theories can only aid with better decision making by prospectively revealing and helping compensate for these rational biases where information or our capacity to process it is not sufficient. Both you and consumers must estimate probabilities so complex they generally trail off into purely intuitive speculation. Behavioral economics recognizes this boundary on consumers’ ability to pierce through complexity and accurately assess true-north value.³⁵

Irrational, Process-Oriented Value Estimation

You can more logically and scientifically measure the lean meaning of money and economics if you shift your conception of exchanging product for money at customers’ point of purchase. You must exchange what you previously thought of as products and/or services as being objects and/or activities. The existential value of objects and/or activities (i.e. products and/or services) to one another is in many ways abstracted and quantified by the prices people pay for them. Consider instead products’ advancement of the physical and meta-physical processes inherent in people’s lives and existences for which they allocate their budgets and change their spending priorities to improve regardless of how much absolute cash they have available to spend or borrow.

You can measure these allocation processes in well established ways, such as through marginal, game and identity value theories. To truly measure the meaning produced by products though, you must measure all of the constituent processes that aggregate into who, why, what, and how customers need and want to live and exist, which is admittedly very challenging. These processes lead to people’s normative and real values that ultimately make meaningful amounts of money get exchanged for product throughout the real economy.

However, these processes also have an irrational element within the unbounded domain of an open-ended universe.³⁶ For example, consider the study of ants by researchers such as E.O. Wilson, Eleanor Rosch, and Deborah Gordon who have substantially uncovered why, what and how ants consume. These researchers have shown that ants execute a mixed strategy of purely rational and intentionally randomized discovery models at the individual and colony levels, leading to some evidence that the collective activity of ants generates enough information to make and execute mathematically rational decisions without having to be conscious like you and me. Ants do this by incorporating seemingly irrational, randomized search as one of their Modi Operandi (their “MOs”).³⁷ E.O. Wilson was even rumored to have an ant encased in Lucite etched with the phrase, “Onward and Upward!” to emphasize this rational end-goal of living ants despite their sometimes seemingly random behaviors and lack of conscious intent.

Optimal Slack

So is this why people do not likewise conform well to purely rational, Pareto optimal models of spending money when aggregated as a society? I (among others) propose that, yes that is why, because consumers’ adaptive processes produce by necessity a certain degree of statistical anomaly at the genetic and cognitive levels to optimize adaptive discovery. You might call this “optimal slack.” Ultimately, a Lean organization ought not become brittle like a permanently pensive thinker, but rather athletically lean as the Greek soldier Philippides running to Athens during the Battle of Marathon. Like ants in a colony, organizations and consumers ought to flexibly think to optimize who they are through creative and somewhat randomized adaptation to win the battle for survival. As will be seen, the search for meaning in life as the ultimate knowledge in an open-ended existence helps organizations and consumers accomplish that task. Understanding this can help you make meaningful amounts of wealth as well.³⁸

Presuming you measured every human process comprising who consumers are that a given product advanced, you would still need some random variables in your estimations and predictions of true-north value because people are constantly extending and optimizing their lives against what they believe provides meaning as a form of Bayesian rational irrationality and mathematical optimization.³⁹ This is a notion that is constantly shifting for people as they self-define the true-north value of what they find personally meaningful. Contemporary genetic and other evolutionary “best fit” optimization algorithms include random variables as essential components, which you see mimicked in consumers who behave in similarly random ways in order to best extend and optimize their lives against a universe of meaningful opportunities.⁴⁰

Cash and Credit Flow as Meta-Economic Value Streams

Because the search for meaning within the metaphysics of Lean inevitably takes you into unchartered waters beyond traditional philosophical and economic systems, you ought to peer into meta-economic and meso-economic matters, in the spaces around and between micro-economic and macro-economic ones. Doing so will allow you to see the entire, universal value stream that makes money meaningful overall by transferring matter and energy up and around the production and consumption cycle.

While, micro-economics studies true-north value at the individual, family, corporate and organizational level, and macro-economics studies economic performance and decision-making at the national, regional or global level,⁴¹ I define meta-economics as economic analysis that underpins micro- and macro-economic conclusions. Meta-economic value emerges from metaphysics and what consumers personally intuitively believe as to who they are and why they exist. Meta-economics then realizes itself in physics and living systems that ultimately create micro- and macro-economic data. Meta-economics is thus consistent with evolutionary patterns of micro-and macro-economics as demonstrated by market behaviors.⁴²

Like meta-economics, meso-economics is also not a formal academic discipline but rather a term describing the lean economic structures residing between micro- and macro-economics.⁴³ I further define meso-economics as the study of what affect intellectual memes, such as courts, political parties, contracts and other social institutions, have on organizations and people’s consumption and output in ways that are increasingly easy to measure as we improve the digital information about why and how people do what they do.

An organization’s people-focused, Lean ideology will mostly relate to the field of micro-economics at the firm level, but thinking in meta-economic and meso-economic terms should help you identify economic issues around traditional micro-economics to help you make money meaningfully. Here is a chart of these terms outlining these economic differences so you may lean through them:

Surprisingly, with the great time and minds dedicated these issues, many of the larger economic issues remain unsettled. For example, people still debate macro-economic issues like the appropriate levels of taxation and monetary policy.⁴⁴ And they debate micro-economic issues like measuring how valuable something is to people by how much they pay for product. So a Lean ideology must still adapt to the changing micro and macro-economic social and political and academic environment in which an organization operates - all with degrees of uncertainty.⁴⁵

The meta-economic chains extending through the business process of people serving other people in complex situations where the probabilities are not known in advance with precision, may be analyzed through the range of quantitative and qualitative analysis and micro and macro economic tools that we have discussed. However, this movement to the most fundamental aspects of Lean true-north value leads back to the natural sciences and the humanities to best measure and produce normative, real and money value.

Given all this uncertainty, I ask you at this point to further shift your conception of money as a means of exchange for product, to an even more abstract one whose store of true-north value is really more analogous to that of the real or perceived potential of product to improve who and why consumers are. Consider money to be the means by which you enhance consumers’ living processes by flowing to them the highly structured matter and energy (products and services, things and actions) that an organization produces. Since what consumers pay measures what consumers perceive to be the net benefit to their living processes among all available product, hope that consumers consider a product to be good and worth every cent to make money meaningfully within the metaphysics of Lean that a good business embodies.⁴⁶

truth-value as Two Sides of the Same Physical Coin

Normative economics are thus equivalent to capturing, structuring and delivering matter and energy, which physically are two sides of the same coin of consumers’ physiological and psychological processes, to produce all normative value. In the prehistoric era, at the very inception of economic trading before the use of money, you generally would have traded an amount of product that took the same amount of matter and energy you used to produce it for other product that took an equivalent amount of matter and energy for that product to be reproduced. The product traded would have had the same marginal cost of effort spent to produce it.

This exchange value of matter and energy aligns with the labor theory of value heavily favored by Karl Marx. That fact does not make this discussion “Marxist” because once trade advanced in any small degree of sophistication, people produced advanced product that solved for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to who, why, what, and how people are, i.e. their real world problems regardless of the effort necessary to solve them. This trade related not just to the energy used to produce products but also to the relative energy efficiencies that product reproduced within those people who consumed them to more effectively support whole societies and nations. Comparative advantage depends on the extent trade extends and optimizes the lives of all people as a species, and not on the labor inputs into an economy, which is at most only an indirect indicator of the extent a nation’s product produces true utility.

The Marxist labor theory of true-north value should have been easily debunked as well on purely common sense grounds given Adam Smith’s “Diamonds and Water Paradox,” as well as the “Warhol Paradox” discussed earlier regarding Campbell soup cans on store shelves and museum canvases. You could sell a cup of water to a very thirsty person for far more than the energy you spent obtaining the water because of that customer’s need to live and exist. Instead of pure labor value, people subjectively decide and then verify whether a product helps their adaptation, regeneration and energization. Water uniquely does this if you or anyone else is thirsty, and owning a Warhol painting of a soup can may infinitely improve a person’s social status.

In modern society, people also contractually pool money, separating labor or energy values from the time the labor value was originally generated. Finance further removes labor from Marxist notions of value, because in addition to labor, time also allows people to better live and exist. Thus, prices reside in the tension between the energy (a.k.a. labor) cost of producing product on the supply side, and the optimization that product subjectively produces to customers’ lives and existences among all available substitutes on the demand side of the economic equation at a universal scale. That modern financial mechanisms imperfectly balance this tension is money and capitalism’s dirty little secret.

Nonetheless, the Marxist labor theory of value erred in two key ways, ultimately making it less desirable than capitalism as a commercial ideology. First, it ignored normative values that dictate what true-north value that products have as to who and why consumers are and personally consider themselves to be; and second, it failed to understand the real values that change the extent money represents normative economic value. Keep in mind though, economic conditions where competition is nearly perfect often drive the exchange value of commodities down to the cost of the matter and energy expended in producing them. Thus, the labor theory of truth-value has some validity as background information within a business ideology, but it should not predominate.

Thus, the only fundamental physical axiom in measuring real economic value is consumers’ tautologically self-regulating purchase history – either consumers are buying a product or they are not – which determines degrees of confidence you may have that a product will continue to be purchased by consumers. While economic formulas may model economic activity with increasing accuracy, you can only reduce economic analysis to mathematical formulas at either the meta, micro, meso or macro levels if they accurately model the fluidity of the systems grounded in natural laws of unknown origin that reproduce consumers’ lives and existences in an open-ended universe. Yet, history thus far quantifiably confirms that no consistent set of axiomatic expressions has been shown to represent and accurately predict all natural systems through economic data. So, we consistently progress onward and upward, eventually increasing our standard of existence, by further explaining what makes life even better in the best economic system we have to date without being totally confident as to whether we will continue to make money meaningfully.

Regardless of what system people may find themselves in along the twisting arrow of economic history, people will iteratively perfect themselves as living systems, however impossible that perfection may be. While the Japanese word, Kaizen, means good change, in Lean terms Kaizen further means a hypothetical, iterative pursuit of perfection.⁴⁷ By capturing and converting more and more matter and energy overall and applying matter and energy toward universalizing who people are as living systems, an organization iteratively reduces disorder through the process of Kaizen in society.⁴⁸ Customers’ marginal benefit in economic terms can generally be equated with the iterative, natural benefit an organization reproduces for them. Customers’ increasingly real and perceived need for product in order to try and perfect their adaptive, reproductive and energy gathering processes dictates how much of their budgets they are willing to give to achieve that end-goal. This energy expended to support the normative and real value of customers’ lives and existences makes the true, metaphysical value of money have meaning.

From this meta-economic perspective, money prices really equal a systemic benefit that customers perceive from consuming product that furthers some aspect of their living processes and ultimate existence. product provides structured matter and energy that systemically plugs-in like a hybrid into customers’ living processes, analogously to how software applications do within a computer’s operating system. All product functions like an App on an iPhone. All true-north value likewise systemically extends and/or optimizes some aspect of consumers’ living processes from their normative, real and really personal perspectives.

Inversely, consumers generally get money made by expending energy through their shopping as guided by their knowledge by deciding what works best for them. They decide how to receive matter and energy by allocating their money to various vendors in order to optimize their living processes. They allocate what best optimizes their living processes across who and why they consider themselves to be. Who consumers consider themselves to be includes who they associate with their identities. Consumers’ identities may include their families, friends, communities, nations or otherwise into the whole universe… or they may define themselves by the inverse of what is not or what people speculate may be but not everyone believes to be for sure. People generally engage in this identity crisis on a dynamic basis by balancing over time a very large variety of variables, including their religions. This makes specifically measuring and predicting true-north value, and people’s actions in general, so difficult. Thus, you must at least understand how structured matter and energy enhances consumers’ living processes for which they will pay meaningful amounts of money over the point of purchase for perhaps seemingly irrational reasons within the context of who and why consumers believe they are.

Moving Forward

With the meaning of money defined, now go beyond products, past the point of purchase, to the most fundamental levels of consumers’ lives and existences, to the place you want to go in their hearts and minds so you can most effectively exchange what they highly value in exchange for more meaningful amounts of money. After you move through the next few Value Streams of “Leanism: The Philosophy of Business,” you will find new channels through the U/People business model to apply your Lean business ideology to your organization.

Value Stream 3: Existence

Value Stream 3 A3 Report:

• Genchi Genbutsu is a Lean term directing managers to go to the source of all production called the Gimba
• Lean suggests the Gimba may be reached by asking “why” five times to reach the cause of any given problem
• Leanism takes you well past five “whys” to the problem of existence itself and thus to the cause of all true-north value
• The three types of true-north value are “Universal,” “Process” and “Personal” (“UPP”), with each having certain commonly agreed degrees of truth-value
• The payment of money represents a para-scientific test of whether customers perceive what they bought as being worthwhile to their existences, thereby providing a means to measure the converged consensus of what true-north value is
• The Ontological Medium (the “OM”) is the vehicle through which this converged consensus occurs, gets measured and drives people toward greater heights
• You can better identify what most consumers will buy by using an Intuition Bracket (the “IB”) to examine the broadly applicable universal and process values, leaving aside ones that are only personal in nature
• The Ontological Teleology (the “OT” or “Ought”) is the possibly tautological goal of all consumption within the IB and OM
• Ontologically Prospective Projects (“OPPs”) are those goal directed activities consumers do to advance upward along the OT within the OM and IB

Value Stream 3 now investigates the Lean concept of Genchi Genbutsu, a Japanese term that directs managers to get out of the board room and go to the “Gemba”, which is the source of all production in Lean. To follow Genchi Genbutsu to the Gemba within the metaphysics of Lean, you must seek the source of all Lean value streams to get to the genesis of all original work. You get to the ultimate Gemba by asking “why” at least five times, which is the most important question about the origin of true value you can find since it leads to the first cause or mover. Once you get as close as you can to the source of the ultimate, “why,” you must then follow the true-north value streams you find across blue oceans toward the horizon of who all consumers are. Genchi Genbutsu requires that you get down as close as you can to the source of all knowledge and existence in the Gemba within the the Lean House of Quality from which all profit originates:

Since this process of Genchi Genbutsu takes you to the penultimate question of why customers’ deepest problems exist, it explains all that they fundamentally value, find most meaningful, will consume and pay for. Thus, following Genchi Genbutsu to the Gemba universally leads you to the edge what causes all consumption. When you reach the first degree of causation, you then have found the cement on which the foundation of a HQ may lean.¹ The causation of consumption and existence is the first brick from which you will build an understanding of the major philosophical, scientific, scientismic, theological and intuitive perspectives. By understanding these perspectives you will construct a well of knowledge from which all consumers’ value streams will spring.²

As stated before, the metaphysics of Lean provides you with the clearest perspective on existing knowledge to reach the greatest profits. I want you to deduce the causal link between who consumers are at their existential limits and what you ought to reproduce for them so that you will make more money.³ When people seek rational answers to these amazing questions, they usually go too far down an intellectual path to communicate back in any sort of concise way, but I anxiously hope to do exactly that here on this side of nonsense.⁴

Existence and Ontology Defined

Let’s start with a formal definition of “Existence.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Existence” as:⁵

Existence, n. /ɛɡˈzɪstəns/

1. Actuality, reality.
2. a. Being; the fact or state of existing; ‘actual possession of being’. in existence: as predicate = ‘extant’.

b. Continued being; continuance in being.
c. Continuance of being as a living creature; life.

3. A mode or kind of existing
4. a. All that exists; the aggregate of being.

b. Something that exists; a being, an entity.

“Ontology,” however, is the philosophical, scientific and business term for “Existence” and the nature of being. The Oxford English Dictionary uses the word “Existence” to define “Ontology” as:⁶

Ontology, n. /ɑnˈtɑlədʒi/

1. a. The science or study of being; that branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature or essence of being or existence.

The Leanism lexicon leans on the term “Ontology” a great deal as a technical reference, so please get used to reading it^{164] To emphasize how important "Ontology" is to Leanism and estimating true-north value in the *Gemba*, you could write ontology with a circumflex pronunciation accent "}” over the letter oh, which is officially pronounced with the short oh sound of “ah,” like “ôccupation,” “ôntologically,” or “paôs.” As you may recall, the formal Lean symbol “Ô” also stands for the Japanese term, Hōshin Kanri, meaning, “Compass Guided Management,” representing the direction of all true-north value.⁷

Thus, understanding normative value through consumers’ ontologies allows you to:

1. Intuit, infer or induce universal assumptions with some degrees of confidence as to why something matters most to consumers; and
2. Deductively measure how you create true-north value for consumers necessarily committed to a shared ontology by living together within the open-ended universe.

You could likewise carry this circumflex “^” accent over the letter oh to other, related concepts within Leanism, like “ôptimization.” However meaningfully symbolic it may be, I will hold back my use of the circumflex for the sake of legibility.

Many non-philosophical disciplines use the term ontology as well to describe everything from gene expression in biology⁸ to process ontology in computer science engineering to business models in business.⁹ Informatively for developing a higher order ontology for your Lean business ideology and metaphysics, the noted Stanford computer scientist Tom Gruber¹⁰ who co-created Siri on the iPhone defines ontology in the software context as:

… an explicit specification of a conceptualization. The term [ontology] is borrowed from philosophy, where an Ontology is a systematic account of Existence. For AI [Artificial Intelligence] systems, what exists is that which can be represented… We use common ontologies to describe ontological commitments for a set of agents so that they can communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. We say that an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology.

Tom Gruber, in this quote above says that agents, like consumers, commit to an ontology if the agents (think consumers) act consistent with their own shared ontologies. At the foundational level of the Gemba, are consumers’ observable actions consistent with their shared ontologies by living together within the universe? If so, just like for Paul Samuelson’s Revealed Preference Theory, this definition of ontological commitment is tautologically circular because it means that consumers commit to who, why, what and how they think they are by sharing a common Gemba, a common world, and a common universe - a common ontological medium - by sharing it with all other living, biological systems, and thereby defining their essential natures through their existential actions in common with all others to simply, further be, without any further, external reference.

Beyond an ontology being a simple set of rules reflexively committing consumers to certain actions in support of themselves within the Gemba and the global marketplace, some computer science ontologies define themselves by dynamically and self-reflexively optimizing a given set of information through algorithms, like nearly all those used for artificial intelligence. These ontologies reflect what they model by fitting their results to data. These ontological optimization algorithms best fit data being analyzed to what is Ontologically Realized, and to what becomes revealed as the rules to which the search agents (think consumers or AIs) commit. Such computer ontologies invoke so called genetic algorithms, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, simulated annealing (from the metalworking context), Gaussian (statistical) adaptation, hill climbing, and swarm intelligence (e.g. ant colony and particle swarm optimization)… each metaphorically alluding to a job to be done that enhances consumers’ biological or economic fitness to better live and exist.

This computer science definition of ontology conforms with everyday economics by describing the common basis by which consumers agree with what they all value in Lean terms, like two people agreeing that a popular product fits their definition of being good. If a product fits the classification of “good” for both people, it must have been perceived as valuable for both people in circular fashion. Since what people perceive as valuable determines who and why they are, the good product defined those customers’ ontologies by furthering who and why they are when they consumed it, just like Tom Gruber saying about agents (again, think consumers) in a software context that, “… an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology.”

Businesses’ inner cores are their ontologies as defined by their business models, or that which ultimately reproduces Lean value for their customers. Since businesses’ commit to those ontologies that realize true-north value for their customers, customers’ Lean values consequentially determine businesses’ own ontologies up along the value stream. Businesses best fit themselves around what their customers want and need to be and become more of who and why they are. Businesses thus act just like how consumers decide what they want and need – consumers’ and businesses’ ontologies become symbiotic and converge by reciprocal definition within the ultimate Gemba.

The Ontological Realization and origin of you, consumers and organizational HQs is that which is, Critical to Ontological Realization (i.e. what is “CORE”). Understanding what is CORE to consumers helps you improve who and why they and organizations are.¹¹ Optimizing profits by enhancing consumers’ lives and existences in-turn improves organizations’ own viability. Such analysis enhances everyone’s ability to ask correct and beautiful questions, measure specific benefits, and optimize an organization’s activity to increase the probability of profiting within any given meta, micro, meso and macro-economic constraints that a Lean corporation faces. Doing so though requires you to go down into the well of all knowledge and come back up, which is no easy task.

Tripartite Perspectives on Existence - Universal, Process and Personal truth-values

To understand consumers’ essence so you may capture the largest portion of their mindshare and wallets, you must expand your own imagination as far as it will go, inducing it to the point of complete abstraction, and then aligning that metaphysical perspective with consumers’ actual existence. From a complete abstraction of consumers’ pure existence, you can then sub-divide consumers’ minds (and the universe itself) into categories and perspectives. There are (generally) three truth-value perspectives of existence, which are: (1) the ideal or “Universal” truth-value perspectives; (2) the outside-in or “Process” truth-value perspectives; and (3) the inside-out or “Personal” truth-value perspectives. I define each of these perspectives on existence here for you to begin building a House of Quality within your Lean business ideology to fully divine who and why consumers truly are for a profit:¹²

(1) Universal Perspective: The Universal perspective relates roughly to Platonism, idealism or epistemic rationalism. In a modern context, universal truth-value means the perspective of predictable, inviolable concepts such as mathematical and physical axioms that have no proven space or time dependencies.¹³ The universal perspective also includes certain physical concepts that are predictably unpredictable, like certain aspects of quantum physics – universals simply must have predictive consistency (even if predictably unpredictable) across all dimensions to the nth degree. Their interaction results in consumers’ ultimate physical manifestation. The universal perspective is notable for being unreasonably effective at explaining natural law¹⁴ and conforms with the notion that all existence ultimately equates with mathematical coherence.¹⁵ Specific examples of universal concepts include prime numbers and the speed of light.¹⁶ The universal perspective is the fundamental, immutable structure of the universe that all process true-north values use forward and backward as their common denominator and ultimate ontology.

(2) Process Perspective:¹⁷ The Process perspective relates to the perspective that all events sequentially occur in spacetime regardless of whatever consumers may personally believe. If you look out toward the event horizon of spacetime, along the way toward resolving all problems, everything you think of as a person or object eventually becomes a process due to the continual, cosmic dispersion of matter and energy. Thus, the process perspective explains how consumers came to be and how they eventually fade away over time in contrast to the universal mathematical and scientific laws that always seem to have existed since the start of and possibly before the universe came to be.¹⁸

The process perspective says that in the ultimate long-run at universal scale, consumers and all things may simply be perceived as a set of temporal relationships always changing at some point in time if you set your horizon out far enough. For example, if you were to dramatically speed up time from your own perspective, you would eventually see mountains change, oceans run dry and the greatest corporations dissolve. For evidence of this creative destruction, the average time for a company to remain on the S&P 500 narrowed from 61 years in 1958 to 25 years in 1980, and 18 years in 2012. From 1955 to 2014, 89% of all Fortune 500 companies were either dissolved or acquired during that time. And 75% of the S&P 500 is expected to be replaced by 2027.¹⁹

As another example of long-term processes reaching forward into current events, consider how the process of natural selection led to consumers now considering purchasing product in stores today. The process perspective includes all events occurring from the inception of the physical universe immediately following the creation of natural laws. It specifically includes everything that eventually happened to cause consumers’ subjective, individual beliefs to arise within them today. Thus, processes dynamically originate from the chaotic interaction of universal laws, and end at the point of intuitive, speculative belief.

The process perspective thus also inserts itself into discussions such as in mind-body distinctions, with some arguing that consumers’ minds operate as physical processes reproducing self-awareness,²⁰ and some arguing that consumers’ consciousness is something sitting beyond the physical universe and is only knowable as a personal truth. To this end, Universal and Process true-north values constitute normatively true economic value supporting what consumers really personally value and who they consider themselves to be regardless of where their consciousness originates. From this physical perspective, Process true-north values may be thought of as instrumental rationality, or what consumers consequentially aim to achieve up along the crooked arrow of time.

(3) Personal Perspective:²¹ The Personal perspective is how consumers, employees, and collectively businesses, find themselves at some point in spacetime within universal processes regardless of how they believe they may have been created.²² Personal true-north value describes the point at which people very personally became aware of their wants, needs and ability to consume in a real and immediate sense. Thus, their Personal perspectives also relate to Descartes’ famous phrase, “I think therefore I am,” that he used to distinguish himself within his profession.

Consumers’ Personal perspectives are the cumulative outcome and function of universal laws and their resulting processes leading to individual intent.²³ So, while the Universal and Process perspectives apply to everything that exists, consumers’ emotional, Personal perspectives are only applicable to them as self-reflexive, sensing people who decide to buy product at points of purchase. For example, their very first shopping experiences reflected Personal true-north value as a self-aware intent to further their universal and systemic existences.

Consumers’ personal perspectives are the same as the one you have right now as you read these words and personally consume this book. Consumers’ personal perspectives provide a consistent version of themselves through time and space that is much the same as when you started reading today. Think of consumers’ personal perspectives like a video camera sitting on their foreheads that they turned on to record all that passed by during their lives from the time they became self-aware until now. Consider this perspective as being like the all-seeing, “Eye of Providence,” on the United States one dollar bill, or an omniscient ID Kata having a singular, personal focus:

However, while a person may privately consider certain beliefs held from within his or her own Personal perspective to be truly Universal, society as a whole may not be convinced to the same degree. Thus, a person’s beliefs held from within h/er Personal perspective are only universalized to the extent h/er society, environment and/or political system agree, but people are otherwise unlimited when professing their beliefs within their own imaginations.

You, the Plane and the Lottery – On UPP as a Universal, Process, Person

Einstein’s Specific Law of Relativity serves well as a literal and figurative analogy illustrating the differences between the Universal, Process and Personal perspectives to better understand Lean true-north value and existence itself. To illustrate, presume you take an overnight flight on a private, customized business jet like the Embraer Legacy 1000E shown below. Imagine that you board this plane, and given your wealth, you have had the sleep cabin decorated exactly like your bedroom at your home. While your plane flies around the world, you go to sleep in the private jet’s bedroom. Other than very minor turbulence in the jetstream, you hardly know the difference between the bedroom on the plane and the one at your home. You can even reach over and grab a cup of water while the airplane is flying and comfortably take a sip before going to sleep and drifting off to other worlds.

Albert Einstein explained long ago that no practical difference exists between being in bed at your home and sleeping on the jet while it is travelling at a constant speed and direction. The laws of physics are the same from every philosophical perspective.²⁴ Thus, from outside the airplane, you are engaged in the process of flying through the air at high altitude supported by universal axioms and processual systems, but from inside of the plane, your personal, intuitive self would be the same as if you were on the ground in your bedroom at home. You wouldn’t know the difference unless you looked out the window at whatever went past down below as you flew by.

Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Otherworld” (2002) comes to mind when I think about this concept, which depicts a women riding in a plane and looking out the window at scenes outside her immediate existence. Just like the woman sitting inside the plane in that painting, from consumers’ personal, subjective perspectives, they are largely the same people with their same names held in a constantly present state of consciousness as their internal processes turn over, passing them by while supporting who they are. In an airplane, consumers will arrive as themselves at a new location even though they changed slightly during the trip. Consumers will similarly, self-reflexively identify themselves every new day they wake up by the same, universal name, even though who their persona is slightly changed from time to time.

Analogously, from a doctor’s perspective, consumers’ bodies are like airplanes flying around the Earth. Customers’ bodies are a collection of processual systems constantly changing through time while who they are inside goes along for the ride. Another good analogy to the interrelation of the universal, process and personal perspectives is that of a lottery machine produced by eGameSolutions Inc., a Global Lottery Provider™. eGames’s lotto machine produces winners by randomly spinning, timeless, universal numbers around a wheel for a definite amount of time until its operator releases the numbers upward from the machine. The lottery machine randomly extracts those numbers from the spinning process at a specific point in time. Consumers compare those numbers to the ones that came out of a lotto machine at the point of purchasing a lottery ticket that people bought for a chance at a new life. Further back in time, you can analogize this lottery machine to those same lotto customers spinning out of the womb, looking back out at the apparent apparatus from which they were conceived, with the chance of becoming winners. Like the lottery machine, you can simultaneously conceive of consumers from the universal, process, and personal perspectives. While we may know that eGames created this lottery machine, do not ask who created the one that ultimately produced who all we consumers are!

You know that from a universal perspective that the world is composed of physical and mathematical laws. Once created, those physical and mathematical laws led to the universe as you know it, and the relations between those universal laws created the bedrock of processes that you think of in-part as time. Over a very long period of time, these processes led to consumers’ personal perspectives within the universe. To the best of science’s understanding, the length of time that passed from the creation of universal laws through natural processes to create consumers’ personal perspectives occurred over many billions of years – over amounts of time that are hard for our minds to consider fully. Look below at this 24 hour clock of Earth’s development located within the Museum of Natural History in New York City. In this clock, humans arose at the top 40,000 years ago, which corresponds to a fraction of a second before midnight:

This clock represents well the tension between the teleological (i.e., purposefully goal directed) and seemingly tautological (i.e., unintentionally, logically circular) nature of existence in the Gemba depending on whether the universe is finite or infinite in time and space. To illustrate the tension in these concepts, even this figurative clock unintentionally, yet correctly, tells you what time it is once a day.

You can also see consumers’ subjective existences within this clock from their personal perspectives, from who they think they are, as a result of pre-existing processes such as their mother’s pregnancies and labor. Thus, at business scale, you can also measure the interactions between physical and mathematical axioms that create product along the assembly line of universal existence to enhance consumers’ living processes and personal perspectives. Consumers’ personal perspectives depend on those processes that in-turn depend on physical and mathematical axioms that further depend on a universal cause that people do not yet commonly agree on, even after asking more than five whys. An ultimate cause may or may not exist, or may exist in some way people do not universally agree on due to lack of predictably experiential evidence, but in the meantime you may go onward and upward regardless and as if there were.²⁵ To summarize, here is a chart of these levels of dependent existence as gradations of true-north value perspectives:

Three Lean Truth Types Aligned with Universal, Process and Personal True-North Value Perspectives

These are the three broad and overlapping, but ultimately dependent, categories of true-north value that align with the Lean value you must uncover as you pursue a profit:²⁶

(1) Axiomatic truth-values²⁷: Axiomatic true-north values are those truth-value propositions from the universal perspective that we have every reason to believe are uniform in nature and based on the seemingly timeless, universal axioms of science and math, like the speed of light and prime numbers, from which you deduce further true-north values. Axiomatic validity is generally assumed due to its coherence and predictability with at least five sigmas (≥5σ) of confidence or ≥ 99.9999426697%. For example, particle physicists generally consider a discovery to be an axiomatic truth if it can frequently be verified within five sigmas (5σ) of confidence.²⁸ The four axiomatic physical forces physicists agree on right now with five sigmas (5σ) of confidence are the electromagnetic, gravitational, and strong and weak atomic forces.²⁹ Axiomatic truth-values qualify as facts for physicists by their very definition as universal, intersubjective truths, and are a sound basis for understanding customers’ physical ontologies. For comparison, a standard of six sigmas (6σ) of confidence, or ≥99.9999998027% of intersubjective agreement, represents the pragmatic idealism we pursue beyond five sigmas (5σ), while an infinite sigma (/σ∞) of confidence can only be hypothetical yet pursued nonetheless in our unending attempt to attain perfection;

(2) Systemic truth-values:³⁰ Systemic true-north values are those truth-value propositions arising from causal, process perspectives within science that you have reason to believe cannot be axiomatically defined. Systemic validity is based on something’s general coherence on an empirical, best fit basis with universal axioms.³¹ Like axiomatic truths, systemic truth-values also increase their validity in proportion to the number of fully informed people that agree with them and the general failure of our attempts to falsify them. Systemic truths differ from axiomatic truths in that systemic truths are valid due to their general, but not unwavering, coherence with reality, rather than being experienced as axiomatically self-evident.³² Qualitatively, you might also describe systemic truths as being nearly universal, intersubjective truths.

Something may qualify as most likely a fact and systemic truth-value if it leans toward two or more sigmas (/≥2σ) of confidence, or ≥ 95.4499736% of intersubjective agreement among all fully informed people. Under this standard, people would describe the systemic truth as common sense if fully informed of its details. However again, since you can only hypothetically assume that people will be fully informed of all knowledge in the real world, including people’s own biases that affect their understanding, you ought to look for a higher standard of measurement before considering something to be a systemic truth and common sense.

While you ideally want to measure all fully informed people, you may have to rely on the opinions of a consortia of experts to determine systemic truths because fully-informed people simply do not exist. A couple of examples of this form of support include the process of peer-reviewing academic papers, and the associations of journalists who increasingly certify public truths as not being fake news. However, reliance on experts and authority figures can compound those people’s interpersonal subjectivity rather than clarifying what is systemic, true-north value based on the impressions of all people.³³ Unfortunately, there is no clear way out of this conundrum, which is why we must view systemic true-north value from different perspectives. So, anything goes when trying to assess systemic truths, so long as you test whether a Lean business process leads customers to a purchase for which you charge them in return.

(3) Intuitive truth-values: Intuitive true-north values are those truth-value propositions arising from consumers’ personal perspectives that they speculate and lean toward based on their scientismic, spiritual and/or theological intuitions with less than two sigmas (<2σ) of confidence, or < 95% of common agreement among all fully informed people. Consumers’ intuition may be called anything from “emotion” to “faith.”³⁴ Strictly personal intuitive truths are those that are truly speculative, for which no known processual or universal truths provide validation up to and beyond a single sigma (≤σ) of confidence, or <68.2689492% of common agreement among well informed people, and yet consumers nonetheless feel are true to an infinite degree. To be clear, intuitive truths are not consumers’ psychological intuitions that they can confirm or deny with known universal or processual truths if they had access to the universe of knowledge. Rather, intuitive truths are limited truths for which greater than two sigmas (>2σ) of informed people have not been convinced that they are not false (i.e. those for which not enough well qualified and experienced people have been convinced to the necessary degree).³⁵ Intuitive truths may be intersubjective assuming more than one person believes the intuitive truth. Examples of intersubjective, intuitive truths include political opinions or a religious faith that requires no degrees of confidence, both of which can still be considered true even if only a single person believes them to be true.³⁶

Like consumers’ perspectives, each of these three truth-value types are arranged in the relational order of supervening dependency, with systemic truth-values and resulting processes dependent on the validity of axiomatic truth-values or “universals.” Intuitive truth-values depend on both axiomatic and systemic truth-values that provide the ontological medium of the Gemba in which people work, and of the universe within which consumers intuitively speculate and purchase.

Keep in mind though that the logical dependency of intuitive truths becomes circular to who consumers are. Once consumers’ intuitive truths lead them to dogmatically believe both what they find personally valuable and what are universal true-north values, like those that may be espoused by a deity or demagogue, consumers then believe in a co-dependency between intuitive, systemic and axiomatic truths arising in their minds’ eyes.

Thus, speculative belief can act like an intuitive tail wagging an axiomatic dog. Problems arise when an intuitive tail fails to lead axiomatic and systemic dogs (or consumers) to food, safety and shelter. In other words, while we cannot directly access Universal and Process truth-values, they ultimately check all consumers’ intuitive speculation since we must follow the true-north values of Leanism where they lead. True-north values thereby stop consumers’ intuitive tails from wagging their axiomatic and systemic dogs, as is only common sense.³⁷ Cults of personality can exemplify this with intuitive speculation, such as when a cult’s charismatic leader espouses axiomatic or systemic dogmas that lead people nowhere. And yet, it is the intuitive truths that people repeatedly pursue in the search for some universal meaning.

While keeping this interplay between these forms of true-north value in mind, these truth types are arranged below in descending order of commonly agreed validity, much as the three perspectives on existence were in the preceding chart in this Value Stream.³⁸

To provide a scientific example of an assertion that is currently being reclassified in some degree from an intuitive, scientismic truth to a systemic, processually scientific truth, and maybe even a universal, axiomatic truth, look to the research for the Higgs Boson or the “God Particle.” The CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) laboratory in Switzerland has been searching for the presence of the Higgs Boson particle whose existence would help complete the standard physical model that is now agreed on as being at least a processual true-north value within the scientific community.

The Higgs Boson was predicted based on this standard physical model but had not yet been actually experienced by scientists through their instruments. Experiments at the CERN laboratory in-fact reproduced results demonstrating the Higgs Boson leans within at least five sigmas (≥/5σ) of certainty, thereby affirming the Higgs Boson’s existence as a systemic truth. Due to the explanatory power of Higgs Boson and its coherence with the Standard Model of natural laws, this test set the stage for revalidating the existence of the Higgs Boson over time so the God Particle itself might become an axiomatic true-north value like gravity pulling water downstream.³⁹

An example of another intuitive, scientismic truth-value that people are working to convert into at least a systemically processual, scientific true-north value is the stipulation that the universe was created in the Big Bang. Scientists describe the Big Bang as a processual system initiated by cosmic inflation, whereby the universe rapidly expanded from a single point outward over about 14 billion years to what you experience today. In an attempt to make the Big Bang theory a processually systemic truth-value, scientists have been studying whether cosmic inflation created ripples like waves in an ocean in the outer reaches of spacetime by observing the Big Bang’s effect. The scientific validation of the processual truth of these ripples in spacetime is very much in flux at the moment, ⁴⁰ but some scientists intuitively believe that they exist with increasingly systemic predictability. Scientists personally believe they can empirically validate the process of the Big Bang that eventually produced consumers’ personal existences from this one dimension in the past.

As you might expect, something falling into more than one of these truth-value classifications increases its validity as a Lean true-north value. For example, consumers can say that axiomatic truth-values, such as mathematical proofs, reside supreme and unassailable. On the other hand, all three truth-value categories ontologically realize themselves by what consumers actually experience. Critically, a thing or process falling within all three truth-value types would be the most valid of all since such a thing or process would be the most completely Ontologically Realized by consumers.⁴¹ In fact, the only thing fully falling into all three truth types is who consumers are in their totality at personal, process, and scientific levels. Consumers evidence all three truth types, and this allows a House of Quality to lean philosophically toward these three truth-value types in the products it produces for them. That product creates the true-north value and meaning of the money customers give to exchange who they were for something at least ten times better.

While consumers’ lives, existences and buying experiences are temporal processes, from consumers’ personal perspectives, the only time they personally know is the time they have been actually alive, such as when they began shopping. However, consumers only presume that time itself existed before they were born, and will continue after they die. For all consumers know, they became consciously aware at some point and believe they will die because they witness all others doing so over the course of their lives and histories. Consumers feel themselves getting older, but they do not otherwise know for sure that they will die other than by defining their ontologies as being mortal based on all of the evidence they received during their lifetimes.⁴² Thus, because all consumers experience this evidence directly, they have great confidence that they are the result of natural and biologically processual systems that terminate at some point within the OM due to old age, and that they will eventually become not alive because they witness others doing so unless they interrupt that process in some currently inconceivable way.

Similar to how they view their own mortality, consumers speculate whether or not the physical universe itself was self-causing or caused by something else. Consumers’ speculation though is neither an axiomatic nor a systemic truth-value, unlike consumers’ biological processes, due to insufficient certainty and agreement across the right people. Thus, consumers’ personally intuitive consciousness remains the most valid truth to them, the surest thing they know, since it represents all three types of true-north value. This is why Rene Descartes’ statement, “I think therefore I am,” has held such philosophical, and subsequently scientific, energy for so long due to its true-north validity from the Universal, Process and Personal (UPP) perspectives. Descartes could have also used UPP in his day to pursue objective knowledge with varying degrees of certainty.

The balance of Leanism leverages these true-north value perspectives by focusing on what consumers can commonly lean toward with at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of processually systemic truth-value, while recognizing the validity of leaning toward personally intuitive true-north values with less confidence (<2σ). You must bracket and recognize these Lean, personally intuitive truth-values that have no axiomatic or systemic truth-value validity so you can most accurately identify why, what and how consumers will purchase from you based on who they fundamentally are within the common ontological medium of the universe.

To consolidate these matters in a Lean business ideology, you can correlate the forms of truth-value we described, UPP perspectives, degrees of explanation, and the methods of analysis in a single chart:

Consumers’ commonly-shared lives and existences ontologically depend on pragmatic, best-fit, systemic truths relying in-turn on axiomatic truths, and yet consumers are fundamentally motivated by their intuitive truths that create seemingly non-circular end-goals for them to be more than they are. This intuitive boundary outside processual and universal true-north values leaves room for personally intuitive speculation about what is not commonly agreed, or what consumers personally feel is best regardless of any common agreement among all people. When consumers intuitively speculate, they have faith that what they live for is better than what they know is certainly not.

The only condition for businesses to accommodate consumers’ intuitive beliefs is that those beliefs must not interfere with certain processually systemic and universally axiomatic truth-values generally agreed by others. That is true unless consumers willingly agree on who may be considered fully informed and convince those people to lean toward that truth with at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of common agreement that their intuitive truths qualify as processually systemic or universally axiomatic truths to an amazing degree. Consumers ought not impose their personal beliefs on others unless they meet this standard.⁴³ Moving an opinion from being a personal truth to a process or universal truth is one of convincing others that no better explanation or product can be found, which is the burden of proof an organization must carry when creating a new product category.

While businesses do not have perfect insight into all that influences what consumers decide to purchase, for the most part, you can intuit, infer and/or induce consumers’ Universal, Process and Personal values (i.e. their ontologies), by observing their behaviors and preferences that they reveal to you. As suggested by Samuelson, once you have ascertained consumers’ UPP values from their stated beliefs or behavioral data, you can compare those values against the ones you know with various degrees of certainty. You may then conjecture, hypothesize, theorize (or even lobby to legislate) those universal truths that are in-line with those believed by customers to achieve righteous business results from the satiating product you sell.

For example, suppose you want to sell product to Google, Inc. as a corporate consumer. Like a hermeneutic interpretation of the Ten Commandments, analyze what Google Inc. intuited, inferred, induced and deduced is good based on its stated business ideology, ontology and corporate philosophy of, “Ten Things We Know to Be True.” Consider whether you also intuit, infer and/or induce what Google believes are its Universal, Process and Personal true-north values from these statements. Determine whether Google’s corporate behavior deductively reflects these stated true-north value beliefs as its ontology, which you can see Google has written below as its own commandments.

Google Inc.’s 10 truth-values⁴⁴

• You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
• Democracy on the web works.
• The need for information crosses all borders.
• Great just isn’t good enough.
• Focus On the user and all else will follow.
• You can make mOney without doing evil.
• It’s best to do one thinG really, really well.
• Fast is better than sLow.
• There’s always more information out therE.
• You can be serious without a suit.

Reason, Causation or Nothing

Intuiting, inferring, inducing and deducing human or corporate ontologies to create true north value within the philosophy of Lean requires that you ground an ideology on a presumption of universal reason, and its necessary corollary, causation. Causation itself is a form of formal Lean “Root Cause Analysis” (RCA)⁴⁵ that originates from an ancient philosophical concept called the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” (PSR). Both RCA and the PSR may also be thought of as an, “Axiom of Causation,” that assumes every reason or cause must have a prior one, back to the start of existence itself. This PSR and Axiom of Causation is the basis for the Lean process of RCA and asking five “Whys” through the Lean process of Genchi Genbutsu.

The PSR, Axiom of Causation, RCA and the “5 Whys” posit that for every fact, there must be an explanation as to why that fact is.⁴⁶ The PSR most particularly holds that each action resulted from a prior cause down to an ultimate self-causing cause (a Sui Generis in Latin).⁴⁷ In the PSR, causation is an assumed abstraction of the relations between every series of events. Thus, the PSR underpins most classic explanations for existence, and yet this theory has the earlier stated limitation of not yet being proven as either a processual or axiomatic truth-value itself.⁴⁸ To date, people have found no common agreement as to even a processual self-causing cause, much less an axiomatic truth, explaining the origin of the universe. Thus, consumers, whether scientist, atheist, theologian or organization, can only intuitively believe in the PSR at a universal scale even if they might only employ RCA and the 5 Whys in a far more limited capacity within their business environments.⁴⁹

Like the PSR, formal “Lean Thinking” uses the Axiom of Causation in the form of RCA and the 5 Whys to find the root cause of any given business problem by simply asking why five times, which hopefully is enough. However, the conversations within an HQ will benefit from moving beyond a mere five whys toward analyzing who consumers are through an infinite number of whys until a House of Quality is ultimately bounded by infinities, paradoxes and tautologies.⁵⁰ A Lean business ideology ought to lead you to the edge of axiomatic and systemic explanations of the universe, to the bare existence of an empty, infinite set at the conceptual inception of something rather than nothing at all.

Finally, an empty, infinite set is the last thing consumers ought to consider before moving past reason, beyond spacetime itself to something other-than-reason.⁵¹ Since a business ideology cannot now axiomatically or systemically say whatever is beyond reason as its inverse, neither consumers nor organizations can axiomatically or systemically know how many “whys” will reach what is certainly not here without intuitively speculating.⁵²

Reason as Causation from Aristotle’s Perspective, with Modification

In the Western/Occidental tradition, you can trace one of the first definitions of pure reason at the boundary of what may be considered rational to Aristotle’s “Four Causes,” which are the “Formal,” “Material,” “Efficient” and “Final” ones. Like Blank’s, “Four Steps to the Epiphany,” Aristotle’s “Four Causes” may be roughly conceptualized and related to Lean philosophical thinking as follows:

• Formal ontological causes explain the shape of how consumers and product came to be. Since formal causes generally don’t make sense in the scientific age, in the philosophy of Lean, I somewhat modify the formal cause to be what I consider a self-defining ontological one encapsulating all that consumers, organizations and product are, including all consumers’ personal speculation, emotions, and dreams arising as a course of their personal perspectives. The formal cause simply is as it is because it is in circular fashion; ⁵⁴
• Material physical causes define what physical processes led to consumers’ and products’ existence as a subset of the formal, ontological causes. The material cause roughly aligns with modern scientific explanations of how natural law emerged through axiomatic and systemic truth-values. Thus, the material cause relates to how organizations actually produce product for customers;
• Efficient first causes generally equate with the very first, initial cause whether material or not that initiated existence through the Axiom of Causation and eventually led to who consumers are, what they experience, and how organizations produce product for them; and
• Final teleological causes explain the end-goal/factor/motives of the universe and why the efficient cause created consumers and product at all. The final cause is also synonymous with the teleological cause, the end purpose of all learning, which is a combination of the Greek τέλος, telos (root: τελε-, end, purpose) and -λογία, logia (a branch of learning).⁵⁵

In this post-post-modern world, these formally ontological, materially physical, efficiently first and finally teleological causes may seem logically circular or tautological in that they lack unification or an axiomatic origin without another extended self-causing cause standing outside of known axiomatic and systemic truths. Nonetheless, consumers cannot help but experience their generally consistent personal perspectives as the synthesis of all these causes combined into their present state of who they identify themselves as being. Meaning emerges for them through this constant, simultaneous tension between the apparent tautological causation of the universe and consumers’ assumed teleology based on their intuitive beliefs.

Not coincidentally, the religious philosophy of Buddhism widely adopted in Japan where Lean thinking developed into a holistic business philosophy, describes an apparent causal circularity for the universe through a concept called “pratītyasamutpāda,” which Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh explains:⁵⁶

Pratitya samutpada is sometimes called the teaching of cause and effect, but that can be misleading, because we usually think of cause and effect as separate entities, with cause always preceding effect, and one cause leading to one effect. According to the teaching of Interdependent Co-Arising, cause and effect co-arise (samutpada) and everything is a result of multiple causes and conditions… A cause must, at the same time, be an effect, and every effect must also be the cause of something else. Cause and effect inter-are. The idea of first and only cause, something that does not itself need a cause, cannot be applied.

Relating Aristotle’s Four Causes to Lean Levels of True-North Value

By seeing ultimate causation of consumers’ lives and existences as a possibly circular co-arising through pratītyasamutpāda for business purposes, you can effectively map all four of the Aristotelian causal explanations to consumers’ and organizations’ universally axiomatic, processually systemic and personally intuitive perspectives and truth-values as explained here:

(1) Universally Axiomatic: Aristotle’s four causes may be seen as universally, axiomatically explaining the origin of consumers’ existences in a logically self-defining sense not related to a cause outside of existence itself. Examples include axioms such as the Western Ontological Argument trying to prove God by the very definition of perfection, Eastern philosophical traditions like pratītyasamutpāda, and modern scientific notions of the universe spontaneously co-arising⁵⁷ under the laws of quantum physics⁵⁸ through such things as quantum fluctuations.

A universally axiomatic cause is generally based on the logic that nothing exists in the truest sense since nothing cannot be by its own definition.⁵⁹ Even for efficient first and final teleological causes residing at the existential extremes of all spacetime, the basis of such causes may be seen to be axiomatically self-regenerating in this way. But, I would like to re-emphasize that no philosophical or scientific explanation for consumers’ ultimate existences today may be deemed axiomatic with predictive, universal certainty of infinite confidence (/σ∞). As stated, all people, whether theistic or not, must rely on systemically hypothetical and personally speculative explanations for their own existences and essences.

(2) Processually Systemic: Aristotle’s formal and material causes may be seen as providing processually systemic explanations for consumers’ and organizations’ existence, such that consumers’ and organizations’ existences arise due to natural processes. Consumers emerged from efficient or final causes arising systemically at the extremes of existence cohering with the overall system of the universe in which consumers exist. The Lean value stream of physical or logical processes extends to the boundaries of known causation, creating consumers from an intelligible, systemic reason that may or may not be tautologically self-defining.⁶⁰ To be clear, no ultimate philosophical or scientific explanation for consumers’ existences today may be deemed a systemic truth such that it coheres sufficiently with people’s commonly shared, predictable experiences to lean toward at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of confidence.

(3) Personally Intuitive: Aristotle’s efficient first and final causes may be seen like personally intuitive explanations for consumers’ existences when they lead to a spiritualism or theology standing outside consumers’ universally systemic and common experience. For example, consumers seeking Aristotle’s materially physical cause may lead them to a scientismic belief that science will ultimately determine the origin of existence. Like other personally intuitive truths, scientismic true-north values ultimately revert to self-defining speculation because they lack further support in universally axiomatic or processually systemic true-north values of their own, even if they seem intuitively true based on some limited evidence or belief in the consistent explanatory power of science.⁶¹ Or as Emerson Sparz, otherwise know as the “Internet Meme Meister” said:⁶²

Rational Agnosticism- Existential Causation in the Eastern Traditions

However, both Western and Eastern perspectives are represented within the philosophy of Lean since Lean originated from a synthesis of both occidental and oriental cultures and concepts.⁶³ In contrast to occidental philosophies’ explanations for existence, with the limited exception of the Buddhist principle of co-arising, oriental philosophies have generally considered questions as to the cause of the universe’s creation to be without purpose, instead choosing to be rationally agnostic. Instead, when they have attempted to discern the ultimate “why,” Eastern philosophies attempt to prove existence from the very fact that consumers perhaps falsely presume that the universe could not exist. Coming from Western culture myself, I like to think about Henri Bergson’s quote below from 1911 when he was considering this conundrum:⁶⁴

…If I ask myself why bodies or minds exist rather than nothing, I find no answer, but that a logical principle, such as A=A, should have the power of creating itself, triumphing over the nought throughout eternity, seems to me natural…. Suppose, then, that the principle on which all things rest, and which all things manifest, possesses an existence of the same nature as that of the definition of the circle, or as that of the axiom A=A: the mystery ‘o existence vanishes.

Eastern philosophy thus is almost an inverse of the occidental concept of, “From nothing, nothing comes,” being more, “There is because there must be.”⁶⁵ According to the 14 unanswered questions attributed to Buddha, much of the logical, Axiom of Causation and the Lean “5 Whys” reasoning is ultimately pointless because consumers’ very existence means that consumers or something else must have always existed, which is quite smart. To this end, there have historically been 14 unanswerable questions attributed to Buddha that define what he apparently believes we cannot know and need not ask any further.⁶⁶ You can see them organized below into four lean, philosophical categories according to their subject matter:

Questions concerning the existence of the world in time:

1. Is the world eternal?
2. …or not?
3. …or both?
4. …or neither?

(Pali texts omit “both” and “neither”)

Questions concerning the existence of the world in space:

5. Is the world finite?
6. …or not?
7. …or both?
8. …or neither?

(Pali texts omit “both” and “neither”)

Questions referring to personal experience:

9. Is the self identical with the body?
10. …or is it different from the body?

Questions referring to life after death:

11. Does the Tathagata (Buddha) exist after death?
12. …or not?
13. …or both?
14. …or neither?

By leaving these questions unanswered, Buddhists take a logically agnostic position in regards to the mind/body duality and the universe’s origin. Buddhists instead address the pratītyasamutpāda/co-arising by deeply pursuing questions of who consumers are today rather than focusing on why they came to be.⁶⁷

Philosophers, physicists and mathematicians all have something to say about this. The ancient Greek Parmenides who also proposed this, “From nothing, nothing comes” concept, also stated that the last conceivable thing that could be before true nothingness would be an empty set or knowledge that nothing existed. And scientists often step further into this discussion by saying that the very structure of information itself comes from the mere possibility of true nothingness.⁶⁸ Mathematicians added to this concept by saying that an empty set still has enough information value to be considered more than completely empty.

You likewise may choose to view causation within a Lean business ideology in a modified form resulting in an infinite regression and becoming self-defining since nothing could never be accordingly the very definition of “nothingness,” thereby leading to circular reasoning.⁶⁹ This leads to the startling conclusion that you may be making a false presumption in business that no profit could be when in fact businesses can always learn something very valuable from their mistakes.⁷⁰ However, a business of course cannot ever test that theory since it would never be around to experience the result should it go defunct. According to Buddha, his form of reasoning may be the very reason that you and all businesses exist!

Boundaries of Reason – Self-Causing Causes, Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem and Simon’s Bounded Rationality

Unfortunately, as you now see, no one demonstrates why information itself exists within at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of intersubjective, scientific validity, thereby making any ultimate explanation for the origin of business logic a merely speculative story.⁷¹ Going even further, the greatest problem for science in proving an intelligible reason for the universe’s existence and ultimately who and why consumers are is that while some scientific evidence exists that the universe originated from a singular event like the Big Bang, science has not been able to describe such origin axiomatically or systemically, and thus scientists themselves still engage in theoretically intuitive speculation as a form of scientismic belief.⁷²

Beyond our own scientific ignorance, many famous philosophers and mathematicians, such as David Hume, Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel, provided significant reasons why reason cannot explain itself.⁷³ Even Immanuel Kant, though he intuitively believed that human experience requires reason, famously limited the application of reason to human experience, which forms the basis for the scientific empiricism that allows you to test what a product is worth in a coherent way.⁷⁴ I provide a brief synopsis of these limits to reason within a Lean business ideology below from a more logically systemic perspective so you may better know where the rational foundation of UPP true-north value begins and ends that you seek to produce and provide to consumers.⁷⁵ Or as T.S. Eliot better said in 1943 in his, “Four Quartets”:

One well-known circularity to true-north value that is almost always described by authors writing on this subject is Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem (1931).⁷⁶ Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, in their book titled “Principia Mathematica” written at the turn of the 20th century, attempted to construct a logical, non-mathematical system starting from universally axiomatic truths, to prove all further truths from these initial postulates.⁷⁷ While Whitehead and Russell thought they constructed a system for universally deducing all reason from these axioms, Kurt Gödel proved otherwise by demonstrating that some truth-values within Whitehead and Russell’s system, though true, could not be proven within the system itself.

A common, one-phrase synopsis of Gödel’s proof is the expression within Whitehead and Russell’s logic that stands as the mathematical equivalent of, “I cannot be proven.” “I cannot be proven,” creates an immediate, obvious and obnoxious paradox, since if the sentence could be proven, its plain language meaning is false. However, if the statement could be proven that it cannot be proven, then that proof creates a logical contradiction for the system itself that is supposed to deductively prove everything non-tautologically. Thus, while true within the system, this paradox caused a big problem for people who wanted to understand and apply true-north value in a singularly consistent way!

Many mathematicians have validated what Gödel showed, which is that neither a logical nor mathematical system based on real numbers could exclude paradoxes and self-reference. The mathematical, logical conundrum stated by Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem is one that can be easily seen in Bertrand Russell’s “Reference Paradox,” which is something that I refer to often in personal conversations. The Reference Paradox states that the, “list of all lists cannot contain a listing of itself,” by the very definition of a list since the nth item in the list would always need a further list to capture the list’s total meaning.⁷⁸ This infinite logic creates a paradox to the definition of a list or set, sort of like an index to a library that would have to include itself but never stand outside the library’s own reference collection.⁷⁹

The full details of Gödel’s proof likewise fall outside the scope of this book, but I encourage you to read further through the footnoted references for you to lean philosophically because this is so important to understand the universe in which consumers and organizations operate.⁸⁰ You are left with the fact that consumers’ existences cannot be explained entirely through universal and process true-north values, but rather only through personally intuitive speculation at this point in time. You cannot exclude all forms of tautological self-reference for who consumers are or why they buy anything at all at the furthest edges of what life has in store for them.

So why does this matter to the metaphysics of Lean and counting the money that you make? Because one would think that mathematics based on real numbers could be self-contained since it is so widely heralded as the big data elixir to understand all that consumers truly value and will buy. However, Gödel showed that Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica failed to create a mathematical system without self-reference, and that all mathematical systems based on real numbers invariably break down and fall into strange, logically tautological loops at some points.⁸¹ Mathematicians have already seemed to settle the question for their discipline, accepting as an axiomatic truth that they cannot find a single axiom to explain all mathematical theories in light of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, among many other mathematical paradoxes in existence.

You can find many paradoxes beyond Gödel’s own inside and outside of mathematics.⁸² Modern concepts beyond Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem, such as quantum physics and relativity theories appear to show that reason has its limits in a general, universal sense - that some truths cannot be logically deduced, some are relative, and some arise from matters of pure chance.

A common example of this provided by physicists and non-physicists is the scientismic debate around Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle⁸³ under the Copenhagen interpretation that states that observing matter and energy at a quantum level actually in some ways determines its existential state and Ontological Realization. The competing Everette/Schrodinger interpretation says that these particles cohere/discohere with many other worlds like homonyms and phrases with parallel meaning.⁸⁴ Quantum theory is the next great debate - equivalent to that of a flat world or heliocentrism - whether we will sail off the edge of reason we do not yet know, but we nonetheless have a duty to be optimistic.⁸⁵

Given academic uncertainty even about the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle, the theories of relativity and other physically scientific true-north values appear to become subjective, personal and require scientismic belief at sufficiently quantum or intergalactic scales - we do not know for sure the source of knowledge at this time on an axiomatic basis. Even if the laws of physics are deterministic, consumers as self-conscious, self-interested, and self-centered agents, freely and willingly optimize toward an infinite, indeterminable, and possibly tautological universe. While this does not mean that knowledge cannot ultimately be explained, it evidences the tension between reason and apparent paradox in matters beyond logic, just as physicists recently did when attempting to demonstrate super-symmetry by discovering the Higgs Boson “God Particle” in the Large Hydron Collider that pushed scientists up against the limits of what makes physical sense.⁸⁶

You don’t want to misapply these limits to matters of reasonable certainty.⁸⁷ In fact philosophers make fun of other philosophers who do. However, you ought to understand them in a general way to become aware of the boundaries of what consumers can truly value at this point in time. Bringing this discussion back to Lean organizations, Herbert Simon’s Bounded Rationality demonstrated in any event that customers’, employees’, and organizations’ irrationality stays well within the narrower boundaries of the walls and U-shaped cubicles in which Lean organizations operate.⁸⁸ Nonetheless, the very act of expanding the boundaries of knowledge is the same as creating wealth, which is what you ought to do regardless of where it might lead.⁸⁹

20th Century Fragmentation of Unification

Given these limits that 20th century mathematics ran into, science and even philosophy turned away from universal, systemic analysis that tries to induce a single explanation for everything from all that people specifically think they know. Thought leaders stopped trying to connect all details within a universal theory and instead segregated their analysis into discrete, disconnected fields of knowledge for the sake of advancing each domain independently. These more specific insights became much more effective at describing and predicting true-north value than could all the proposed unifying theorems, even if more specific theories could not be used to explain other true-north values.

Contemporary philosophers went so far as to concentrate only on problems they felt stood safely outside of science’s reach.⁹⁰ While professional philosophers maintain this intellectual posture in this post-post-modern era, rather ironically, leading physicists like Stephen Hawking and David Deutsch among others have recently noodled on overarching physical theories of all true-north value in books like “Grand Design,” and through physical concepts like “String Theory,” while philosophers largely abandoned that explanatory goal.⁹¹

Even if both contemporary philosophy and science dislike over-arching, unifying theories, they cannot avoid the fact that all underlying axioms and systems resulted in all consumers’ personal presences and consciousness that are unified for most intents and purposes. On balance, consumers’ unified consciousnesses cause them to buy product, which makes the money organizations earn truly meaningful. Consumers bring together all of the natural laws and their biological processes into their personal presences being who they are as consumers. So to understand what people will buy, you must look at customers in the same way as cohering the three perspectives and truth types within who they are as lean people. To conduct effective business analysis, you must apply all discrete axiomatic and systemic evidence, and all speculatively intuitive notions of true-north value, to who you believe consumers are and why you believe they will buy product in meaningful quantities, which Leanism helps you do.

Money as Unified Lean Metaphysics

However, a tension arises between the unification of the universe, the different perspectives consumers bring to how they perceive the universe, and the true-north value of the product within it. You must recognize how consumers’ mutations and adaptations in their underlying physical processes created divergent perceptual and cognitive biases within them, which behavioral economists and marketing neuroscientists increasingly explain. Marketing departments in all businesses analyze consumers’ different personal perspectives on various products on a daily basis in order to sell them more.

And yet, while consumers may have been created by universal axioms and processual systems, they nonetheless stand in a singular, intersubjective universe that yields different personal perspectives on it. Common sense indicates that you ought to be able to discuss the full meaning of market research in largely coherent fashion, even in this post-post-modern, deconstructed world. Since these days deconstructionist scientific and literary theories have largely accomplished their end-goals,⁹² organizations now operate in the deconstructed aftermath of a post-post-modern world striving (perhaps pointlessly) toward some common sense reunification to make an effective difference in what consumers commonly experience from the product they buy. This unified experience ultimately informs what gets bought in the singular exchange of product for money that the philosophy of Lean represents.

With this intellectual history in mind, I propose a unifying, coherent, Lean business ideology that leans an organization philosophically back into consumers, while simultaneously helping you become completely aware of the intellectual difficulties of creating over-arching, and over-sold, business schemes.

You must keep the scientific, literary and philosophical sophistication of consumers’ underlying, divergent, fundamental processes in mind while you recognize that customers identify themselves as buying product from a singularly unified, lean, personal perspective. Because regardless, consumers inevitably look to explain the coherence of their lean personal identities from that perspective and uplift themselves by buying product. Thus, Leanism is a “meta-modernist” or “pseudo-modern” business philosophy optimistically attempting to synthesize this reality while keeping in mind all this post-modern skepticism.⁹³

Beautiful Question Marks??

Keeping this post-modern intellectual legacy in mind along your journey up the true-north value stream, in order to motivate them to purchase something, you ought to find some unifying reason for the origin of who consumers are from universally axiomatic, or processually systemic truth-values that lean with at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of confidence. Otherwise, you will be selling into a speculative market. However to do so, science must be able to resolve all outstanding philosophical (or theological) questions, which science has not done to date. This counter-poses to Stephen Hawking’s statement in his book “Grand Design” that logical philosophy was a historical relic, and that quantum physics had assumed all of the burden of explaining why consumers exist and buy now.⁹⁴ Perhaps Hawking stated an axiomatic truth, but then science has not to date explained all outstanding philosophical questions, such as what might be a universally recognized, self-causing cause.⁹⁵ This leaves businesspeople still pursuing a unifying, scientific explanation for the most valid and predictable consumer insights.

Science has clearly done a remarkable job in explaining discrete facets of the universe and predicting consequences based on such insights. So to provide a high level perspective of the relationship of scientific theories leading back to the gap that science still has to fill about the origin of consumers’ and organizations’ existences, consider this chart created by Professor Max Tegmark at MIT.⁹⁶

Below in Prof. Tegmark’s chart⁹⁷ you can see a range of scientific disciplines explaining many discrete aspects of consumers’ existences. In fact, philosophy, physics and math are all degrees of the same “thing” from different perspectives, each informing the other to create a cohesive body of knowledge (BoK) within the great ontological medium of the universe.⁹⁸ Or as Galileo Galilei said, “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze… It is written in the language of mathematics.”⁹⁹ However, neither mathematics, science nor philosophy conclusively explain the origin of existence as indicated by the question mark ? at the top and bottom of this universal true-north value stream. To complete this chart, I added a question mark at the end of Tegmark’s chart to represent the necessarily unbounded intuitive speculation about what is not. If you imagine seeing this chart in three dimensions, these two question marks are one and the same, folding back on each other to touch and complete the possibly circular ontological teleology of consumers’ value streams within the ontological medium of all known existence:

Figure 3.11: Chart of scientific and humanities fields back to the inception indicted by a question mark ? at the top and bottom of this value stream. Prof. Tegmark’s Chart of Disciplines (© Professor Max Tegmark)

Like Douglas Hofstadter did in his book, “Gödel, Escher, Bach,” I am including a picture by Maurits Cornelis Escher within this discussion of circularity. Here you may compare this image of Escher’s to Tegmark’s chart. Escher’s grand image, “Waterfall,” shows how clearly Escher (and Hofstadter) understood this Lean true-north value stream:

By turning Prof. Tegmark’s chart upside-down, you can see how it aligns with our earlier delineation of the great fields of knowledge as seen again here:

You may further compress this spectrum of knowledge down to UPP true-north values that are similarly bounded by a question mark at each end:

You may finally extend this fountain of knowledge into a Leanism by likewise putting question marks on either end:

“U” stands for universal truth, “Lean” represents a processual truth, while “People” are a personal truth only truly knowable through empathy.

Fecund Universes?

To better understand consumers’ existences from a physical perspective, let’s revisit a little more closely one of the intuitive, scientismic explanations for consumers’ possibly circular existences we discussed earlier called “fecund universes.” One of the most intuitively speculative, scientismic conceptions for existence is that of “parallel” or “fecund universes,” which describes unlimited levels of universes representing all possible universes that could be.¹⁰⁰

In the inverse of the concept of, “From nothing, nothing comes,” the term “fecund universes” describes the notion that every possible thing exists, and what you know as the universe simply represents one version of infinite universal variations in infinite regression.¹⁰¹ In this scenario, consumers are a statistical result of the fact that something must exist, and if something exists then everything exists, and if every conceivable universe exists then consumers exist in the one iteration that provides for consumers’ existences as you personally know them now online or in-line in stores. In a way, the argument for fecund universes is reminiscent of the ontological argument for God’s existence since proponents get close to saying that if you could imagine any universe then that universe does exist. However, if you think this notion is completely far-fetched, consider the small irony that you like all people hopefully spend a third of your life each day in fairly random, parallel universes that are very personally real to you every time you go to sleep. Or as John Lennon is attributed as saying, “I believe in everything until it’s disproved… It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”¹⁰²

This concept of infinitely many universes actually originated with Plato and has been brought forward by modern physicists to conform with modern mathematics.¹⁰³ This adapted scientific concept of many worlds follows from the details of quantum mechanics that fall outside the scope of this book, but this general concept ought to help you gain perspective on what may be in the fullest sense and what may be not at all.¹⁰⁴

This concept of fecund universes in one sense may also be seen as the “Anthropic Principle” set into scientific terms, meaning that you should expect that the structure and cause of the universe as consumers have come to know it is consistent with one that intelligibly results in consumers being who they are.¹⁰⁵ The fecund universes concept conforming with the Anthropic Principle is thus just another way of stating that a consistent stream of reasoning exists far past “5 Whys” from consumers’ existences back to a sui generis, or self-causing cause, of everything simultaneously being since nothing simply could not be by its own definition.¹⁰⁶

Other Scientismic Theories

Aside from parallel or fecund universes, quantum physicists have posited many other theories for the origin of existence and all true-north value over the last several decades as quantum physics has advanced. Each real advance of quantum physics often directly affects the philosophy of Lean when determining the reason for consumers’ existences and source of true-north values. Quantum physicians such as Alex Vilenkin and Steven Weinberg have put forward several explanations for why consumers exist beyond fecund universes, from quantum fluctuations creating a complex universe of net zero energy, to quantum physics experiments showing the possibility of matter appearing out-of-order in time, thus voiding the concept of ultimate causation altogether as a mere mirage.¹⁰⁷ Other physicists have examined a real probability that the universe in which consumers exist is merely a simulation just like “The Lean Startup’s” IMVU as discussed in Value Stream 1, even though such answer would not resolve what created our simulated universe in the first place.¹⁰⁸

Alternatively, some philosophers have suggested that this universe as you know it exists because it is the best one that could be and still logically cohere. Thus, if something were to exist at all, it must be as you actually know it, which is a strong form of the “Anthropic Principle.”¹⁰⁹ Unfortunately, all such theories remain unprovable at the current moment, merely standing as intuitive, scientismic speculation not yet validated as processually systemic or universally axiomatic truths. While physicists and some philosophers continue to conjecture as to why consumers exist, none can yet prove it axiomatically or systematically, which is not to invalidate their speculation but rather to note the degree of speculation.¹¹⁰

Physicists, and some philosophers of science, present all of these conjectures as they do for all scientific and philosophical explanations under a general “best fit” principle, under a presumption that they can only know reality directly to the extent testable data fits to a given theoretical model. This is what fecund universes and other physical theories do to explain the origin of existence within the domain of physics, by fitting current scientific evidence to universal, true-north values. The search for the Higgs Boson “God Particle” most recently reconfirmed this method in some degree by failing to disprove the Standard Model.¹¹¹ By better fitting evidence to known truth-values, and occasionally changing those truth-values in response to conflicting evidence, physicists continue to better understand how the universe came to be and how physical laws led to consumers’ existences. They also shed more light on the normative true-north value consumers demand when they buy product from their unified, personal perspectives.¹¹²

Consumers’ Existences Are As If Self-Defined

To meaningfully monetize consumers’ normative and real true-north values in Lean fashion, you must discover their ignorances, infinities, circularities and paradoxes.¹¹³ To physicists, consumers are bounded at the atomic level by the difficulty in detecting particles and anti-particles, and at the cosmological level by the speed of light multiplied by the time light takes to travel from the furthest edges of the known universe.¹¹⁴ To mathematicians, consumers are bounded by infinities and inherent paradoxes that limit their ability to construct a universal, non-self-referential ontology.¹¹⁵

From the universally axiomatic perspective, you can view consumers’ existences as if they themselves were self-defining, as if their existences did not have an initial self-causing cause that gives them an ultimate “why.” From a processually systemic perspective, consumers’ reason to exist may seem logically tautological, as if they exist simply to further and more fully be even though logic suggests they ought to exist due to some finally agreed on, causal reason. And yet, consumers personally intuitively speculate, either as spiritualists, theists, scientismists or other -ists, about an ultimate third-party cause for their lives and existences.

I only restate here the common sense notion that consumers universally and processually experience existence as if they exist simply because they do regardless of creed, but they may also speculate about a theological or scientismic purpose not yet agreed on by at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of informed people.¹¹⁶

Thus, if only for the purpose of leaning metaphysically toward much of the true value that consumers consume, I suggest that you ought to at least recognize the possibility that consumers exist entirely due to mathematical and/or scientific reasons, which is to say, entirely due to universally axiomatic and/or processually systemic truths. Your understanding this perspective strictly for business purposes will allow you to see more clearly consumers’ existences as if they were Ontologically Teleological. Seeing all consumer’s existences as if they were operating up through an Ontological Teleology is different than seeing them as coming from whatever open-ended intuitive speculation you or they may have as to why they exist. An Ontological Teleology recognizes the fact that consumers’ ultimate cause may actually be tautological but may also be not - we don’t know.¹¹⁷ You benefit though from witnessing the upward genesis of their Ontological Teleology by better identifying and creating salable value. You do this by seeing them as if their purpose was possibly Ontologically Teleological in nearly circular form, which I understand is difficult at first to comprehend. For starters, here are a couple of personally intuitive hypotheticals of consumers with different belief systems, from theists to scientismists, to exemplify how you may better identify these consumers’ distinct forms of true-north value by drawing clear lines around them regardless of what they believe:

Theists

On the flip-side of scientific axioms, theists assume that an intuitive, theological, or emotional explanation of existence is an axiomatic true-north value. However, no spiritualistic or theistic explanation changes the fact that what theistic customers commonly experience is as if they lived in an Ontological Teleology given that they still live in a rational universe. Their faith simply acts as a personal self-causing cause to move them beyond the apparent circularity of existence that they experience. Thus, theistic customers seek meaning by speculating with personally intuitive, sublime forms of truth that ascend beyond the apparently circular chain of explanation of their commonly shared existence with other people who do not share the same theistic perspective. Theologians most often stipulate that their own personally perceived, intuitive experience and speculation is what they consider actually meaningful and only falsifiable on a mythical or emotional level until certain miracles, Nirvanas or end-of-days arrive. Theologians find Ontological Teleological true-north value by serving their physical needs as a means to find non-tautological true-north value through open-ended, non-falsifiable, religiously dogmatic axioms that will answer all their prayers.

Scientismists

Similar to theists, some consumers generally believe or have faith in reason itself to explain existence, despite the PSR, RCA, Axiom of Causation and 5 Whys not yet having axiomatic validity as I have defined it here.¹¹⁸ People who place their faith in science to answer the biggest questions of their existence are called scientismists.¹¹⁹ Your scientismic customers assume that a rational explanation for their ultimate existence exists. Just like theists who constantly receive spiritual stimulation and emotional validation, scientismists have their faith substantially and commonly reinforced by advances in modern science that empirically prove further consequential reasons for their lives and existences. These scientismic customers push the explanatory boundaries for their existences further and further by pursuing yet unproven, scientismic theories. This scientismic faith leads scientismists to speculate that reason within their existences holds to a physically valid self-causing cause such as might exist under quantum physics. Just like theists, scientismists faithfully find Ontologically Teleological value in serving their physical needs to hopefully find an ultimately self-causing physical axiom as an answer to all their theories, hypotheses, conjectures and prayers.

Intuition Bracketing (“IBing”) Speculation for Money

Now, to accurately measure the salable normative, real and monetary value that Lean organizations ought to be producing for money, I suggest that you carefully identify consumers’ speculative, scientismic and theological notions of intuitive value and differentiate them from known universal and process true-north values. Your product will serve each of those true-north values separately. For an organization to reproduce products that accurately addresses these true-north values, it must ground itself as well as possible in what it can axiomatically and systematically validate within consumers’ lives and existences, while recognizing that what consumers believe transcends the apparent circularity of their existences. This is especially true if starting a risky business venture or operating in a new market with limited historical profits since an organization will be bridging itself philosophically forward across unchartered waters toward true-north value that no one has yet discovered.

Like the money veil over what people monetarily value, a veil exists over what consumers normatively value within who they consider themselves to be, which requires further distinction. Consumers’ intuitive speculation makes identifying truly normative value within the domain of the ID Kata difficult, and therefore requires you to differentiate true-north value types so you can know how to produce meaningful product worth lots of money. To define this value veil for Lean business purposes within an HQ, I recommend developing a U-shaped, conceptual value lens that I call an Intuition Bracket (IB) structuring who consumers are and may be. The IB conceptual lens sees through the veil covering the truly normative value of existence, while what the IB filters out is open-ended, intuitive speculation. The Intuition Bracket is thus the summation of an infinite set within which all Lean true-north value (a.k.a. reason) resides, and is synonymous with understanding consumers’ specific place in the universe.¹²⁰

Chart of the Intuition Bracket or IB

As prescribed above, the conceptual IB allows a Lean business ideology to separate consumers’ universally axiomatic and processually systematic existences from what they personally, intuitively believe. You simultaneously ought to diverge such perspectives within your Lean business ideology while keeping both in mind. Such an Intuition Bracket allows you to easily exclude consumers’ intuitive speculation, but still allows you to define consumers’ (and corporations’) existences within the limits of the IB.¹²¹ As a reminder of what David Packard who founded HP said in 1965 as quoted from Good to Great:

I want to discuss WHY [emphasis his] a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being.

David Packard could have used the IB to identify consumers and companies’ essential reason for being by delineating different true-north value types. The bracket aspect of the IB creates an abstract category between the UP and personal true-north values, and I propose, allows you to more deeply categorize existence itself to analyze, identify and try to measure consumers’ real and monetary value as David Packard suggests.

The interior part of the Intuition Bracket contains that which consumers, and thus all of society, agree on an axiomatic or systemic basis. The IB contains that which belongs to consumers themselves, or by their very natures, that which is inherent, essential, proper, of their own, leaving outside the bracket their and all other people’s speculative, intuitive true-north value perspectives they cannot lean toward axiomatically or systematically with at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of common agreement.¹²² Let me reemphasize that what I mean by intuition is not what you might psychologically consider intuitive, but rather what people in general cannot axiomatically or systematically agree on at the moment with available knowledge.

I fully admit that the boundaries between these true-north value types can be unclear at first given the fact that science and perception, like “The Bed of Procrustes,”¹²³ often operate on a best fit basis. However, you can draw reasonably clear lines between that which can be falsified with empirical evidence through data and has some predictive validity through time with a reasonably certain degree of confidence, and those true-north values about which people speculate but have no widely agreed evidence or consensus.¹²⁴

So within the IB, reason stands as that which you axiomatically and empirically lean toward on its own based on widely agreed data across time, unlike intuitive truths that are not commonly agreed as predictably repeatable within at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of universal confidence. Standing immediately outside of and adjacent to the IB are the true-north value perspectives consumers personally believe, which may be beyond any reason. Let me now provide you with another schematic to represent the IB and the boundary of pure reason that you may use in a business ideology:

Inside the Intuition Bracket resides natural law, axiomatic and systemic truths, and all else that stands in juxtaposition to what is beyond consumers’ widely shared conceptions of existence. Whether by intuitive or scientismic causes, bracketing axiomatic and systemic true-north perspectives within the IB allows you to focus on who consumers are when they find themselves in the world, hemmed in by their ignorances, infinities, circularities and paradoxes.

Let me reemphasize for clarity sake that existence only appears this way for consumers on first impression, and that consumers must scientifically, intuitively or philosophically speculate to determine what caused the purpose of their existences. This matters in business because their purposeful meaning ultimately leans them toward buying product to further exist toward that end-goal, whether such end-goal is within the IB or not.

In the 1900s, the philosopher and psychologist Karl Jaspers was one of the first to define the IB when he created the term, “Existenz.” “Existenz” stands for the proposition that all people recognize these rational limits, and once known, begin to reconstruct personal identities reflecting who they authentically are within those known limits. Jaspers’ Existenz was the intellectual precursor to and inspiration for Existentialism.¹²⁵ Thus, within Leanism, you might even write this notion as, “Σxistenz,” replacing the “E” with the capital sigma “Σ.” The capital sigma Σ indicates that “Σxistenz” sums all of who consumers are, and all that they want to buy, which they at least intuitively believe leans them philosophically toward all meaning. This philosophical process allows you to move beyond the origin of consumers’ existences to lean that much further up their universal value streams to see what originally delights them.

The oriental religious philosophies that contributed to the development of Lean also support this concept of Intuition Bracketing. Since Buddha refused to systematically contemplate ontological arguments by setting those questions aside as moot,¹²⁶ by following the philosophy of Lean, you may in general for all practical purposes bracket what consumers intuitively believe caused their own existences so you may further lean toward what they need to buy while never underestimating what faith they have. Thus, IB’ing helps you identify consumers’ needs for sustenance, consumers’ intuitive speculation, and ideally the complementary combination of the two to pursue the greatest profit.

Ontological Medium (the OM)

Since the IB includes within itself axiomatic and systemic true-north value perspectives, it captures concepts such as universal spacetime and physical processes that you can refer to as an Ontological Medium, or an “OM” pronounced as, “AUM.” The OM is thick and pregnant with the Ontological Teleology,¹²⁷ consisting of all that you would expect within the IB, such as spacetime, chemistry, and the biodiversity of all life. Thus, the OM incorporates all of the assets that an organization manages.¹²⁸

While consumers have some ideas as to the origin of their existence, applying whatever theological or intuitive causes they choose outside the IB, you and consumers can bracket those causes outside the bounds of the physical OM and conceptual IB to advance up along whatever ought to be within those boundaries. You ought to employ the hypothetical concept of the IB in your business philosophy with at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of confidence to better isolate consumers’ Lean true-north values. Doing so allows you to effectively bracket the origin of the OM through which consumers buy product. When the OM is bracketed in this way, purchasing products furthers the consumption of more products to further be for nearly-circular purposes. I hope this concept of the Ontological Medium, a medium through which customers exist in spacetime and within stores, further explains for you the source of normative, real and monetary true-north value that products reproduce and customers consume.

I am now going to provide a modified chart of the IB adding the OM to it:

While all the forms of matter and energy within the domain of physics and other sciences reside within the Ontological Medium, within the Intuition Bracket, matter and energy self-organizes itself on a cosmological scale. This process occurs on balance within all universally axiomatic, immutable, and predictable physical transformations. The consistency of those transformations though seems to be impacted by the observer, and so the observer has a certain mesmerizing effect within the universal OM. This is why financial prophesy is inevitably heresy to some degree because the very act of planning and observing the results affects the very predictability of results that financial systems most reward. It is also why degrees of confidence increase with the number of people who agree with a truth-value proposition, because they cohere their collective, overlapping consensus as they do.

The Ontological Teleology (the OT)

If you remove any notions of a “grand design” from existence that people have devised or discovered, or any faith that science will ultimately explain why consumers exist at all, and you take existence simply as consumers’ find it right now at this very moment, both within the IB and what stands in juxtaposition to it, you arrive at an apparently self-defining, Ontological Teleology, or in short, the “OT.” The OT determines whether any consumption was nominally valuable, meaningful and thus good, and underlies all true-north value as defined by the fields of economics, psychology, and neuroscience, among all other disciplines. Since “Ontology” means existence, and “Teleology” means end-goal, “Ontological Teleology” simply means, “the end-goal of further existing.” Thus, the concept of the OT within the IB has a possibly circular, self-defined meaning.

Much like how you can see, the word “Toyota,” spelled out in its logo below, you can also see the overlapping O and the T of the Ontological Teleology within it:¹²⁹

The Oxford English Dictionary further defines “Teleology” as:

The doctrine or study of ends or final causes, esp. as related to the evidences of design or purpose in nature; also transf. such design as exhibited in natural objects or phenomena.

Consumers’ singular objective within the IB through the OT is an apparent end-goal to further exist to find meaning within the boundaries of axiomatic and systemic truths. Generally, people consciously consider only their immediate satisfaction and not their teleological purpose when consuming product within the Ontological Medium as bounded by the Intuition Bracket. Consumers search for meaning through the OT by attempting to spring away from its apparently circular paradox by rational or irrational deed or creed to find linear, goal directed purpose.¹³⁰

The OT ultimately moves upward in a spiral motion along the curvature of spacetime because the present and future are always similes (though not facsimiles) of the past, so consumers are bound to reinvent history as they reach new heights.¹³¹ Or to paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. BCE 535 BCE – BCE 475), “[N]o man ever steps in the same river twice because it is never the same river, and it is never the same man.” All goal-directed activity is teleologically non-circular to consumers within the boundaries of the IB so long as they only consider their beginning and final causes as being within the strict confines of the OM. Consumers can and do often choose to disregard the apparently logical circularity of their existences, or at least choose to believe in another cause not demonstrated through their common senses within axiomatic and systematic truths. For example, customers generally do not consider the apparently circular nature of their existences when consuming products, because shopping does not seem tautological within the bounds of a store or shopping cart and consumers’ everyday lives generally removed from existential extremes.

At the same time, referring back to the earlier discussion of the circular nature of Samuelson’s Revealed Preference Theory and Lean true-north value, that economic model generally fails to accurately map consumers’ activities because it does not incorporate consumers’ seemingly random search for meaning outside the IB. The oscillation between circular and non-circular belief causes people to waver between rational and irrational activity. Consumers’ wavering toward seemingly irrational activity becomes validated when it helps them self-organize more effectively through the OT toward the Ontological Realization of who they wish to be. For example, putting massive resources into churches in the middle ages and space exploration in more modern times with little certain benefits other than achieving a sense of awe demonstrate how people attempt to boldly go where the apparent paradox of the OT is not and actually self-organize around truly teleological meaning. All this represents the collective human will to universalize, which can be immensely profitable if you market this very valid true-north value to move consumers along the upward curvature of the OT.

Ontologically Prospective Projects (the OPPs)

Please find below our universal diagram expanded to include an existentially goal directed Ontological Teleology recognizing Ontologically Prospective¹³² Projects as “OPPs” or “OPPortunities.” In this chart, OPPs contrast with potential threats people avoid in order to survive as the leanest within the OT. People engage in OPPs to maximize their own lives and existences. OPPs are synonymous with optimizing, and are explicitly related to consumers’ Ontological Realization by engaging in activity that ultimately orients them upward along the Ontological Teleology.¹³³ The chart below shows a twisting, Ontological Teleology that somewhat correlates with the physical arrow of time carving its way through the OM.¹³⁴

In this chart, consumers move between the existential extremes of:

1. Opportunities to pursue a universalized, Lean perfection of instantaneous and seamless problem resolution and satisfaction that consumers seek and yet only know as a hypothetical possibility; and
2. Threats to consumers’ pursuit of perfection, or more accurately, being “other-than” perfection, which consumers know all too well and must correct for by thinking and behaving differently.

Consumers’ pursuit of perfection is their taking action to move toward real or perceived opportunities to reproduce as well as they can upward along the OT as they self-define it and away from threats to their becoming not. Each of these actions constitutes the resolution of the unique problem of existence. For example, customers optimize toward opportunities and away from threats by purchasing products that they perceive either as providing them with an OPP or removing a threat to their lives and existences. Customers like products with a thumbs up or down on a sliding scale with one to five stars as to whether consuming a product acts as an OPP to in-fact improve their ability to live better within the OM, or toward what they believe is outside the IB, so they may achieve meaningful moments of true-north value¹³⁵ by resolving their utmost problems, as seen again here in this chart:

Teleology v Teleonomy

Now is an appropriate time to differentiate between the terms “Teleology” and “Teleonomy” for you to best understand which Lean end-goals consumers chose to pursue for their meaningful OPPs. In its historical sense, Teleology describes a system whereby people intuit, infer, and possibly induce from the sophistication and organization of existence that: (1) creation exists to achieve a final end-goal due to its generally intelligible nature; or that (2) an intelligible first cause created a final end-goal that can only be speculated. However, “Teleology” in its modern sense and as used in this philosophy of Lean means that organisms operate in anticipatory fashion to predict their future Ontological Realization according to their reliance on the truth of axiomatic, systemic or intuitive values. In other words, teleology intentionally seeks a specific end-goal.

However, modern behavioral scientists dislike the term “Teleology” because they generally criticize historical teleology as having a time reversal problem in that the future goal of teleology in its historical sense must dictate present events. This entire notion violates natural law because the arrow of time within the context of the OM only moves in one direction as far as we know.¹³⁶ This time reversal problem arises from the fact that considering physics and biology to be goal directed violates the evolutionary principle held by most scientists with at least five sigmas (≥5σ) of confidence that behavior is unintentionally shaped by natural selection and environmental conditioning. Instead, behavioral scientists state that the evolution occurred “purposeively” as a result of natural laws operating through complex systems, and not guided “purposefully” toward an end-goal that may have been intentionally specified in advance.¹³⁷

To overcome this time reversal problem of teleology, in 1958 the behavioral scientist C.S. Pittendrigh created the alternative term “Teleonomy” that has since been adopted by a number of behavioral scientists for this same reason.¹³⁸ Teleonomy is just a biological term for life’s purposive nature. Thus, changing the terminology of “Teleology” to “Teleonomy” emphasizes the fact that natural laws act as the guiding force of the OT concurrently and coincidentally in complex, dynamic systems, resulting in the Ontological Realization and origin of biological creatures, rather than toward any predefined or purposeful goals.¹³⁹ Teleonomy is generally used to separate biological behavior from its more historically controversial first or final explanations in a universal, Aristotelian sense.¹⁴⁰

Behavioral scientists’ jobs are to think about the root causes of behavior in animals in order to better understand, predict and manage them. In that light, “Teleonomy” attempts to overcome these temporal problems and some theological connotations associated with the term “Teleology” based on its historical use to prove an intuitively speculative self-causing cause. Teleonomy is thus a fairly recent term used to describe the appearance of design in nature that does not have any inherent end-goal, but rather appears as if it was designed to achieve a goal due to its being naturally selected for maximum efficiency in regenerating and becoming further Ontologically Realized through time. Or as Timothy Ferriss said in his book, “The 4-Hour Workweek,” “Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.”¹⁴¹

I consider the teleonomic from teleological distinction useful at the beginning of describing consumers’ existences within the OM and IB in that the linear, existential development of life from organic matter prior to the creation of consumers’ independent agency of themselves reflects purposive teleonomic activity regulated by the external dynamics of the complex universe. However, at the point where teleonomic activity results in organisms with degrees of independent agency like consumers, that agency expresses a purposeful, teleological, goal-seeking cognition measured by how it acts to further become Ontologically Realized within the OM, IB and universe. Consumers’ Darwinian fitness gets both teleonomically self-organized and teleologically intentionally shaped upward along the OT.

For example, when bounded by the IB, even Aristotle’s own final cause or end-goal of further existing seems to be for Aristotle himself to simply further exist as a living system in seemingly logically circular fashion. Sadly, Aristotle no longer is, but his thoughts lived on through us. Existence likewise is where the first and final causes of who and why consumers are emerge into their unified personal perspectives to leave behind whatever present and residual effect their lives may have. Consumers exist within a universe that results in an inherent end-goal of their further simultaneously and optimally being both toward and away from what is other than existence. In other words, people live to avoid becoming not in a physical sense while also simultaneously living for what they speculatively believe to be so (i.e. what may be not) at the same time. This is true because at this moment any determination of whether the first or final causes were by grand design or not stands outside the IB as a speculative, intuitive truth.

Thus, the IB nearly equivocates Aristotle’s efficient and final causes, almost connecting them around the teleological bend, so you can measure to some degree those causes’ systemic expression and Ontological Realization along the upward curvature of the OT. The OT thus allows you to define and measure who consumers are within the limits of the IB because the Ontological Teleology is the great simpliciter and regulator of itself without further external reference outside the OM and IB. Either consumers are or they are not within these empirical boundaries.¹⁴² For example, natural selection as Ontologically Realized through the OT demonstrates a survival of the fittest, telos, or Lean end-goal of true-north value for genes¹⁴³ to exist to a greater degree. So, while all consumers optimize themselves against universal possibilities, the OT simpliciter is what gets Ontologically Realized because it is ontologically self-reinforcing, which is what allows you to measure it. Within the IB, the only thing that matters is what certainly is with a fairly high confidence, while keeping in mind what is not, and what may be.

Thus, this measurable, ontologically, teleonomically, purposive aspect of the universe results in consumers who have teleologically, purposefully, and subjectively cognitive faculties with independent agency that furthers their apparently tautological, Ontologically Teleological goal of extending and optimizing their existences by in-part buying and consuming the products you produce for money. Just because the ultimate goal of universalization is hypothetical, that does not invalidate its practical application to the here and now in order to make more money.¹⁴⁴ Consumers have a purposefulness that generally conveys a survival advantage and provides a higher standard of existence to them through their ability to spend money and consume energy to the greatest degree of all.

The Open-Ended Paradox of the OT

However, the OT through which consumers exist to a greater and greater degree appears paradoxical in an open-ended sense, since the origin of being and knowledge only seems self-defining when you bracket out intuitive speculation. Said another way, within the bounds of what people commonly experience, scientist, business person and theologian alike must all be collectively, intersubjectively agnostic while personally and professionally speculative about whether or not the OT ultimately self-defines what purpose their existences may have.

This existential condition leaves consumers either:

1. Personally or publicly declaring irresolvable ignorance as to the ultimate causation of the OM in an agnostic sense;
2. Attempting to leap beyond the apparently tautological, Ontological Teleology in an otherwise unexplained universe by thinking and acting irrationally;
3. Engaging in intuitive spiritual, theistic, or scientismic belief and speculation as a rational response to the apparent paradox of the OT by placing faith in:
   1. A spiritualism that may or may not be commonly experienced;
   2. In one or more deities that may or may not be commonly agreed; or
   3. In the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Axiom of Causation, RCA and/or 5 Whys due to science’s consistent explanatory success.

Most people actually seem to live day-to-day by simultaneously engaging in a mix of all three of these strategies. As you know from experience, some people conflate intuition with processual or axiomatic facts. Some people profess and orient their actions toward their intuitive beliefs out of ignorance. Or, some people profess belief in intuitive truths to conform to society but otherwise live like pragmatic agnostics. And others still hold personally intuitive beliefs that go against the OT and what appears to be their self-interest even after being fully educated as to why, what and how they are within the OM and IB to the best of existing knowledge. While all of these responses to the OT allow consumers to exist with the least cognitive dissonance vis-a-vis the apparent tautology of the OM within the IB, very rarely if ever do consumers execute any one of these strategies consistently throughout their entire lives.

Instead, consumers employ a complementary mix of these strategies to uniquely/profitably extend and optimize their existences within the OM. For example, intuitive speculation allows consumers to conceptualize what is hypothetically possible in their hearts and imaginations, but is not (yet) Ontologically Realizable.¹⁴⁵ Consumers then test whether such intuitive speculation results in their experiencing a greater Ontological Realization of who they are. Such intuitive speculation also functions as a method for consumers to test their self-organization with passion and meaning to reinforce and validate (or not) their non-circular, personally intuitive true-north values. This passion play gets repeated until consumers switch to agnosticism or scientism, or just act a little crazy to see what happens, to see whether such other strategies more effectively enhance their standard of existence.

Whatever consumers happen to intuitively speculate gets validated to the extent it expands the volume and velocity of those consumers’ Ontological Realizations, which is equivalent to who, why, what and how they are and all Lean value. From a Darwinian, processually systemic perspective, within the bounds of the universe, IB and OM, people’s conscious experience and activity is simply an endeavor to ontologically reinforce their survival as the leanest through offspring, monuments, memoirs, academic theories, charitable foundations, pseudonymous corporations and the like. Even if you assume a logical circularity of purpose within the IB, the increasing organization of nature within the OT leads somewhere, most namely to universalizing people through successive regenerations onward and upward in an Ontologically Teleological fashion. Thus, intuitive beliefs constitute a rational response to the soft paradox of the OT and are effective so long as they facilitate and do not hinder people’s overall expansion and optimization.¹⁴⁶

For example, imagine passengers’ journeys if you were an airline serving food to people with religious beliefs. If those religious beliefs forbade eating certain types of food, like spaghetti, then the airline’s food should conform to passengers’ intuitive true-north values for religious purposes as well as their process true-north values by being nutritious. At the same time, the act of serving the nutritious, religiously observant food cannot conflict with the axiomatic or systemic truths applicable to all people, like the ability for other passengers to have nutritious food. The food ought to reciprocally conform to all passengers’ various forms of intuitive speculation as well within a free society. All these true-north values must somehow cohere within the singular, overlapping consensus¹⁴⁷ and seemingly open-ended paradox of the universe. You can witness this existential sentiment reflected in the, “COEXIST” stickers commonly adhered to the backs of people’s automobiles:

Even scientismists admit that they do not know precisely how existence originated within several sigmas of confidence, and so they themselves hold personally intuitive, scientismic beliefs when existentially pursuing their work. So, whether you are a scientismist or not, you must recognize the extreme ignorance and the apparent tautologies, circularities and paradoxes in which all researchers and consumers find themselves existing regardless of their speculative persuasion.¹⁴⁸ People have no axiomatic or systemic explanation for what originated within the boundaries of the OM. At the same time, you likewise must appreciate that while intuitive true-north values are not axiomatically or systemically valid, they are Ontologically Realized within consumers’ personal perspectives (i.e. within their hearts, memories and imaginations). This may affect what and how customers purchase from you when you orient the production of product toward their true-north values through the philosophy of Lean.

Consider further that the apparently circular nature of the OM within the IB would be shattered if all fully-informed people willingly agreed to at least a Lean two sigmas (≥/2σ) of common agreement that a self-causing intuitive true-north value, like a deity, was one of Aristotle’s efficient or final causes. This may in fact have been the case in ancient times within highly theistic societies. For example, at any religion’s peak, did at least 95% of the informed population truly consider its dogmas to be systemic truth-values if not axiomatic truth-values? Did these theologies bring their dogmatically stated, efficient-first or final-teleological causes from outside of the IB to inside the IB as a universally axiomatic or processually systemic true-north values for their adherents?

Even if so, those theistic truths had to be ontologically validated to hold onto believers and continue to exist over time. Theologies ultimately live and die over time by their true-north viability, which is the Ontological Realization of their professed adherents within the OM.¹⁴⁹ Even where one or more people hold an intuitive true-north value, that personally held intuitive truth-value either does or does not obtain by creating Ontological Realization over time when interacting with other axiomatic or systemic truth-values and religions. This is the process by which speculative true-north value gets created and tested for falsification.

Silly Suds

A rather silly example of this dynamic is the “Pastafarian” movement started at the turn of this millennium. In 2005, a small group of people called themselves Pastafarians and satirically agreed that a Flying Spaghetti Monster® both created itself and the known universe. Pastafarians started doing that to protest the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to teach intelligent design in Kansas schools, evoking the famous 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial”¹⁵⁰ challenging the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools.¹⁵¹

Pastafarians satirically held that people’s Ontological Teleology would be to serve the wishes and purposes of the Flying Spaghetti Monster®. The Pastafarians’ proposed that the Flying Spaghetti Monster® (the “FSM”), as its greatness is officially called, was either a Universal or Process true-north value, which may also be considered to be an objective fact with large degree of certainty.¹⁵²

If you want to know why the FSM held such satirical sway, presume for a moment you and all consumers are in-fact Pastafarians. If so, the FSM would be an axiomatic truth, keeping all else you know the same. In that case, Pastafarians’ existential purpose within the OM would still appear as if it was Ontologically Teleological, with the goal still being to become universalized in juxtaposition to what may be not. Keeping all else the same, including a presumption of free markets, you would still ask how the FSM’s new axioms may interact with previously known axioms to increase Pastafarians’ Ontological Realization upward through the OT. Thus, the Pastafarians would become customers and buy a product based on that product’s real or perceived ability to increase their Ontological Realization through the OT in coordination the new, axiomatic fact of the FSM. The Pastafarians would do this by adapting their consumption of product to all the dogmas of the FSM, whatever they may be, to best extend and optimize their existences under this new deity.¹⁵³

On the flip-side, presume you and all people are not Pastafarians but rather scientismists who believe science has the ultimate explanatory power for what caused the OM beyond the IB. Presume further that a scientismist’s dogma is that existence is fully expressed in string theory, much like Pastafarians believe in pasta. This string theory says that this universe in which consumers now reside is but one possibility of an infinite number of Ontological Realizations, with each string representing infinitely many possible universes. In that case, consumers would accept that fact and continue to shop much the same. Customers would still seek to become further Ontologically Realized as they define themselves by buying product unless a string somehow caused their behavior to change. Whether the Pastafarians or scientismists were correct would not necessarily change people’s consumption patterns without further guiding detail to each of their dogmas.

Thus, the OM contains within itself today teleological, goal seeking customers looking to further their own existences by shopping up along the OT as if this was the only universe that mattered. Thus, we now move along the Ontological Teleology within the universal value stream to Value Stream 4: Lives, to consider the OM generally as teleologically ontological for the sake of clarity and to show some continuity with the history of philosophical thinking about true-north value and all meaning for living things. I will use “Teleonomy” only to the extent I intend to specifically indicate a goal directedness based on the measurable, dynamic confluence of axiomatic and systemic true-north values within the OM as bracketed by the IB with at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of confidence.

Value Stream 4: Lives

Value Stream 4 A3 Report:

• The self-organization of matter and energy within the OM leads to supervening levels of existence
• Thinking of life’s emergence in lean terms as a form of adaptation, regeneration and energization provides a philosophical perspective on modern evolutionary theory that may be applied universally to all consumers and organizations
• By this definition of life, even a stream of water is alive to the smallest degree
• Basic, biological activity is the first place were knowledge gets transmitted across generations of living systems to improve those systems’ overall existence
• Cognitive activity further optimizes the storage, transmission and application of knowledge toward improving those living systems’ existences
• Intentional, cognitive activity adds an element of self-interest to this process, thereby greatly increasing the ability for organisms to adapt, reproduce and energize
• Increasingly self-conscious organisms like consumers have had an advantage to date of improving their lives by being able to better imagine how their self-interest gets optimized by the different decisions they make – but their advantage is ultimately tested by whether or not they are relatively short-lived
• Meaning gets created to the degree living systems actually universalize themselves through the above processes

Now go along the universal value stream to lean through what life (or “命” in Kanji) really is. Consider how consumers’ lives and organizations’ viability emerged within the Ontological Medium. Think about how universal truth-values led to the processes by which consumers personally find themselves in the seemingly self-defining paradox of the OT. See how these value streams wound their way through the OM within the IB toward the seemingly limitless ocean of true-north value that all life and conscious existence is. This form of Lean metaphysical thinking about consumers’ lives within an HQ ought to flow from Descartes’, “I think, therefore I am,” being a distinct cause and effect, toward a possibly tautological, “We are, therefore we will be.” Your business ideology within the metaphysics of Lean likewise ought to head in circles, similar to a tornado or whirlpool, to greater and greater effect.

As an organization advances up the universal value stream in this way, you more clearly see consumers explicitly or implicitly finding meaning in their lives in the difference between what is within the IB and what not. Thus, each department of an organization ought to produce products that in-turn attempt to energize and optimize this meaningful difference in consumers’ lives through the processes of the ID Kata at each level, as seen again here:

Customers Self-Organize Upward Along the OT

The self-organization of living systems within the OM leads to consumers finding themselves in the open-ended, nearly tautological paradox of the OT running up through this busy universe. These physical and biological theories describing living, natural systems eventually self-organizing into consumers provides another perspective on why customers consciously buy and consume product. To give you a notion of how old this idea of self-organization is, consider the fact that in his 1633 book, ‘‘The World,” Descartes wrote that order tends to arise naturally from the universal laws operating in the chaos of the cosmos. He wrote that the origin and course of the planets and comets in general, “…were so extended and so impeding that, when they collided with one another, it was easier for several to join together.”¹ Scientists today simply rephrase this principle of teleonomic physical interactions in terms of modern scientific knowledge.

Science increasingly tests scientismic theories to explain why living consumers emerged from raw matter within the OM in an upward orientation to the OT to become who they are today. These scientismic explanations revolve around exploring the self-organization of complex structures from chaotic, dynamic systems of the universe, like the study of planetary ecology. These theories model processes that ultimately created consumers’ Ontological Realization. Consumers’ OT processes successively depend on each other to become Ontologically Realized in upward, self-organized fashion due to physical, chemical and biological axioms and systems. These processes get driven even further upward when consumers purchase and consume the products you produce.

Life itself constitutes and constructs one of the most sophisticated aspects of existence, the greatest of all, “Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication” (SUDS).² “Strategic,” in SUDS means the teleological end-goal of Ontological Realization, “Unique” means that which strategically succeeds among all neo-Darwinian games, and “Degrees” means the variously differentiated SUDS you experience in the universe. Therefore, “Sophistication” means an organisms’ strategically unique degree of self-organization that allows it to further and better live by adapting, regenerating and energizing. An organism’s SUDS measure its dependence on various axiomatic and systemic true-north values and its ability to downwardly manipulate them in order to improve itself within the OM. Doing that in the universe requires an organism or organization to pursue a specifically lean angle or vector of true-north value while contributing toward greater degrees of systemic sophistication overall. Adding products to the universal value stream creates more SUDS.

If you intuitively believe that life arose from supernatural causes intervening within the OM and disagree with scientismists’ claims that supernatural causes do not, consider these constraints that scientismists propose for their hypotheses about how life began to work physically:

1. The time over which these processes occurred since the inception of the universe over an estimated 13.7 billion years; and
2. The size of the universe to the extent we can even detect it due to the limiting factor of the speed of light.

When you think about the universe that way within the IB, these scales make the probability of a single strange physical dynamic called “life” exceptional but not completely outside the possibility of axiomatic and systemic explanation.

Self-Organizing and Supervening Levels of OT Sophistication: From SOOT to SLOTS

If life is considered to have no larger teleological purpose in this way, then a person may say that a simple molecule has no more meaning than a cellular organism within the OM. Along that same line of reasoning, a person may further say that a cellular organism has no more inherent meaning than a mammal, and a mammal than a person within the IB. All this is true within the conceptual lens of the IB but for the fact that different types of life relate within different Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication juxtaposed to what is Not Ontologically Teleological (i.e. what is “NOT”).³ What is not NOT in a double negative sense is Self-Organizing Ontological Teleology (SOOT) within the OM, creating all that matters.

Super Supervenience

The process of Self-Organizing Ontological Teleology forms dependencies between one level of existence to the next through what is technically called, “Supervenience.”⁴ Supervenience is an important concept within the OT for you to understand how to lean an organization philosophically. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘‘Supervenience” as:

2. Philos. The dependence of one property or quality on another for its existence.

From this perspective, certain properties, qualities, and/or truth-values depend on one another as a hierarchy of living existence. From this view, society depends on psychology, which depends on life, which depends on biology, which depends on chemistry, which depends on physics. Vice-versa, the composition of physics determines chemistry, which eventually through much complexity determines the foundational rules of sociology.

Thus, from the perspective of supervenience, cosmological SOOT further self-organizes into Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication (SUDS) that become Supervening Levels of the Ontologically Teleological Systems (a “SLOT” or “SLOTS”).⁵ These SLOTS emerge as levels of living existence,⁶ built upon the universal, axiological true-north values of natural laws ascending via processes into living animals with cognition, intention, and eventually a sense of meaning - like consumers.⁷ SUDS and SLOTS are embodied in everything from genes to memes (i.e. the cultural or behavioral “genes” of coordination, cooperation and imagination⁸). Thus, the supervenience of SOOT into SUDS, and then SUDS into specific SLOTS, occurs through axioms and systems interacting within the bounds of the Ontological Medium and what knowledge consumers pass on from one generation to the next.⁹

For example, just think about how Leanism supervenes on Lean, and Lean in-turn on the cultural and intellectual legacy of Eastern and Western philosophies. Consider further within Lean how consumers pull the production of product up through these SLOTS as we have described them. For another example, think about how an organization produces washing machines that energize and reproduce chemical reactions with soap. Since consumers need clean clothes to live, consumers’ biological processes in one SLOT require these washing machines to utilize chemical reactions that function within a physical SLOT for which no axiomatic self-causing cause is known. Who or what created the SLOT in which the physics behind soap operates? No one knows with axiomatic certainty, but all supervening SLOTS collectively produce delightfully clean consumers.

To illustrate these different SLOTS whether produced by living systems or not, below are three pictures that relate universal, processual and personal true-north value SLOTS: (1) of a Whirlpool Galaxy self-organizing at a cosmic scale; (2) a whirlpool of water self-organizing in nature; and (3) a manufactured Whirlpool® washing machine existing as an extension of consumers’ need to clean SOOT out with soap.

The interrelation between these supervening SLOTS means that they get manifested at each level of sophistication. These inter-dependencies also mean that any given star, planet or washing machine could have looked quite different with a slight change in its production process. Slight differences in their formation could have arisen due the notional “butterfly effect,” meaning that small differences across spacetime can have large effects at the largest scales. Given this extreme variability as to what becomes a fact, you must compare what you think ought to be with what you know is NOT by examining the processes of Ontological Realization. For example, compare the creative processes and aesthetic beauty represented in both the image below from the Hubble telescope composited over a nine-year period¹⁰ and the image of a kaleidoscope of butterflies next to it. Consider what a small change in certain natural processes might have rendered at these scales and whether you would change a thing:

Supervenience of Weather, Money and Consumers

You witness in everyday business how each of the supervening SLOTS feeds higher levels of living sophistication. Such aggregate, supervening complexity often takes on a life of its own through its own internal sophistication not easily explained by the lower level departments of an organization.

While you as a businessperson may attempt to forecast the viability of an organization to shareholders, no one in an organization could explain every thought or action taken by every employee that will reproduce that annual turnover. Analogously, while consumers perfectly understand the chemical interactions of H2O with the other primary elements in the atmosphere, they cannot predict the weather more than a few days in advance because they cannot model the interactions of every molecule in that system. The weather’s complexity supervenes on particle physics, giving it a secret life of its own, just like the money an organization produces.

For a more sophisticated example of supervenience, here is a fictional application of it in the future. The “transporter” on the television series Star Trek® operated by having people become atomically disassembled, transmitted and reconstructed in another place. These science fiction transporters beam people from one place to the next based on the premise that if people’s atoms get reconstructed properly at a new location, then people’s subjective consciousness and personal perspectives will follow along and supervene on their atoms in the new location as well.¹¹

For a more realistic but sad perspective, people’s physical supervenience may also be seen in emergency rooms or nursing homes where you live. Who people are appears to change as a function of how their brains get damaged as their neurological processes stop or change from disease or injury.¹² Any doctor will attest based on first-hand experience alone that people’s minds and thoughts undoubtedly supervene on their patients’ fundamental physical processes.

What Goes UPP Must Come Down

Thus, the notion of supervenience is generally one of upward causation from the less sophisticated systems with less Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication to higher SUDS. Generally SUDS are teleonomically purposive from one level upward to the next. However, at a certain point, consumers’ teleologically purposeful intentions push back down to similarly effect their aggregated, lower level systems that created their teleonomically purposeful intentions in the first place. This notion is one of common sense, but it is best to keep in mind that supervenience functions bi-directionally both upward and downward within consumers. Ultimately though, both directions of supervenience within consumers are bound by and get means tested against the Ontological Realization of who and why consumers are overall as living systems across spacetime.

Taking on a deeper, more speculative topic by way of further example, any question as to whether a soul supervenes on consumer’s physical processes (meaning a soul as something that exists beyond the OM and IB or may not be at all), or whether it continues when consumers’ brains no longer function, is only validated from consumer’s personal perspectives, since we cannot test whether a soul is in fact NOT. Whether a soul lives is a matter of intuitive speculation dealt with outside the IB.

The soul is a good example though of an intuitive truth-value that, given sufficient empirical support leaning toward at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of common agreement among all fully-informed people, could make it a systemic or axiomatic truth-value. Interestingly, a Nielsen poll in 2014 shows that Americans lean right at a single sigma (/σ) on this issue with 68% of the general population agreeing to a soul’s living existence. However, I can only speculate what percentage of Americans may be considered fully informed on these issues.¹³

How Did People Come to Live? Living SLOTS Emerge

Thus, to intelligently discuss scientific explanations of how consumers’ true-north values supervened and advanced upward through the living SLOTS of the Ontological Teleology, you ought to limit a business ideology to the boundaries of shared universally, axiologically and processually systemic true-north values within the OM as bounded by the IB. To see clearly what is not intuitive within the Yin and Yang of a Lean business ideology, you ought to recognize the abstract notion that axiological and systemic true-north values, or reason itself, is defined in juxtaposition to what is Not Ontologically Teleological. Fortunately, science can help you in this endeavor when used within the metaphysics of Lean since science has continually advanced what is known about what consumers truly value and what is not. Science’s great virtue is that it provides evidence that may be empirically tested and perhaps falsified with a high degree of confidence – even if what is being hypothesized is not yet considered an axiomatic or systemic true-north value.

For example, discoveries in chemical systems show that, under certain conditions, non-living molecules such as proteins compete for resources. RNA teleonomically, purposively “competes” for chemical nucleotides to determine which replicates.¹⁴ Small differences in the configuration of these molecules may result in higher or lower reaction efficiency. Since chemical resources in these systems are finite, their variance leads more reactive processes that adapt, reproduce and energize to a greater extent than others. Less regenerative and adaptive chemical processes recede and eventually become NOT due to all the energy resources going to the more reactive processes.

Thus, within a scientismic explanation for life, the process of natural selection begins at the chemical level. In fact, this type of chemical system - unlike the more common chemical reactions you study in beginning chemistry – is more like a tidal wave in that it only achieves a form of stability when it continuously changes. In this conjectured explanation for life, the chemical system maintains its Ontological Realization as a consistent process within the OM upward along the curved arrow of spacetime until it somehow fails to adapt to its environment, reproduce itself through reproduction or find a source of energy. You might think of these constant chemical changes producing a perpetual reaction to be much like an organization’s revenue streams that only appear to be relatively stable, if (hopefully) increasing, while consistently turning over time.

To best understand consumers’ and employees’ systemic origins and to measure and predict what they will normatively and really buy, look further at recent scientismic explanations for how consumers came to live from inert matter. To do this, we will look through the conceptual lens of the IB at the Ontological Realization of these universal, processual and personally scientismic true-north values.

Leaning Toward ARE SLOTS - Becoming Meaningfully Viable

I developed an “ARE” acronym, standing for Adaptation, Regeneration, and Energization, to test the necessary and sufficient processes that living systems like consumers - and organizations as a group of real people organized as a fictional person - must do to remain minimally viable.¹⁵ Everything consumers and organizations do is directed toward energizing their adaptation so they may ultimately reproduce.¹⁶ Similarly, all product must ultimately optimize all aspects of these ARE processes that we lean toward from a metaphysical and scientismic perspective to help remain minimally viable. Organizations lean toward ARE processes by adapting to market conditions, regenerating product ideas, and gathering the contractual power to further distribute matter and energy as profits throughout society. “ARE” is the organic inception of true-north value and all meaning within the OM when bounded by the IB.

The “Lean toward ARE” acronym ought to reflect how all consumers came to live and what produces their Ontologically Teleological motivation to buy product. Living systems like all consumers adapt to further live through specific Supervening Levels of Ontological Teleological Sophistication. This scientismic perspective then allows you to determine how to best improve consumers’ lives within the OM and IB through a meaningful exchange for money by presuming that the Axiom of Causation applies within the bounds of the IB. If you presume this, you could then logically intuit, infer, possibly induce and then deductively market test the extent to which an organization’s product helps consumers adapt, reproduce, and energize throughout the OM.

Consider the ARE acronym in reverse order; its inverse meaning is, “ERA.” Thus, performing ARE processes determines how long consumers will persist through time. The capital letter R represents “Regeneration,” which stands central to this ARE concept for ontological continuity, which is the Rubicon of all consumers’ value streams. Regeneration is necessarily and sufficiently supported by Adaptation and Energization because a system regenerating like a water fountain must also teleonomically find energy to perpetually adapt and reproduce at the most basic levels within the OM to still be considered a water spout.

As will be elaborated further below in this Value Stream 4, the epic of evolution generally over-emphasizes reproduction by individual organisms. Reproductive concepts often distract people from seeing regeneration by living systems as the higher abstraction better describing the Ontologically Teleological goal that all organisms (and organizations) have over time. Regeneration is what living systems most fundamentally do to maintain their identity against the forces of entropy and competition.

Reproduction in and of itself is not the process ultimately being satisfied. Rather reproduction, along with adaptation and energization, is a subset of the larger, possibly circular goal of extending and optimizing systemic regeneration. For example, consumers reproduce themselves to universalize their personal value streams both during their lifetimes and through their offspring.¹⁷ Reproduction is simply one method of regenerating their Ontological Realization further in spacetime once they pass away.

Living organisms like consumers do not intrinsically or necessarily want to reproduce for self-organization, but rather to increase the volume, velocity and effectiveness of their Ontological Realization that their offspring physically extend. Regeneration is the central true-value stream to which the tributaries of adaptation and energization contribute. Consumers’ lean toward ARE processes to adapt and consume energy to maintain or increase their functional structure and identity to the edge of senescence. Lean, living organisms want to reproduce because, as far as is known, biological organisms cannot perpetually regenerate within themselves indefinitely.¹⁸ Reproduction is one mechanism that organically arises as a matter of practical necessity to extend and perpetuate consumers’ Ontological Realization through adaptation and regeneration. Organisms must reproduce themselves in order to extend their lives and existences through their offspring.

Here is a diagram showing the start of ARE processes at the beginning of the universal value stream, which I will go ahead and symbolically shorten to “/ARE.” This diagram abstracts the notion that somewhere within the universe, IB and OM, the U/People business model becomes viable. This chart indicates how certain Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication arise into their own /ARE Supervening Level of Ontological Teleological Sophistication:

You / People

To understand what it means to lean toward ARE processes within the philosophy of Lean, you must understand what life truly is. However, the term Life with a capital “L” is difficult to define scientifically because Life is an informal and vague description of the things we consider to be alive because they self-sustain living processes.¹⁹ Nonetheless, the term Life has some scientific meaning because scientists commonly refer to the concept of, “Living Systems.” Life for scientists describes the boundaries between scientific fields such as chemistry, biochemistry and biology that ultimately produced consumers. No definition of Life could fully capture its meaning, especially for consumers as conscious beings, but you might find a lean, flexible statement of the qualities of living systems to make money meaningfully by better serving why, what, and how consumers are alive.

One General Definition of Life Proposed by a NASA Working Group

If you research a general definition of Life, you will probably find one created in the 1990s by NASA’s Exobiology Discipline Working Group (a.k.a. the, “Working Group”).²⁰ The molecular biologist Addy Pross referenced this definition of Life in his book, “What is Life? How Chemistry becomes Biology”²¹ that extended Erwin Schrödinger’s famous 1944 book, “What is Life?”²² The definition of life that NASA developed within the Working Group was, “A self-sustaining chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.” This definition is fairly compact and self-explanatory, but I think you would find it more helpful toward better understanding true-north value in the philosophy of Lean to hear from Dr. Gerald Joyce,²³ who was a member of that NASA Working Group. Dr. Joyce described the more complex definition of “Darwinian evolution” as follows:

‘Darwinian evolution’ has an associated property list: you can’t have Darwinian evolution without self-replication or reproduction. You can’t have it without mutability, heritability, and variation of form and function. And metabolism is in there too. You can’t have Darwinian evolution without, at some level, a flux of higher-energy starting materials to lower-energy products that drive the processes of replication and whatever is necessary to support replication. And then there are the specialty properties like locomotion, irritability, ecological properties such as compartmentalization, and so on; those are all adaptations. And then things like photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, energy storage, and so on; those are just strategies of adaptation. All of that is subsumed by the ‘Darwinian evolution’ part.

Qualities of Living Qualities

NASA’s Working Group definition is a great start, but by looking at the concept of life in abstractly metaphysical rather than Darwinian chemical terms as you have been doing in much of this Value Stream 4, you could perhaps better philosophically describe Life’s qualities however consumers and organizations exhibit them. If you sufficiently broaden the qualitative description of Life, you might better analogize and relate its necessary and sufficient conditions to the para-sciences of business and economics. You might then perpetually improve consumers’ standards of living through time in the meaningful exchange for more money. If you include these broad, qualitative descriptors of living systems within the business ideology of a Lean HQ, here are a few criteria that I recommend you follow when doing so:

1. Science recognizes that “Life” is more of a processually systemic true-north value than a thing per the Working Group’s definition, so any description of the qualities of Life ought to be processually systemic;
2. A description of the qualities of living systems ought to be as efficient as possible under the guiding principle of Occam’s Razor;²⁴
3. If an organization lists different qualities of Life, they ought to be:
   1. Necessary, such that if one quality was removed, the process of Life would never obtain or would eventually cease; and
   2. Sufficient, such that no further process would be necessary to sustain an overall living system;
4. An organization ought to want a statement of Life’s qualities abstracted to the highest true-north value possible to cover all physical and metaphysical contexts within the universe and be amenable to analogizing to more specific business fields; and lastly
5. An organization ought to want a statement of qualities that is easy to apply and remember in an everyday context for all, especially if you analogize from the broad qualities of consumers as living systems and apply them across all organizational functions.

Lean Toward ARE Processes

The /ARE acronym provides the three necessary and sufficient qualities that consumers and organizations must possess to perpetually live. It provides a broad church for all forms of scientismic conjecture, hypothesis and theory about what life is however it may appear, not just when it is organic. /ARE is thus the philosophical abstraction and meta-modern synthesis of evolutionary theory. /ARE measures scientismic conjectures, hypotheses and theories about evolution based on the degree they each explain the Ontological Realization of living systems through Lean adaptation, regeneration and energization. You can lean toward ARE to analyze life as follows:

“A”

* Adaptive (Anticipatory/Aligning):²⁵ Living systems like consumers must systemically adapt to changing environmental factors to maintain and potentially extend their energization and regenerative processes, such as through natural selection. In addition to natural selection and other biological adaptation theories,²⁶ adaptation also applies to consumers’ behavior within their lives in the common sense that consumers decide best how to extend and optimize their lives as living systems. Consumers adapt and align as living systems by leaning their Ontological Realization as that which best energizes and reproduces who they are in response to the information they experience within their demographic and environmental circumstances. Through these feedback mechanisms, consumers adapt according to how they are in fact Ontologically Realized, such as when deciding whether a product provided its anticipated benefits after purchasing and consuming it.²⁷

“R”

* Regenerative (Reproductive/Repairing):²⁸ By definition, consumers as living systems adapt and consume energy²⁹ as a physical axiom to reproduce their living processes within themselves or through their offspring, which generally involves some form of reproduction according to natural selection. To do so, consumers must adapt their energy transforming processes in order to continue to reproduce. The most effective living systems increase the size and/or sophistication of their energy transforming processes by increasing the volume, velocity and/or effectiveness of adaptation through time in order to reproduce even more. Per natural fitness, regeneration stands central to living processes but necessarily requires adaptation and energization within the OM; and

“E”

* Energetic (Entropic/Endergonic):³⁰ To support regeneration,³¹ consumers’ lives must ultimately increase universal thermodynamic equilibrium through transformational, material processes.³² Since energy is an abstract collective concept,³³ the vital question³⁴ for consumers as living systems is how they combine or match energy processes,³⁵ as exemplified literally by the pathway of sun to photosynthesis to food, and figuratively in their motivation to purchase product.³⁶ Ultimately consumers’ must synthesize metabolic energy to better live, exist and shop in ways they believe are best. But for this qualitative definition of life, consumers like all life must constantly seek potential energy in order to further their own adaptive and regenerative activities. All life must do this either through direct consumption, or by matching external energy within their own internalized energy conversion pathways, whether unintentionally (i.e. teleonomically) such as how plant life grows toward energy, or purposefully (i.e. teleologically) like how consumers shop at grocery stores.³⁷

This tripartite, scientific conception of ARE - adaptation, regeneration, and energization - orients itself with the Buddhist concept of pratītyasamutpāda introduced in the last Value Stream. See how Dalai Lama XIV defines “pratītyasamutpāda” as a reliance upon three conditions, which you may apply analogously to the three key elements of the ARE acronym within the philosophy of Lean:

In Sanskrit the word for dependent-arising is pratītyasamutpāda. The word pratitya has three different meanings–meeting, relying, and depending–but all three, in terms of their basic import, mean dependence. Samutpada means arising. Hence, the meaning of pratītyasamutpāda is that which arises in dependence upon conditions, in reliance upon conditions, through the force of conditions.³⁸

According to Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, this Buddhist aphorism provides a physical analogy for this pratītyasamutpāda concept that, “Three cut reeds can stand only by leaning on one another. If you take one away, the other two will fall.”³⁹ Likewise, the Christian concept of the holy trinity dictates that the Christian God is dependent on the three identities as father, son and holy-spirit. Similarly, life is necessarily and sufficiently dependent on all three distinct but interrelated ARE processes in a scientismic, meta-physical and personal sense.

How Far ARE You Leaning Toward Consumers?

I am sure you recognize the three principal ARE qualities of living systems in consumers, by how consumers adapt, reproduce and energize. The duration of any living system’s era can be measured by the time it successfully leans toward ARE processes. These ARE processes are lean (or “/”) because they fundamentally, necessarily and sufficiently define who, why, what and how all consumers are within the IB. Consumers physically energize by eating well, but they also energize metaphorically. For example, consumers figuratively energize themselves through education with information and by developing new relationships in person and online. Thus going forward, energizing means consumers doing so in their lives both literally and figuratively.

Consumers likewise reproduce who they are biologically, personally, financially and socially. They reproduce biologically during their lifetimes against old age and through their descendants by consuming nutritious energy, personally through their psychological maturity, financially with their income used to pay for product, and socially by sustaining relationships. Likewise, consumers adapt to the changing circumstances of their lives directly or indirectly through evolution. As long as consumers, their descendants and their societies successfully lean toward ARE processes to their limits, consumers will all continue upward along the spiraling arrow of time as consistent living systems as long as physically possible, thereby increasing their total lifetime value as customers to organizations.

How Lean ARE an Organization’s Processes?

Given the breadth of this description of consumers as living systems for a Lean business ideology, you may now further apply ARE living processes analogously to any organization. An organization must energize through commodities and human capital by converting those resources into adaptive and regenerative business purposes. An organization must reproduce new product and profits, and it must adapt to changing circumstances by conducting regular Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (i.e. “SW/OT”) analyses within its competitive context.

Given that an organization is a group of people, an organization must likewise convert its energizing inputs into greater structure through the product it reproduces. The product must enhance the structure of life because in the long run, perfectly functional societies regulate away organizations that reproduce money with no normative value, and thus no truly meaningful, true-north value. While keeping in mind the significant problems of money’s reflection of the true-north value stream as described in Value Stream 2: Money & Economics, an organization can approximately measure the meaning of the money it produces through the energizing earnings it retains. Since making money meaningfully means extending and optimizing people’s lives and existences for adaptation and regeneration overall, an organization and its product becomes an energetic, physical part of consumers’ ARE processes, supporting their lives from below and within.

Apple of My “i”

You can make more money meaningfully by leaning an organization and its technology by extension toward ARE processes. For example, you can see Apple, Inc. lean toward ARE processes at the micro-economic level with the iPhone product and its related apps, since “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”⁴⁰ Apple, Inc.’s product exemplifies how apps lean toward ARE processes to determine the era of a specific organization by similarly leaning toward Apple’s customers:⁴¹

Adaptation: Since adaptation relates to how an organization successfully recharges its energization and regenerating processes to better exist in its business environment, you must ask questions such as how is Apple adapting to its changing competitive landscape? What is Apple developing to take advantage of opportunities available to it in the current business environment that might not have existed last year or may in the future? If you review Apple’s risk factors described in its latest annual report, how is Apple adapting to minimize those threats? Given the perpetual introduction of substitutes for its CORE product, what is Apple developing to meet those threats or avoid them altogether?

Regeneration: Since regeneration relates to an organization’s outputs, you must ask questions such as how Apple reproduces highly demanded product through its energization and adaptation? How is Apple structuring its sales & marketing, finance & accounting, people services and operations to ensure it reproduces and grows revenues and profits in the short, medium and long-term to pay operating expenses, debt and dividends? How is it regenerating and growing equity gains to encourage further demand for its stock and ensure the perpetuation of its business? How is it regenerating new lines of product to delight consumers?

Energization: Energization relates to Apple’s figurative or literal inputs. For example, energization requires Apple to manage its human talent acquisition system to ensure it is attracting the most valuable employees it can. Energization requires asking how Apple makes sure that its vendors provide it with the best quality inputs for its products?⁴² What sort of competitive and marketing intelligence is Apple gathering? What is Apple’s corporate and technological acquisition strategy? What sources of financing is Apple seeking in debt and equity besides the earnings it retains? How is Apple ensuring the health, engagement, and creativity of its workforce to optimize the energy of its human capital? All these inputs energize Apple and are necessary for it to successfully adapt, reproduce and “charge” the best prices for its meaningful product.

Consumers’ Pocket Universe

If living systems’ eras lean on ARE processes, then Apple’s iPhone and its apps serve the discrete needs of Apple’s customers’ living ARE processes by leaning them to a higher degree.⁴³ The information produced by Apple’s product inter-subjectively maps reality, including other people’s perceptions, to other people’s perceived reality in a converged consensus to better lean them toward ARE processes. Thus, the information provided to people by apps metaphorically energizes people’s adaptive and regenerative processes.

Adapting through Apps: Energizing social media and news feeds provide the information necessary for consumers to adapt to the changing circumstances of their lives. Weather apps allow people to adapt to their perpetually changing physical environment. Calendar apps allow Apple’s customers to adapt their schedules as necessary. Customers use fashion news to adapt their wardrobes to the latest clothing trends, or sports news to adapt their fantasy league teams each week.

Regenerating through Apps: In the most literal sense, dating apps allow customers to meet partners for continued vitality and offspring. Customers use health apps and wearable technology in order to optimally reproduce their well-being within their own lifetimes to the limit of their eras. Social media apps allow customers to create multiple, digital personas or avatars to virtually reproduce themselves online. Customers communicate with apps such as those that check into a physical location in order to reproduce friendships. Business apps allow consumers to reproduce their income that in-turn gets spent on product to lean their businesses’ ARE processes further and further upward.

Energizing through Apps: Apple’s customers must energize through new app information as necessary to fuel adaptation and regeneration, whether through algorithmic search suggestions, social media likes or fitness trackers. Customers use social media apps to energize their personal and professional networks. Customers energize through music recommendations, like Siri recommending Johann Sebastian Bach based on feedback they have given. Customers use restaurant, delivery and grocery apps to vitalize themselves with new food. Customers use fitness apps and trackers to energetically stimulate their activity.

All these uses for Apple’s Apps demonstrate the real-world application of the ARE acronym to all life and business. Let’s now look at evidence supporting this tripartite conception of all living systems starting with energization, which funds all adaptation and regeneration.

The Axial Age – Energizing Money and Intuition

The physical, metaphorical, and metaphysical concept of energization as a fundamentally Lean component of life is evident in the book, “The Measure of Civilization,” written by Stanford historian Ian Morris.⁴⁴ Morris provides significant data showing a statistical correlation between the development of money, vitality, and energy capture by people during a period of history Karl Jaspers termed the “Axial Age.” Karl Jaspers if you recall is the same philosopher who coined the term “Σxistenz” discussed in Value Stream 3.⁴⁵

In “Measure,” Morris assesses the development of people by their, “…abilities to get things done in this world,” which Leanism equates with doing things that lean toward adaptation, regeneration and energization. Morris remarks that one of consumers’ most remarkable attributes is their ability to apply energy for non-food purposes as a measure of usefulness, which the philosophy of Lean describes as increasing adaptive activities in order to reproduce. Morris noted that sociologist Leslie White first championed energy capture as the main driver and measure of social development of all people.⁴⁶ Morris further concludes in his book “Measure” that, “Energy capture must be the foundation for any usable measure of social development,”⁴⁷ which social development we know precisely aligns with adaptation and regeneration.

Morris supported this argument with extensive data. The following charts show Morris’ estimated upward curve in the change of energy capture that occurred by people living in the Western world from 14,000 years before the Common Era to the turn of this millennium:⁴⁸

More recently, you can see a chart from 500 years before the Common Era to the turn of this millennium here with similar effect. You can see an upward, exponential curve in energy consumption as meaningful society advanced:⁴⁹

Another scholar, Jared Diamond, author of “Guns, Germs & Steel,” supported Morris’ claims by noting that people choose the means of production that yields the highest energizing and nutritional returns.⁵⁰ More recently, a group of scholars in the journal, “BioScience,” conducted a quantitative study confirming the unsurprisingly powerful correlation between economic growth and energy consumption.⁵¹

Spaghetti Suds ARE Processes

Since energization, along with adaptation and regeneration, represents one of the most fundamental components of living systems and consumption, the ARE processes are like the Flying Spaghetti Monster® described in Value Stream 3 brought down to Earth, sitting in a pot of boiling water. Eventually, the combination of water and pasta plus heat creates persistent suds that float on the surface of the water to reach ever greater heights. Consider this process of boiling pasta as the most basic Self-Organizing OT developing a Strategically Unique Degree of Sophistication and emerging into a unique Supervening Level of OT Sophistication.

The chemically axiomatic and processual true-north values of the water and pasta form one SLOT, with the suds from the spaghetti and highly energetic, gaseous water having Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication in a higher, supervening SLOT. The suds energize from the interaction of the boiling water and spaghetti, with the bubbles continuously regenerating from that evolving system that consumers eventually strain, cool down and eat to live in the highest living SLOT within the known OM.⁵²

The FSM is Not Dead⁵³

This may be a shocking conclusion, but according to our definition of life from ARE processes, spaghetti suds are “teleonomically” alive. After the suds emerged from within the OM and they formed from the energizing water regenerating them, these suds to some small extent teleonomically adapt to perpetuate themselves by changing shape and size as necessary to the extent they can. These suds unintentionally, only by way of their physical and chemical structure, seek new sources of energy to reproduce with the single Strategically Unique Degree of Sophistication they hold onto. Even though the simple SLOT that these suds occupy is merely a chemical process, it is a living system because the suds to a small degree adapt and reproduce while they have a source of energy. The SUDS systemically, yet unintentionally, seek new sources of energy to perpetuate themselves ontologically in spacetime. And, from another perspective, the rising spaghetti suds are actually an extension of consumers’ own lives because while the suds supervene on spontaneous, teleonomic self-organization within the OM from chemical processes, consumers teleologically created these suds to energize themselves to become more of who they are and want to be as human beings.

Emergence of SUDS through SOOT into SLOTS

Beyond pasta suds, another living ARE process is that of a wave in the ocean. Once a wave begins, it appears to reproduce a single, stable column of water moving across space and time in a dynamic equilibrium. However, a wave is like the regenerating cells within consumers’ bodies, and an organization’s annual revenues, by constantly turning over but generally maintaining a consistent identity. The wave originates and gets Ontologically Realized while traveling through the Ontological Medium by constantly becoming composed of new water molecules and yet remaining defined as a consistent, yet greater, wave from a person’s personal perspective.⁵⁴ Like suds arising in a pot, a wave teleonomically (i.e. unintentionally) reproduces and optimizes itself as a wave simply by increasing the upward pressure on its column of water. This dynamic is much like shareholders demanding greater share prices and dividends so they may consistently and increasingly identify themselves as awash in money - it’s their way of maintaining who they believe they are and becoming even wealthier people than they ever imagined themselves being.

by including quotes about happiness from esteemed individuals repeated here:

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
– Buddha

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
– Aristotle

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
– Franklin F. Roosevelt

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
– Mahatma Gandhi

The primary cause of unhappiness [and happiness] is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
– Eckhart Tolle

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
– Martha Washington⁵⁵

The Coke-Cola Company then says on its website:

Like Coca-Cola, these great men and women each asked themselves the same core question – what is happiness? While each of their own definitions differ, each touches on a similar cord that we must all come to realize. The quest for true happiness is not really a quest at all, but a decision and a choice. So don’t wait another moment. Open an ice cold Coca-Cola and choose happiness!

• Coca-Cola Company Open Happiness Ad Campaign⁵⁶

According to the Coca-Cola Company, consumers can consciously choose to downwardly direct their body to drink Coke, which consumption then upwardly directs their physiological and psychological responses to make them feel a certain way in-turn, just like any other drug. According to the Coca-Cola Company, by its customers consuming its product of ice cold Coke, it determines what happiness its customers experience in their lives and existences. So, consumers’ downwardly conscious decision to consume a Coke will upwardly and teleonomically bubble up happiness within them like SUDS in a U-shaped utility curve. That is the real thing the Coca-Cola Company D/Ontologically produces. This U-shaped utility function works upwardly along with the psychological relation that Coca-Cola Company wants consumers to have between its brand and whatever else really causes them happiness by extending and optimizing their lives and existences.

Setting aside Coca-Cola Company’s philosophical analysis of happiness for a moment, in describing Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham phrased its primary question as, “What use is it?” The U/People business model translates that question to mean the extent a product like Coke universally leans toward ARE processes, toward this abstract ethic of Universalization by creating opportunities or removing threats to consumers’ lives and existences within the OM, beyond the IB, and toward what ought to be BOT.

Since notions of good, better, and best, describe what product leans consumers up along the Ought better than any other product they could buy, Utilitarian Universalization can be restated as, “[t]he view that the morally right action is the action that optimally leans consumers in the highest SLOT toward ARE processes overall.” So optimizing ARE processes toward universalizing people overall as the most sophisticated SLOT known, helps you consider what is the most virtuous product an organization ought to reproduce. Consider this notion in the context of what Apple Inc. said is its mission statement during its 2013 developers’ conference:

This is it.
This is what matters.
The Experience of a Product.
How it makes someone feel?
Will it make life better?
Does it deserve to exist?
We spend a lot of time on a few great things, until every idea we touch, enhances each life it touches. You may rarely look at it, but you will always feel it. This is our signature, and it means everything.

• Apple Inc.’s Mission Statement Video at its 2013 World Wide Developers’ Conference in Cupertino, California

Apple’s mission statement aligns with Utilitarian Universalization. Contemporary philosophers generally define Utilitarianism not with happiness as its measure of value, but as a form of Consequentialism through universalizing a person’s ego so that it enhances each life it touches. Like R.M. Hare, modern philosophers now write this type of Utilitarianism as shorthand, “U.” They view “U.” as starting from consumers’ self-conceptions, moving outward to their kin and demographic categories such as family, community, nation, environment, politics, culture and peer-group, to eventually touch the entire world.

Classic Utilitarianism on the other hand evidences Apple’s notion of emotional enactment when it says, “…but you will always feel it,” by using emotion such as happiness as its value system. Classic Utilitarianism holds that you ought to maximize that emotion within consumers to the extent it orients them within the OM toward their true-north and leans them along the Ought.⁵⁷ Emotions, like happiness, represent a sensory concept or an emergent class aggregating the extent consumers optimize themselves along the Ought.⁵⁸ Consumers’ emotions thus ultimately get back-stopped and means-tested against truly normative UP values rather than more subjective Personal values.

As demonstrated by substantial empirical evidence and common sense leaning toward more than five sigmas of agreement, emotion is grounded in psychology and is conceptually related to physics and chemistry even if fairly removed from those physical forces due to the sheer complexity of higher mental SLOTS. Emotion thus represents an aggregate of consumers’ sensory phenomena reflecting what they experience for better or worse through the existential factors of processes that U/ARE. This dynamic shows itself in the following dialogue between a Trainer and New Hire at the Walt Disney Company as described in “Built to Last”:

TRAINER: What business are we in? Everybody knows McDonald’s makes hamburgers. What does Disney make?
NEW HIRE: It makes people happy.
TRAINER: Yes, exactly! It makes people happy. It doesn’t matter who they are, what language they speak, what they do, where they come from, what color they are, or anything else. We’re here to make ‘em happy.⁵⁹

Like Universal Studios and Coca-Cola Company, Disney causes happiness, but how does Disney make itself the happiest place on Earth? Because it universally increases the degree of ARE processes upward into its guests’ personal perspectives. Disney enhances its guests’ remembered and experienced selves from childhood through adulthood.⁶⁰ Disney’s fantasy land removes constraints of the OT that consumers otherwise experience in their day-to-day lives and thrusts its guests forward like an amusement park ride, toward a pragmatic, universalized perfection, into what they believe is BOT, even if only for a few days’ time during their vacations, which is highly valuable all the same.

As Collins and Porras said in “Built to Last”:⁶¹

A visionary company continually pursues but never fully achieves or completes its purpose— like chasing the earth’s horizon or pursuing a guiding star. Walt Disney captured the enduring, never-completed nature of purpose when he commented: ‘Disneyland will never be completed, as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

The happiness Disney reproduces over generations of its guests indicates changes in ARE processes from its guests’ personal perspectives. Disney experiences provide consumers’ remembering selves with the optimism to adapt, reproduce and energize to create a better world when they return to school or work. Disney increases its guests’ perceived juxtaposition with what they know is Nought to become more of what they believe is Bought by stimulating them and relating them to Disney characters and a magical kingdom. Once they leave Disney, consumers then aspire to reproduce that magical feeling within what the OM really is in their ordinary lives to the extent they can by buying Disney media and merchandise to make themselves happy once more, and hopefully forever after. As the journalist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said in his article, “A Visit to the Wonderful Disneyland”:

I don’t know if a Garden of Eden awaits adults in the hereafter. I do know, though, that there is a Garden of Eden for children here in this life. I know because I myself visited this paradise. I have just returned from there, just passed through its gates, just left the magical kingdom known as Disneyland. And as I bid that kingdom farewell, I understood for the first time the true meaning of the French saying ‘to leave is to die a little’ [partir, c’est mourir un peu]⁶²

Thus, the BOT/NOT existential dichotomy repeats itself up through the SLOTS to become an emotional dichotomy for Elie Wiesel and all other consumers visiting Disney as well. For example, the happiness of love is a natural component and extension of consumers’ relation to other people. Loneliness is its inverse. Fear on the other hand indicates changes in consumers’ sense of physical or psychological integrity and safety. Happiness results from the changes in the factors and degrees in which consumers live and exist.⁶³

Thus, happiness results from changes in consumers’ real or perceived ability to universally lean toward ARE processes along the Ought. Just like how philosophy is the middleware between science and intuition, consumers’ emotions are the middleware between the Ought and who they personally are. Thus, by focusing on the perpetual process of extending and optimizing consumers’ universalization of ARE processes and personal true-north values, and thus on who, why, what and how they are, you will continue make them very happy, just like Walt Disney did.

Emotions thus function bi-directionally from physical cognition to experienced emotion and vice versa because of a concept called “enactivism” described further below. Without emotion, consumers cannot otherwise anticipate, recognize and measure changes in ARE processes from their personal perspectives.⁶⁵ Positive changes in consumers’ Ought factors (“OFs”) that create positive, systemic improvements for them generally result in positive changes in their emotions, such as their becoming happier by getting over an illness. Positive emotions correlate with improvements in the factors of consumers’ Ontological Teleology when you solve their deepest existential problems. Solving problems with Ought Factors should be the ethical and commercial end-goal of all organizations.

Customers’ Upward, Downward, Inward, Outward Demand - Supervenience and Enactivism

Like other great leaders, Walt Disney intuitively understood what within the OM made customers happy. The latest psychological theory today calls this dynamic, “Embodied Cognition,” which describes how consumers’ physical responses under normal conditions change their thoughts, behaviors and emotions. Embodied cognitive studies have demonstrated that consumers’ opinions of product can change depending on whether they are shaking their heads up-and-down or side-to-side in a “yes” or “no” gesture.⁶⁶ Just think about the effects of subliminal messages at Disney, and the way its marketing department frames the tangible benefits of its product to consumers so they feel emotionally touched. This concept of embodied cognition should come naturally if considered from the perspective of physical persuasion on what and how consumers think.

Just as consumers’ act of biologically leaning toward ARE processes upwardly developed their personal perspectives from one SLOT to the next, the decisions consumers make also downwardly effect their biological processes as well and vice versa. A symmetric dependency exists between the environmental cause of who consumers are and what consumers really think of a product. The reason for this dynamic is supervenience as we discussed earlier, and again, this process overall is called “Enactivism.”

Through the related concepts of enactivism and embodied cognition, consumers’ interaction with the OM, when moving toward what they believe is BOT and away from what they know is NOT, creates emotional meaning for them. For example, a child gives meaning to an inanimate toy when that toy becomes the child’s new friend and enacts a feeling of comfort in the child by removing threats from what the child most fears. The toy also enactivates the child’s imagination, thereby providing the child with an opportunity to visit parallel universes with the toy inside the child’s mind’s “I.”⁶⁷ Thus, the child enacts meaning with the toy through the interaction of the toy’s objective, Ontological Realization coupled with the child’s emotional relation to it.⁶⁸

As consumers realize as adults, toys mean far more within the limited sphere of who children consider themselves to be than when their worldview expands as they get older. This makes meaning a pliable, contextual truth-value within the extreme boundaries of the OM and IB. For example, adult customers fully recognize the Lean manufacturing processes that went into making the toy they so loved, which changes their Personal prospective on it. Thus, consumers’ knowledge of the construction and commercialization of the toy changes the meaning they assign to the toy as adults. Ultimately though, all this emotional meaning at whatever stage of life gets back-stopped and means-tested by what they believe ought to be Bought and know is Nought.

Just as a child enacts a meaning for the toy, psychologist Antonio Damasio demonstrated that adult consumers’ environments and emotions inextricably influence what they reason. A well cited experiment⁶⁹ showed how consumers change their answers to questions simply by holding a pencil in their mouths, forcing them to smile whether or not they actually felt happy. A forced smile artificially and subconsciously modifies how consumers reason because of supervenience, forming another boundary to their rationality and Utilitarianism.⁷⁰

For another example of bounded rationality within who consumers really are, mood-modifying drugs have been shown to reduce mental performance, which ought not be a surprise.⁷¹ The cause for this among other factors is that emotions are inextricably linked to how consumers reason due to their need to heuristically classify something with an Ought quality such as good or bad, or happy or sad. If consumers can’t feel well whether an answer is good or bad, they are less able to reason well as well. For an example of the effect of naturally produced chemicals, Cambridge researchers recently found a relationship between the level of financial traders’ stress-related hormones and their assessment of risk, which obviously affects their objective trading performance within the market-place.⁷² On the other hand, some researchers have found that a certain level of stress, called “Eustress,” enhances cognition.⁷³ The connection between emotional truth-value and logical reason is explicit in guiding consumers to ethical OPPs and away from threats to becoming NOT.

Further consider the relation between emotion and facts within the well regarded implicit association test.⁷⁴ The implicit association test measures the strength of consumers’ subconscious associations between their mental concepts like “product” and their Ought-oriented qualitative assessments like “bad,” “good” and “better,” or sentiments like “joy” and “terrible.”

In one implicit association test for fashion clothing, the color red was shown on a screen, requiring the test taker to then pair it with one of the qualitative words, “bad,” “good,” “joy” or “terrible” shown in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Test takers were then shown a picture in the middle of the screen, such as the latest clothing fashions, in colors such as pink or red. The computer then asked the test takers to click on a qualitative emotion or sentiment in the other corner of the screen that they felt matched the picture in the middle of the screen and the word in the other corner. The test then cross-matches the qualities displayed in the corners of the screen with the picture shown in the middle. How quickly and accurately consumers associate the qualitative emotions or sentiments for each category, color or class of product depicted in the middle of the screen tests consumers’ sentiments and bias toward the product depicted in the middle by interrupting the mental filters consumers have in place.

How consumers consciously or unconsciously think about the value of what the word or picture represents to their lives and existences emerges from what they phenomenologically feel about that word or picture. Consumers base this estimate on whether they consider the product as extending and optimizing who and why they think they are. Consumers unconsciously best fit their emotions to the product presented to them, such as whether they considered a product in an advertisement to be inferior or superior to competitors’ product that might extend and/or optimize them as well, better or best.

All of these studies support the notion that, rightly or wrongly, what consumers think closely relates to what they feel, similar to how consumers reason coheres to logic. By transitive logic (modus ponens), consumers emote to better lean themselves with the Ought, to passionately thrust themselves forward toward their ontological perpetuation. Happiness is synonymous with advancing Ought Factors, while sadness is their negation. Emotional influences on cognition, and vice-versa, developed so consumers could more universally Lean toward ARE processes. Just as Prospect Theory showed how consumers discount gains in favor of avoiding losses, emotions guide consumers in knowing when such movement up or down the Ontological Teleology may occur, and when to pursue or avoid it as an OPP or a Threat.

Hierarchy of Needs - Maslow Inc.

If emotions roughly indicate what ethically optimizes consumers’ lives and existences along the upward curve of the Ought, then consumers’ motivational psychology ought to Lean that way as well. Well-known models of human needs developed by motivational psychologists reflect consumers’ normatively processual and really personal true-north values. All these need theorists describe what motivates consumers outside of any concept of an Ontological Teleology, or any other philosophical concept described by this book, other than generally, Pragmatic Idealism.⁷⁵ They all speak to employees’ and consumers’ internally intrinsic and externally extrinsic motivations. By applying the Ought to motivational psychology, an organization can ethically align its ARE processes with the Ought to motivate employees to perform good work and consumers to buy its good product. Motivational psychology can extend and optimize the efforts of people that produce and deliver product in a Lean House of Quality, and leans consumers toward making a purchase.

One of the best known of all need theorists is Abraham Maslow who described a hierarchy of needs within his generally dynamic theory. Like our review of competing philosophical theories about forms of human will, I would like to review briefly Maslow’s work along with some of the other motivational psychologists who have classified what an organization ought to do within the U/People business model for some intellectual context. I will briefly review a synopsis of some of these need hierarchies to factor them into the true-north value that a product may reproduce within consumers.

To begin, you can see below the well-known pyramid summarizing Maslow’s concept of human needs arising, much like an ID Kata or Charts of SUDS, toward new, supervening levels of human motivation:

Self-Actualizing Peak Experiences, Flow and Getting Bought

In his book titled, “Hierarchy of Needs: Toward a Psychology of Being,” Maslow begins his hierarchy with the need for self-actualization. Maslow defines this need as:⁷⁶

… the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Does what Maslow write above sound familiar at this point? Notice Maslow defining self-actualization by repeating the verb “is” as a form of to be or becoming, which of course is a form of Ontological Realization oriented along the upward slope of the Ought. Maslow stated that self-actualizing people may be or become a variety of Ontologically Realized identities, such as a mother, athlete or painter, and that once people are or become those “things” they achieve fulfillment.⁷⁷

Consumers likewise identify who they are along the upward slope of the Ought with their self-conscious analogies, such as the subconscious notion, “I am like me.” Maslow further says that consumers become aware of, “…what [they are] potentially.”⁷⁸ This means that consumers recognize that even the very best mothers, athletes and painters are constantly seeking such self-reflexive identities. Consumers strive every day to exist as their self-selected identities because they believe it optimizes the essence of their remembered, experienced and anticipated selves. They seek to cohere all three selves into a seamless personal narrative that universally leans their ARE processes upward along the Ought toward a relentless pursuit of a universalized perfection.

Every one of consumers’ self-identified careers provides a product to other consumers, regardless of how good or bad they are. Even a trickster, fraudster or gangster serves him or herself as his or her own customer. In contrast, good customers validate their own identities by self-assessing what effect the product they produce has extrinsically on others. Collectively, the mother, athlete, painter or trickster each assesses whether he or she is good at what he or she does by the results of their efforts. A mother assesses how she served the life and existence of another, an athlete assesses how he or she extended the range of human physical potential within the OM, and an artist assesses the degree he or she inspired a sense of what seems sublimely outside the IB and may be truly BOT. Tricksters in comparison assess the extent they serve themselves, which is usually an indirect and congruent measure of the extent they move society as a whole U/Socially closer to becoming NOT.

Society measures consumers by the extent each of these career identities, and those who aspire to them, leans other people along the upward curve of the Ought as well. Society decides whether consumers achieve these identities by serving their own customers, by increasing the human population with similarly reproductive people, by motivating others to perform beyond known limits through athletics, or by inspiring others through aesthetics. Self-actualization of an identity results from a perceived and desired ontological effect, which people deem optimizing by universally leaning society’s ARE processes through specific OPPs within these professions to advance who and why people are overall.

For example, consider what the nine-time gold medalist sprinter Usain Bolt said in preparation for his final Olympics, “[I]f I win these three gold medals, I will be immortal… So I’m going to run with that: immortal.”⁷⁹ Universalization through the OT is always the objective function for everyone, especially peak performers.

Peak Experiences

Maslow’s self-actualization relates the positive aspects of what Maslow called “B-values,” or “being values,” which Leanism calls being Ontologically Realized and closer to getting Bought. Maslow delineated B-values in his writing as the ontological factors of “wholeness, perfection, completion, justice, aliveness… truth, self-sufficiency, etc.”⁸⁰ All these B-values relate to what Maslow describes as peak experiences that he says optimize the emotion of happiness.⁸¹

You might describe consumers’ peak experiences as the seeming instantaneous resolution of all problems without division, thereby reproducing happiness as a B-value. Of course, no peak experience lasts for consumers because it is an illusory production of emotion from U/ARE processes – consumers necessarily live and exist in an imperfect world while hopefully moving somewhere along the upward slope of the Ought while they remain far away from getting truly Bought. Consumers can only perpetually experience peak experiences by in-part consuming product to perfect processes that U/ARE toward the event horizon of where the Ought becomes NOT and goes gently into that good night.

Flow

For a related notion, the well-known psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposed a concept called “flow” that can be seen as analogous to both Maslow’s peak experiences and the perception of universally leaning ARE processes from people’s Personal perspectives. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as a psychological state that seems like a simulated perfection, facilitating, “… concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from the so-called ‘paramount reality’ of everyday existence.”⁸² People experience flow when they are at work, performing activities that adapt, reproduce or energize their companies, customers or clients without much friction along the upward slope of the OT.

Csikszentmihalyi’s work and that of subsequent psychologists suggests that an organization ought to likewise create products that provide a sense of flow as a peak experience to customers when they consume them. This is what it means to ethically delight consumers to lean them further upward along the Ought. Thus, I further define “flow” in the Lean sense as the universalization of consumers’ ARE processes upward along the Ought as a result of an organization’s specific OPPs to reproduce the best product experiences for its customers.

Self-Esteem

Maslow listed self-esteem just below self-actualization in his hierarchy of needs. Maslow said that consumers need self-esteem in two primary ways:

1. … for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom, and
2. …the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation.⁸³

The first need (1) is largely based on consumers’ internal estimation of their own self-worth, and the second need (2) is externally reflected inward from other people’s estimations. The self-esteem need for adequacy thus relates to consumers’ need to be further and positively Ontologically Realized from their own and others’ estimations of their self-worth.

The second, external self-esteem need (2) of reputation and prestige also relates to society’s attempted universalized leaning of its ARE processes to a greater degree by assessing individual consumers’ contributions to it. Organizations can develop product that better optimizes people’s internal and external self-reflections that help them align with the OM upward along the Ought the way they, and the society to which they relate, perceives the OM as being. This leads to the next lower level of Maslow’s hierarchy, which is the need for love and belonging.

Love & Belonging

The need for love and belonging identified by Maslow relates to both sexual and asexual affection, which Leanism calls “Relation” and “Stimulation.” Love and belonging also promote consumers’ physiological and psychological “Vitality” as a specific ontological factor of consumers’ lives and existences within the OM. Consumers likewise aspire to irrationally love as a form of “Meaning.” “Relating” with someone or something improves the perceived difference between who and why they think they are and what they know is Nought, while aligning them toward getting what they believe is truly Bought.

To feel a sense of love and belonging, consumers ought to feel that the object of their affection makes them safer in some way by helping them avoid physiological or psychological insecurity, such as being and feeling unattractive. This leads to Maslow’s safety needs, which Leanism identifies as an Ought factor of being “Integral” and not “Insecure.”

Safety

Safety needs largely align with an “Integral” Ought factor covering all physical and psychological contexts, though Maslow also includes notions of “Illness” within his need for safety. Leanism addresses notions of “Illness” in the Ought factor of “Vitality.” Leanism distinguishes the need for safety as a threat specific to consumers’ leaning their ARE processes as living systems within the OM at large as opposed to consumers’ need to maintain their internal vitality for the same reason. Maslow states that consumers’ psychological perception of safety can affect many other aspects of their demand for product. Their ability to relate and discover meaning from safety results from their contingently needing physical and psychological vitality and integrity.⁸⁴

Physiology

The last range of Maslow’s needs delineates physiological needs. Maslow’s physiological needs may be most closely aligned with the Ought factor of “Vitality” and not being “Ill,” on which the universal leaning of ARE processes depends. Maslow rightfully included thirst and hunger in this category, which of course relates to customers’ energy and regeneration activity as living systems, since “Vitality” requires food for energy and water for regeneration.

Maslow describes physiological needs as the most, “… pre-potent of all needs.”⁸⁵ I propose that by describing the supervening potency of needs, Maslow leans toward a sense of minimum vitality in his philosophical analysis. I believe though that Maslow could have said this better by articulating that consumers’ very existence is contingent on the fulfillment of physiological needs through universalized, leanly adaptive, regenerative and energizing processes.⁸⁶

No Need Hierarchy

Significant research has shown that consumers do not necessarily respond to Maslow’s above stated needs in any particular hierarchy or order.⁸⁷ Consumers do not necessarily build their lives and existences from one need to the next – all needs contribute to consumers’ Ontological Realization through different SUDS forming organic vectors of value and distinct SLOTS. Many other needs theorists thus improve on Maslow’s motivational theory by leaning out Maslow’s needs and removing any specific hierarchy.⁸⁸

While consumers may intrinsically want to satisfy more basic needs like food and shelter before more complex ones like love and meaning, this assumption does not hold when tested because consumers pursue Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication to solve their greatest ontological problems, whatever they happen to be at that moment. The only base conditions for existence are Lean adaptation, regeneration and energization, and all other factors simply contribute to those goals when pursued either teleonomically or teleologically.

However, some people subjectively define their priorities so that they lean against the Ontological Teleology and away from ARE processes. These bad people believe they are optimizing their lives and existences in some strategic way that is self-destructive or destructive of others as ultimately judged by whether or not the bad people reduced the Ontological Realization of themselves and others within the OM through their actions. Since the OT is nearly circular, consider too that, in the inverse, the most celebrated leaders sometimes disregard one or more of their Ought Factors and needs, like Spock in the Star Trek, “Kobayashi Maru” scene. Such esteemed leaders disregard their physical integrity and/or vitality for larger ideological goals to universalize themselves through the ontological advancement of all other consumers.

Maslow’s needs though are heuristically potent because they are fairly congruent with the problems of universally leaning toward ARE processes that prevent people from leaning themselves upward along the slope of the Ought. Solving each of Maslow’s needs further supports consumers’ perpetual existence by orienting them toward higher SLOTS. However, we know from research that the only existential hierarchy resides in the extent customers’ ARE processes leverage a specific Ought factor to extend and optimize their lives and existences to solve their greatest problems. Consumers will always buy what they perceive may help them to either:

1. Engage in OPPs to universally lean each of their ARE processes toward what they believe is truly Bought, or
2. Remove threats to one or more of processes that U/ARE so as to most avoid becoming Nought.

Alternatively, negative Ought Factors, such as deprivation, isolation, illness, insecurity or despondency, may each end who and why consumers are, which is a big problem. The positive inverse of each of these negative factors - stimulation, relation, vitality, integrity and meaning - optimizes who and why consumers are in their ability to leanly adapt, reproduce, and energize to universalize their lives and existences however they think best, which is a great solution. Thus, consumers’ Ought Factors ought to be stated as modifying the verb, “to be” to emphasize each as a parameter of consumers’ Ontological Realization, such as being “Stimulated,” “Related,” “Vital,” “Integral” and/or “Meaningful.”

Maslow, as insightful as he was, also coined the term “meta-motivation” to describe the motivation of those consumers who go beyond simply perpetuating themselves within the OM, to describe those who strive for constant betterment and problem resolution upward along the Ought.⁸⁹ Maslow’s meta-motivation can be analogized to those consumers’ Will to Universalize ARE processes upward along the Ought. Those consumers consciously define who and why they essentially are and spend the energy necessary to ontologically become it by solving their greatest problems with true-north values within the metaphysics of Lean. Every organization ought to do the same by providing product that reproduces that true-north value within consumers to charge them meaningful amounts of money in exchange.

Other Need Theorists

For comparison, a number of need theorists have proposed models of human motivation other than Maslow’s.⁹⁰ A small range of the best known of these models classifying consumers’ needs, drivers, end-goals and/or motivations are summarized below to provide a sense of the intellectual history in this area to further an understanding of all people’s “Ought Factors,” and thus what leans consumers toward spending time and money at stores.

Henry Murray

In 1938, Murray predated Maslow to propose a taxonomy of needs that extended to extremely long and seemingly never ending lists; however, based on the earlier discussion regarding Russell’s Paradox, you know Murray’s lists of needs could never universally capture life and existence itself, and his trying to do so was pointless.⁹¹ I will not list Murray’s needs because there are so many, but they run from “achievement” to “order” to “acquisition” to “sex” to “infavoidance” to “contrariance” to “play” to “exposition” to “succorance” to “sentience”… you get the idea.

Clayton Alderfer

In 1968, Clayton Alderfer followed and rearranged Maslow’s traditional hierarchy. Alderfer suggested that human needs were made up of three relatively independent factors, whose order of priority may vary between consumers:

• Existence: Alderfer correlated Existence to Maslow’s physiological and safety needs;
• Relatedness: Alderfer correlated Relatedness to Maslow’s esteem needs as judged by others; and
• Growth: Alderfer correlated Growth to the need for internal self-esteem and self-actualization.

Since each of Alderfer’s needs correlate to Maslow’s, they therefore further relate to consumers’ universalization through the factors of the Ought as described above.

David McClelland

In 1985, David McClelland proposed the need for affiliation, achievement, and power similar to Maslow, Alderfer and Nietzsche.⁹²

Manfred Max-Neef

In 1989, the economist Manfred Max-Neef classified consumers’ ontological needs as:⁹³

• Subsistence
• Protection
• Affection
• Understanding
• Participation
• Leisure
• Creation
• Identity
• Freedom

Max-Neef considers these needs as being independent, but I personally would not recommend that you commit to that position in a Lean business ideology for a list of consumers’ ontological needs because of the semantic vagueness of each word and Russell’s Paradox that no list of needs could completely describe who or why consumers are.⁹⁴ However, all of these physical and psychological needs relate in various ways to universally leaning ARE processes without discerning which ones would compel consumers to buy at their points of purchase.

Paul Lawrence

Another such drive theory based more on the epic of evolution and modern theories of natural selection was proposed by Paul Lawrence, a professor at Harvard Business School:⁹⁵

Lawrence’s four drives are:⁹⁶

• Acquire: “The drive to acquire what one needs for one’s survival at the conception and survival of one’s offspring” - which is the purchase of product to support and universally lean ARE processes to a greater degree;
• Defend: “The drive to defend oneself and, as needed, one’s offspring from threats” - which is ensuring that consumers maintain their and their offspring’s Integrity and Vitality in lean, philosophical terms;
• Bond: “The drive to bond; that is, to form long-term, mutually caring and trusting relationships with other people” - which is Maslow’s love/belonging, and Leanism’s and others’ Relation need; and
• Comprehend: “The drive to comprehend; that is, to learn, to create, to innovate, and make sense of the world and of oneself” - which is how consumers mentally map the universe to who and why they are and how they better lean toward ARE processes with what they produce.

Paul Lawrence did admirable work in applying evolutionary concepts to human drives, but as discussed before, the Neo-Darwinian theory he used over-emphasizes regeneration without fully recognizing the paradox of the Ought that causes consumers to experience Ought Cognitive Dissonance in that process, which is the biggest problem, and thus motivation, people have. Ought Cognitive Dissonance causes consumers to recursively search for meaning, which in-turn leans them toward “meaningfully” adapting, regenerating and consuming, so this dynamic spiral must be considered when developing and marketing products to people.

To strip away indirect, secondary drivers of human motivation, one must build logically from the seemingly circular OM as bounded by the IB, which is the ontological fact of existence experienced by consumers through Lean processes and Universal, Process, and Personal true-north values. Deconstructing Paul Lawrence’s model, consumers acquire, defend, bond and comprehend in order to optimally lean toward ARE processes to attempt to become axiomatically universalized over all and finally get themselves BOT as the ultimate end-goal and problem-solution.

Deci and Ryan

More recently, Deci and Ryan’s “Self-Determination Theory” (“SDT”) proposed that consumers’ three fundamental true-north values are “Competence,” “Relatedness” and “Autonomy.” Deci and Ryan’s Competence relates to Maslow’s internal version of “self-esteem.” Relatedness perfectly aligns with what I also call “Related” as a factor Critical to Ontologically Realization (again, what is “CORE”) to consumers along the upward angle of the Ought. Autonomy means the Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication that consumers use to discover how to best universally lean their ARE processes over all possible domains.

Thus, each one of these SDT factors aligns with how consumers optimally strive to ontologically realize themselves within the OM along the angular Ought in their attempt to universalize who, why, what, and how they consider themselves to be through problem-resolution. Each Ought factor contributes at some level toward allowing consumers to universally adapt, reproduce, and/or energize – i.e. to find meaning through universalization toward what they believe is Bought and against what they know is Nought.⁹⁷ Deci defined motivation itself as, “energy for action,”⁹⁸ thus aligning SDT motivational theory with universally leaning people toward ARE processes.

However, again, categories or lists of factors such as SDT can never fully-capture existence according to Russell’s Paradox, that the list of all lists that does not contain itself. No one can produce a finite list of all aspects of human existence that does not also reflexively describe itself like consumers do when they consciously say things like, “Y AM I buying X,” or, “I MAY buy Y.” This conundrum of unbounded exploration to universalize overall to try and get Bought is how consumers shop among a seemingly endless array of choices available to them and is what causes them to defy simple segmentation and personification.

Attachment Theory

Complementing individual need theories of true-north value and all meaning based on categorical lists, one of the latest need theories is called “Attachment Theory.” Attachment Theory states that human attachment is an adaptive process.⁹⁹ However, quite obviously, human relationships directly lead to regeneration of the species, and so I summarize all attachment under the general Self-Determination Theory and the Leanism concept of “Relatedness.” The distinction is largely semantic, which emphasizes how fluid words can be.

Factors of the Ought

Specific need categories sometimes succeed in identifying one factor of the Ought as a true-north value, such as Self-Determination Theory’s version of “Relatedness.” More often than not though, the specific need categories described by others identify true-north values that are actually derived by others as an after-thought from more fundamentally affirmative Ought Factors. These primary Ought Factors are the ones that best explain who and why consumers are, and what and how the processes that U/ARE create consumers’ existences. None of this is meant to invalidate such other need theories, but rather to put them in the context of the true origin of normatively Universal, Process and Personal true-north values that arise due to consumers’ existential contingency within the OM.

Today, scholars studying human need drivers tend to shy away from describing specific need categories for this reason. Instead, they favor constructing scientific, empirically verifiable experiments within the OM to try to quantifiably predict human preferences. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Prospect Theory again stands as a good example of such an insight by demonstrating with reasonable certainty that people universally exhibit a bias favoring reducing loss over achieving gains when they have a choice between the two. This loss aversion clearly demonstrates a behavioral driver that does not fall neatly within one of Maslow’s or other need theorists’ motivational categories. However, behavioral economic theories also align with the problem consumers have of perpetually regenerating processes that U/ARE throughout the OM, just like all need theories do.

Zero to One Again- Binary Oppositions of Bought and Nought

So if you are going construct all-encompassing Ought Factors of psychological motivation aligning with the Lean principle of Hōshin Kanri and the Ontological Teleology, you must recognize that the contingency of consumers’ existences within the OM creates binary oppositions. These binary oppositions reside in all HQs between positive and negative Ought Factors aligning with what may be Bought and what is Nought. Organizations can factor consumers’ binary oppositions and deepest problems within these extremes of life and existence in order to identify what products consumers find most truly meaningful. These extremes along the value stream form the terra firma of the money making process because there you find people’s hardest problems to solve.

If you form an ID Kata with champagne glasses on top of a luxury vehicle just like how Toyota’s Lexus division did in its famous commercial in the 1980s, you will notice that this impossible Penrose Triangle forms a point of purchase over the Lexus. An intentional, unresolved paradox exists because while the glasses are stacked in upward fashion, their bottoms point downward. This is not a coincidence.

Toyota’s advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi created this image to draw your attention to the fact that Toyota’s customers’ lives and existences have two explicit, maximal conditions, which are either to get Bought or become Nought. Like Buddha, Hume, Derrida, and an infinite number of other philosophers, Toyota sees these conditions as mutually dependent on one another because nothing could rationally exist without a logical inverse, or some logical distinction to itself, thereby creating all existence, essence, meaning and true-north value in the difference between the two conditions. It’s the difference that motivates employees to pursue perfection and customers to purchase to perpetually try and resolve their deepest problems.

An organization likewise does not need to concern itself with the specific range of possibilities of what may be Bought for business purposes within the metaphysics of Lean other than to know what motivates its stakeholders, employees and customers to think, believe and do. An organization for its own purposes ought to bracket that speculation outside the IB – an organization cannot rationally know either what may be Bought or what is Nought by their own definitions. An organization only needs to be mindful of the potential for consumers to become Nought and what they really personally and intuitively believe is Bought to determine who they believe consumers truly are and thus why they may buy the organization’s product. The ultimate, pragmatic point is to build a logical, coherent, lean ideology of Universal, Process and Personal true-north values for an organization to more accurately analyze, deduce, and thereby predict what are the greatest problems consumers have, and thus what product consumers are most highly motivated to consume in return for paying meaningful amounts of money.

Like bubbles floating up in champagne glasses, Coke-Cola enacting people’s happiness, or SUDS rising up to new SLOTS, an organization ought to inform, innovate and design its product so that it surfaces what consumers essentially,¹⁰⁰ universally value, and thus what psychologically motivates them through the Ought to extend and optimize consumers’ universal demand. Between the extremes of Bought and Nought, organizations’ product ought to “OPPtimize” consumers toward universalization and away from real or perceived threats by furthering their energization, adaptation and ultimate regeneration.

Ought Factors (OFs) of Psychological Motivation

Since the processes that U/ARE represent consumers’ sufficient and necessary true-north values by solving their existential problems, you must understand which Ontologically Teleological factors psychologically motivate them by either:

1. Optimally leaning consumers’ processes that ARE so they may capitalize on OPPs to strive to get what they believe is Bought; or
2. Threatening consumers’ processes that universally lean toward ARE such that they might strive to avoid becoming Nought.

I would never propose to exhaustively list all possible Ought Factors that universally lean toward ARE processes (i.e. “U/ARE OFs”), thereby summarizing all psychological motivation and problem resolution into a mere list. However, I do try below to best fit some Ought Factors to consumers’ real lives and existences with a certain amount of Pragmatic Idealism. Remember that all lists of specific OPPs or threats to consumers’ processes that U/ARE are necessarily incomplete due to Russell’s Paradox, and all categories are analogically fluid within consumers’ value streams unless you can quantify them in some respect, so I propose what Ought Factors I can with words until business people better quantify their true-north value and effect within an HQ.¹⁰¹

Thus, Ought Factors may be objectively, physically real or may be subjectively, psychologically perceived by consumers. Ought Factors are gradations through B/ARE, C/ARE, I/C/ARE, ME/ARE, WE/ARE and eventually U/ARE processes. I do not propose Ought Factors as being unchangeably categorical, but rather to re-purpose the historically proposed motivational factors, needs, drivers, and/or end-goals all people have into ontologically-based problem/solutions that you may use to lean philosophically in a modern way and thereby make more meaningful amounts of money.

Ought Factors are not intended to be formal categories but merely labels of intentions with soft, round edges rather than bright lines. Ought Factors are simply what I perceive to be the most efficient parameters of problem-solutions organized around the overall Ought universally leaning ARE processes that best isolate normative Universal/Process and really Personal true-north values for identifying what consumers find most meaningful to their being as reflected by the money they spend.

I believe it would be helpful for you to take the existential extremes within which consumers extend and optimize themselves, and factor the Ought into the most mutually exclusive, orthogonal categories of problem/solutions to consumers’ being that you can within what makes the most sense to you. Though you must keep in mind that these factors are necessarily interdependent to support consumers’ singular personas, you might use them to better identify consumers’ various true-north values that product extends and optimizes to increase consumers’ Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication into higher and higher hierarchical SLOTS.¹⁰² Just be careful when leaning up along the value stream in this way because you can easily twist your mind into knots.

A good method an organization can use to factor the Ought is through the ID Kata like Toyota did for Lexis using a stack of champagne glasses as its model. You factor the Ought either positively or negatively depending on which products’ features and benefits upwardly extend and optimize consumers’ lives and existences along the Ought by solving their existential problems. You naturally ought to build products’ Ought Factors toward what consumers believe is Bought in a positive sense. However, because the Ought through which all customers live and exist is an apparent paradox for all practical purposes, you can also build Ought Factors in the negative sense from what may make consumers become not Nought. All ways lead up. You build upward from these positive or negative Ought Factors by leaning ARE processes toward an infinite sigma (/σ∞), which is the relentless pursuit of a Perfectionist Consequentialism and Universal Optimism of what may get Bought and against what is Nought. However, since there is no apparent difference between getting BOT and becoming NOT, you ought to truly lean toward the Pragmatic Idealism of Six Sigma (/6σ) methodologies.

Thus, you may construct the Ought Factors of psychological motivation by asking either:

1. What is required for consumers’ to universally lean their ARE processes toward getting Bought; or
2. What may cause consumers to stop universally leaning any one of their ARE processes and become Nought?

You can design a market strategy from either existential extreme since the Ought appears to be possibly circular within the IB. As Maslow said in paragraph nine of, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” “Classification of motives must be based on goals.” And the truest end-goals ought to be based on nothing less than consumers’ existential extremes on either side of their life-cycles. When you produce these existential parameters for consumers’ OFs, they should also meet the same criteria that you established for leaning ARE processes. I adapt the ARE criteria to Ought Factors as follows:

1. While consumers’ lives and existences may be viewed as a systemic process that attempts to perpetually optimize processes that U/ARE through problem resolution, any description of their Ought Factors ought to be universal and persistent for broad application and analogizing. An organization’s description of the qualities of Ought Factors also ought to be as efficient as possible under the guiding principle of Occam’s Razor and in-line with the Second Law of Thermodynamics;
2. Different Ought Factors ought to be:
   1. Necessary, such that if any one factor was removed, U/ARE living processes would never reach the necessary degree or would eventually cease; and
   2. Sufficient, such that within the limitations of making finite lists due to paradoxes and categorical semantics, no further Ought Factors would at least seem to be necessary to further U/ARE living processes;
3. Consumers’ lives and existentially literal and figurative qualities ought to be abstracted to the most generic terms to cover all contexts within the universe. They should be amenable to analogizing and relating across Supervening Levels of OT Sophistication and include all indirect but still supervening Ought Factors as described below; and lastly
4. Ought Factors ought to be easy to apply and remember in an everyday business contexts, especially if an organization analogizes OFs across increasingly sophisticated SLOTS to reproduce customers’ most truly valuable SUDS.

The most fundamental components of organisms and organizations that U/ARE are these categories supporting Ought Factors:

• Ontological Medium (OM), regards all physics as a literal, conditional prerequisite for all life and existence. Again, the “Ontological Medium,” or “OM,” is a bit of shorthand for all of the scientific elements that compose consumers’ physical existences such as the many dimensions, all forms of matter and energy, and the movement of matter and energy across those dimensions upward along the spring-like arrow of spacetime that allows consumers to be. The Ontological Medium regards the inviolable, physical contingency of existence as consumers know it within the IB. The OM, when considered within the IB, says nothing about the intuitive beliefs some consumers may hold about what may be truly Bought outside the IB, such as an intuitive belief in the concept of souls. Common examples of customers seeking to extend their lives and existences through the Ontological Medium include everything from saving time at work by multitasking to buying increasingly better houses as a form of product to shelter themselves from the elements and social disdain;
• Stimulated / Deprived, regards consumers’ inherent need for exploration and discovery to universally lean toward higher levels of the Ought through adaptation, regeneration and energy hunting/gathering. Beyond chemical needs, consumers cannot psychologically develop without sensory stimulation, and proven psychological (and possibly genetic¹⁰³) harm occurs from extended sensory deprivation.¹⁰⁴ Stimulation can also be the basic physical energy injected into adaptive and regenerative living processes at life’s inception, and may be figuratively applied to consumers’ psychological needs in the highest SLOTS by perpetuating better life and existence through SUDS;
• Related / Isolated, regards consumers’ proven need to relate to others under Attachment Theory as bounded by Dunbar’s Number¹⁰⁵ in response to consumers’ need to adapt, reproduce and energize to ultimately universalize themselves upward along the Ought. Related / Isolated is simply the fact of consumers universally leaning toward ARE processes U/Socially with all people. Any sensory component of Related / Isolated is handled in Stimulated / Deprived as described above. At the most basic level, Related / Isolated may also apply to related combinations of chemical processes occurring within consumers through B/ARE SLOTS in order for them to optimize U/ARE processes. Relation may also have mathematical support in co-evolutionary free-lunch theorems that show that consumers can increase their optimization overall by specializing and cooperating rather than trying to be jacks-of-all trades. Finally Relation addresses the problem that people need memes as much as genes in order to survive - people now require the legacy of knowledge handed down from our ancestors to now live and exist as much as they do their own genetic heritage;
• Vital / Ill, regards consumers’ real or perceived problems with sustaining internal vitality as living systems in response to real or perceived illnesses. Vitality relates to consumers’ basic biological functions and general psychology. For example, you may label consumers’ psychology as abnormal when it limits their ability to universally lean toward ARE processes at a level expected within their highest SLOT as human beings. Vitality also relates to consumers’ need to perpetually metabolize energy and reproduce as much as possible by optimizing the degree of ARE processes;
• Integral / Insecure, regards consumers’ real or perceived problems with maintaining their integrity in response to external threats to their lives and existences. Like other OFs, the terms “Integral” and “Insecure” can have further figuratively psychological meanings for consumers as conscious beings. As with other Ought Factors, you must differentiate between what UP true-north values are and what consumers personally, phenomenologically experience. Consumers’ psychological perception from their Personal perspectives may not perfectly align with UP true-north values due to boundaries on consumers’ rationality and imperfections within the OM, thus making them feel secure when they are in fact not or vice versa; and lastly
• Meaningful / Despondent, regards recognizing the problems consumers have as fundamentally rational, self-aware organisms who personally experience the “Paradox of the Ought.” Consumers attempt to meaningfully go beyond the seemingly paradoxical Ought to find a certain non-tautological teleology within their bounded rationality. To feel “Despondent” is to not realize a difference between what ought to be BOT and what is not living and existing. Consumers respond to the apparent paradox of the Ought either by engaging in theological, spiritual or atheistic belief, or by simply bracketing existential questions and reflexively focusing only on extending the era of processes that U/ARE within the OM with blinders on. Teleological or teleonomic “Meaning” is the monster of consumers’ souls that products must ultimately speak to in order to make the most money through the normative value they generate. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty said:

Model of U/ARE Ought Factors

This chart of Ought Factors of psychological motivation isolates what extends and optimizes consumers’ lives and existences the most to best identify what makes consumers feel Stimulated, Related, Vital, Integral and Meaningful within the OM. The Chart of OFs classifies who and why consumers are as self-aware living organisms trying to optimally lean toward ARE processes to the extent they can become wholly existing through their Will to Universalize. When factoring the Ought, an organization must empathize with each binary opposition that consumers experience from their self-conscious, really personal phenomenologies that drives them to buy at their points of purchase to solve their greatest existential problems.

Consumers teleologically purposeful consciousness articulates and deals with the apparent paradox of trying to universalize ARE processes infinitely through these Ought Factors:

The above Ought Factors act as Ontologically Teleological wants/needs/end-goals/motivations/parameters that in-turn resolve who and why consumers are as living systems. Consumers extend and optimize their ability to leanly adapt, reproduce and energize through these OFs to attempt to universalize across all dimensions. Naturally, these Ought Factors are not the only ones through which consumers could optimize their lives and existences, such as so many others listed by need theorists. However, I ask you to consider these OFs to be generally the most instrumental toward serving consumers’ processes that U/ARE because they factor who and why they ARE ontologically. Thus, I consider these OFs to be more motivating than any others because they address what matters most, but please feel free to put your own spin on them.

Higher Order Meta-OFs (MOs)

All other parameters beyond these primary OFs supervene and resolve themselves as Meta-Ought Factors (MOs). MOs indirectly serve processes that U/ARE, and thus consumers’ lives and existences overall via OFs. For example, consumers’ psychologically “Stimulated,” emotional need for love is an indirect solver of the more fundamental need to be “Related” to more leanly adapt, reproduce and energize. Love in-turn often resolves consumers’ need for “Meaning” by flowing them past the Ought toward an irrational end-goal outside the IB. Likewise, consumers’ need for “Safety” indirectly resolves their more fundamental need to be “Integral,” or in the double negative sense, not “Insecure,” which in-turn provides them with the ability to love freely.

For an example of an even higher-order Meta-OF, consumers’ broad need for information and knowledge may be viewed as a Meta-Ought factor creating coherence between consumers’ personally inter-subjective and objective Universal/Process perspectives on true-north value with all other people. Knowledge reflects actionable Universal and Process true-north values that consumers’ can use to further exist by solving problems to enhance their Ought Factors and U/ARE processes. Knowledge is the power that allows consumers to better lean themselves into the OM by letting them seize OPPs or reduce threats to their lives and existences. Knowledge also allows consumers to more meaningfully avoid becoming Nought by buying products to better perform processes that U/ARE so consumers may at least try to get themselves BOT.

Industrial Classification of MOs

To better categorize larger Meta-OFs, consider two further industrial classifications of consumers’ means to better live, through transportation and telecommunication.

Transportation MOs

For transportation as a Meta-Ought factor, consider that when consumers move from one place to another, such as with the Uber car service, they pursue one or more core Ought Factors and processes that U/ARE. Even if a customer buys a Toyota automobile to go on a road trip only for the sake of exploration, such exploration would naturally fit within the Stimulated / Deprived CORE Ought factor. In other words, consumers’ seek Stimulation to achieve unbounded exploration in order to solve their existential optimization problem through random discovery and play. Transportation for these purposes relates to consumers’ need to seek the best sources of energy and meaning to fund adaptation and regeneration through these lines of reasoning.¹⁰⁶

Alternatively, employees might travel for an organization to earn money that lets them buy products to serve all of their CORE OFs. They give money to transportation businesses so the employees can in-turn become more Stimulated, Related, Vital, Integral and/or Meaningful. Transportation could also be used by them to adapt by moving to a new city to get a new job, to regenerate by taking them to a health club or by sending their offspring to get knowledge in school, or to energize them by letting them buy food at a restaurant. Consumers might even purchase a Tesla sports car to transport their self-esteem to a better place.

All of these motives and end-goals are intertwined, existential problem/resolutions, but they can be Ontologically Teleologically factored and identified with the ID Kata. For example, consider employees earning money through a bake sale just to donate to charity. Employees do so to reproduce personal Meaning for themselves and Relate to others in need of charity to ontologically universalize who, why, what, and how they think they are. Or, as David Foster Wallace said:

Telecommunication MOs

For telecommunications as a meta-Ought factor, think through consumers’ end-goals each time they speak with a personal relative as a physical extension of their self-conceptions.¹⁰⁷ They also telecommunicate to get job training to adapt to the workforce. They telecommunicate with a doctor’s office to schedule an appointment to reproduce their Vitality in order to continue to live and exist. They telecommunicate to set a date with someone to energize their social life through Relation in order to Stimulate their personal Meaning. Each of these OFs ought to be used as an independent parameter when analyzing who and why consumers are through their lives and existences. Thus, they are each what intrinsically and extrinsically motivates consumers to buy product now, while recognizing that all these parameters cumulatively add up to consumers’ Ontological Realization and fundamental motivation to purchase.

U/ARE processes up through all of the various SLOTS and SUDS reflect different skews, like stock keeping units of real value, to be purchased in each of the above CORE-OFs and Meta-OFs. For example, consumers’ need for anticipation and adaptation gets reflected in their need for Integrity and Vitality just like how consumers’ need to optimize their adaptive processes gets reflected in their need to be Stimulated. Consumers’ need to adapt and reproduce through natural selection gets reflected in their need to Relate, just like how their need to Universalize their lives and existences gets reflected in their need for Meaning. Consumers reflexively conceptualize their universal existences to optimally lean toward adaptive processes by resolving problems toward what they believe is Bought and to better contrast themselves to what they consider to be Nought.

You now Ought to be able to see how consumers’ processes that U/ARE get factored into their true need for Stimulation, Relation, Vitality, Integrity and Meaning. For example, energization requires Stimulating inputs to obtain energy itself and the information to find energy in the first place. Energization requires Relation with others to cooperatively pursue and produce shared energy sources, just like a large chemical reaction, which ultimately results in Vitality. Energization also requires the Integrity of the processes and character creating Vitality. U/ARE processes result in Meaning to more reflexively conceptualize how an organization may gather the energy (aka capital) necessary to fund greater adaptation, regeneration and ultimately “Universalization,” which is the manifest destiny of all organizations, just like it is for the consumers on which they depend.

By now, you can see all this leaning upward along the ultimate value stream toward channels of universal Ontological Realization. All organizational analysis ought to go on and on like this as it investigates how a company’s products serve consumers’ Ought Factors and Meta-OFs as they move along true-north value streams toward universalization. This analysis would apply to any other Ought factor or Meta-OF an organization considers, which is why I think this model best benefits who consumers are and why they really buy what they purchase. How you make that money meaningfully with this information by aligning with the Ought is up to you.

Factoring Meta-Ought Factors

For all these Ought Factors that in-turn optimize processes that U/ARE to find meaning outside the IB, their structure as binary opposites reflects the contingent nature of consumers’ lives and existences.¹⁰⁸ Like the Ought Factors diagram shown above and repeated below, an organization ought to factor the Meta-OFs its product serves by building from the existential extremes of universalization on the one hand and what may lead consumers to become NOT on the other. Once an organization has these fundamental end-goals in mind, it can more logically connect them to what problems fall in between. These Meta-Ought Factors provide a framework to guide you and any organization through the general, existential motivational categories of consumers’ lives and existences.¹⁰⁹ They will lean you upward along the Ontological Teleology through which consumers extend and optimize their will to consciously and unconsciously universalize.

Emotional Meta-OFs (EMOs)

Consumers’ psychological and physiological feelings, their delights and pain-points, also reflect these Meta-Ought Factors. Emotions are motivational Meta-OFs of their own kind. Feelings are phenomenological events that measure the extent that a consumer’s OFs change up or down along the Ontological Teleology. Feelings are a subjective (and to some extent objective) function and sentiment of how consumers are doing within the OM. Thus, these Emotional Meta-OFs (a.k.a. “EMOs”) emerge from consumers’ real or perceived changes in processes that U/ARE.¹¹⁰ As described earlier, EMOs may be perceived as the middleware between CORE OFs and what consumers personally experience. While they are middleware, they cognitively surround what is CORE to who and why consumers lean toward ARE processes since they are so essential to consumers’ Lean Thinking and being. “EMOs” often get mistaken for CORE OFs for this reason.

While consumers’ and employees’ EMOs consume lots of organizational energy, emotions and gut feelings produce a very powerful computational heuristic for consumers and organizations to efficiently and accurately decide what uniquely/profitably extends and optimizes consumers’ lives and existences. Daniel Kahneman, one of the creators of Prospect Theory, refers to EMOs as “Type 1” thinking, as opposed the more analytical Ought factoring we have been discussing, which Kahneman describes as “Type 2” thinking.¹¹¹ EMOs thus function as a type of signal, “Andon” (行灯), “Kanban” (看板), or emoticon inside an HQ and within consumers. Andon and Kanban are Lean terms of Japanese origin for tools that centralize information to indicate when operations are good or bad, when things are going well or not. EMOs likewise signal when an HQ or consumers believe that some thing or event resolves problems to facilitate adaptation, regeneration or energization, or not, up or down the Ought. I believe Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States and a true leader, may have recognized this dynamic in this quote attributed to him with some authority:

At the same time, oscillating EMOs directing how consumers think and act may lead an HQ and consumers to perceive and do things that are not rationally aligned with normative processes of true-north value that U/ARE.¹¹³ For example, consumers’ EMOs may diverge from normative Universal and Process true-north values, so an organization must empirically market test with the ID Kata. You can factor EMOs like all other OFs, but you must be careful to identify their possible irrationality and deviation from the OT.

Notice too that CORE OFs critical to consumers’ Ontological Realization simultaneously serve as both Ontological true-north values, such as being Stimulated, Related, Vital, Integral and Meaningful, as well as consumers’ emotional states of well-being. For example, consumers can both be and feel Stimulated, they can both be and feel Related, they can both be and feel Vital, etc. This linguistic fact evidences the emotional and Ontological connection between the two sides of the ontological / emotional coin.

You may extrapolate consumers’ Lean ontological/emotional true-north values further and further, higher and higher into instrumental goals and Meta-Ought Factors above the primary, intrinsic CORE OFs, particularly within the context of human psychology.¹¹⁴ All these ontological/emotional needs relate back in one way or another to the more fundamental CORE OFs, which means back to the problematic contingency of consumers’ lives and existences within the OM and the open-ended universe. Thus, resolving Emotional Meta-Ought Factors, Meta-Ought Factors and CORE OFs is the fundamental job to be done by a product each time it gets consumed.

Irrational Exuberance

All good EMOs though eventually lean toward Meaning, which is toward what may be Bought to resolve the existential problem of leaning ARE processes toward universalization and away from what is Nought. Problem resolution in the form of existential Meaning in-turn may physiologically and psychologically enact what consumers feel on the rightward, upward slope of consumers’ U-shaped utility curves. Meaning is thus perhaps the most generalized and abstract of the CORE OFs critical to consumers’ Ontological Realization. Thus, the Meaningful Will to Universalize is composed of:

1. Rational action taken by consumers to resolve the existential problems in-line with universally axiomatic and processually systemic true-north values to universalize themselves within the bounds of the Intuition Bracket; and
2. Irrational, intuitive action responding to what consumers know is Nought inside the Intuition Bracket to optimize their search for what they believe is Bought outside the IB.

Consumers’ search for Meaning and a Will to Universalize keeps them in a state of emotional and physical criticality, balancing between (1) rational order and (2) irrational disorder, seeking to optimally universalize ARE processes overall. Corporations as fictional legal people work this way too,¹¹⁵ balancing order and disorder in a perpetual state of rational/irrational criticality toward optimizing their Ontological Realization. I am sure you experience this state of criticality every time you enter an HQ of an organization. While arguments exist against it,¹¹⁶ this concept of self-organized criticality being how consumers optimize emotion and meaning is reasonable, intuitive speculation to consider in a Lean House of Quality. I hope this speculation gets more thorough testing though.

Much as consumers’ Personal perspectives supervene on and assume their Universal and Processual true-north values, you can also see randomness within each of these values that operate inside each of them. Some systemic instability leads to their greater overall stability due to small variations that lead to tremendous changes over time. The author Nassim Taleb created a term for this, “Anti-Fragile.”¹¹⁷ In a series of experiments led by physicist Per Bak and his colleagues in 1999, they determined that these seemingly random changes to consumers’ neurological processes resulted from systemic phase changes whereby randomness is structured as an actual process in consumers’ minds. Per Bak determined that a single, small change led to many smaller changes cascading into what appears to be a much larger cumulative change, resulting in greater systemic and/or structural stability overall. This is a deceptively simple idea until you see how broadly it applies.

Per Bak’s phase changes follow the mathematical distribution of the “Power Law”¹¹⁸ as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, “The Tipping Point.”¹¹⁹ The Power Law states that one variable is often exponentially related to another in its degree of variance. As Gladwell and others across science and economics have well described, many rare events naturally follow this pattern of the Power Law. For example, a genetic mutation leading to the birth of a black swan could lead to an overwhelmingly large population of black swans if black swans were able to adapt, energize and ultimately reproduce better than birds of a different feather.¹²⁰ The Power Law reflects the magnitude of what occurs during such critical phase changes, like how a mere kaleidoscope of butterflies could eventually cause a twister further up along the OT by further changing global weather patterns.

Within universal, axiomatic truths, randomness seems to demonstrate itself. At the quantum level this behavior is reported in atomic particles by physicists.¹²¹ From a process perspective, scientists report that random genetic mutations are critical to consumers’ adaptation through natural selection even though many other mutations have bad results. From consumers’ personal perspectives, they behave in seemingly random and irrational ways to meaningfully determine what they ought to do in relation to what they believe is Bought and universally and processually know is Nought.¹²²

This apparent instability at each SLOT creates beneficial randomness that reproduces what is critical to ontological well-being by shaking out, stochastically testing and settling what is Ontologically Teleological and what is Nought.¹²³ Randomness (or at least perceived randomness to the best of our senses) thus seems to reflect itself from the ground up within all consumers’ UP and really Personal true-north values. I speculate that even consumers’ random search for emotional meaning is most often instrumental to their optimizing the physical and cognitive processes that best universalize their ARE processes overall.¹²⁴

Thus, organizations’ and consumers’ criticality can simply be considered rational, structural randomness. This randomness is beneficial to the extent it optimizes processes that U/ARE. Effectively structuring randomness in consumers’ minds and in organizations must be done with processes that C/ARE because true randomness by definition must be closely watched. You must keep in mind that working with randomness, like studying all true-north value, is like harnessing the sun - it is both very powerful but painful and disorienting to see, and only Lean value streams can constructively channel it.

I want to convince you if you need convincing that structural irrationality is a part of leaning consumers’ lives and existences toward further and better being. An organization can make money meaningfully by channeling consumers’ irrationality upward along the Lean value stream so they may best purchase perfecting product, even if when and how such consumption will occur is hard to predict.

Extending Personas through U/ARE Processes

Importantly, irrationality reproduces itself in how consumers feel about products’ meaning when they dream.¹²⁵ For example, irrationality reflects itself in some of what consumers daydream about buying. And dreams themselves may be plausibly described as unrestricted moments of free-form analogizing and dis-analogizing that aligns and juxtaposes what they phenomenologically experience within their largely rational lives and existences. They dream to define what does and does not align them with the OT, by helping them envision what they believe is Bought and are afraid will make them Nought.¹²⁶ Hopefully, all paid advertising places product within how consumers’ define their dreamy personas, i.e. who they want to be and become along the OT, in this way.

The Harder They Fall

While an organization produces products that perfect consumers’ Ought Factors in a positive sense toward what they believe may get Bought, whether that belief is rational or not, ironically, consumers feel most alive when they are reaching higher degrees of Ought by increasing their perceived risk of becoming somehow Nought. You can see again the nearly tautological proximity of Ought and Nought in this diagram looking down into the initial twisting fractal of the OT:

Each of consumers’ Ought Factors grows proportionately in both directions between what they do positively experience and what they can but don’t experience as well in the negative sense. The better and more deeply an organization extends and optimizes consumers’ Personal perspectives by advancing them upward along the Ought, the more acutely consumers rationally perceive a potential loss in their Ought Factors, MOs and EMOs, that would result in greater sadness.

On the one hand, wealth represents advancement in consumers’ Ontological Realization. On the other, wealth does not correlate in a straight line with happiness because people who are highly worthy on a net basis must worry to a greater degree about losing their self-worth.¹²⁷ Wealth can magnify EMOs and a perceived risk of social and/or material loss in everything wealthy people do. An organization can capitalize on this tendency and consume the money of worthy people by selling them products that wealthy people purchase to help them (or any person or thing they perceive to be an extension of them) avoid losing over gaining in relation to their peers.

The Only Way is UPP through Meaning

Consumers find themselves attempting to find “Meaning” either by extending who and why they are within the bounds of OM and IB, or by attempting to irrationally circumvent the rationality of the Ought with their intuitive speculation or risky behavior. As discussed in the Value Stream 3: Existence, since consumers’ Ought Cognitive Dissonance arises as a rational mechanism to their conscious awareness, consumers attempt to rationalize the Ought paradox itself to no end. This is the only way forward in an unbounded universe.

Consumers need for Meaning as the resolution of their existential problems was famously addressed by Victor Frankl with his development of “Logotherapy,” but I now connect its contents to CORE OFs to explain why Logotherapy is effective within the metaphysics of Lean.¹²⁸ I of course recommend addressing the balance of the CORE OFs in conjunction with Logotherapy to best optimize processes that U/ARE under the overall function of self-organizing criticality. Meaning is inherently a composite of the CORE OFs since they all increase the distinction between what is known to be Nought and what may be Bought.

If consumers bought a hypothetical product that allowed them to live forever, consumers would perpetually contrast themselves between what ought to be and what is Nought. Nonetheless, most science fiction films show very advanced, adaptive, regenerative and energizing alien species living very violent existences against a universe of possibilities of becoming Nought. Despite having the capacity to live forever, they risk ever more to really live at all.¹²⁹

Critically, as an organization perfects consumers’ processes that U/ARE toward a fully universalized event horizon of complete problem resolution, its product will serve less Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication to extend and optimize consumers’ lives and existences. This paradox results because should customers consume product that fully removed the contingent possibility of their becoming Nought, they would likewise remove the lower portion of their binary Ought Factors. While they would perpetually exist without that contingency, they would remove certain meaning their lives would have within the OM since meaning is defined by the BOT/NOT duality, tension and paradox.

However, given the distance we all are from such hypothetical perfection, an organization fortunately only needs to focus on resolving problems to move along value streams flowing upward toward consumers’ universal horizon of complete satisfaction, toward what they all believe is truly Bought. For an organization to make the most value, it needs to focus only on discovering what best extends and optimizes who and why people are within their lives and existences in the OM, and ultimately help them in their quest to get BOT to the extent that pursuit leans them along the OT.

Extending and optimizing who and why people are means solving their problems to increase their juxtaposition between what they ought to buy with what they know is Nought and tantalizing them with the possibility of getting Bought, even if only to feel that way for a brief moment. Ironically, by doing so, consumers will become ever more acutely aware of what is Nought, and what they have to lose by not buying product from you at all. You will do this by providing them with the most meaningful, delightful purchasing experiences and products possible within each of their individual phenomenologies.

Bringing it All Together

This concludes “Leanism: The Philosophy of Business,” which investigated who, why, what and how consumers are, and what leads them to purchase value from you. With this knowledge, you now know how to follow the value streams that lead to the greatest profit. You also have a solid foundation for your Lean HQ to dent the universe. This Value Stream 5: People’s will conclude by showing the U/People organizational chart together with the universal chart of Ought Factors. In this combination, you can see the delta-shaped ID Kata unfolding like a lotus plant, becoming an upward summation of who people ontologically are, bracketing the Zen we all pursue to reach perfection:

Prologue: Channels

You now know why an organization ought to lean metaphysically toward who people are. This business model should help any organization think well about how to set up a House of Quality. Leanism concludes by better describing management’s upper-ontology and what and how it ought to be reproduced. You must proceed downward through the divisions of the U/People business model toward in-fact uniquely/profitably extending and optimizing people’s lives and existences for the highest profit. Leanism channels all businesses’ upper-management/ontology in the following way:

Value Stream 6: People’s, Chief Meaning Officer (CMO)

– Marketing

The Chief Meaning Officer addresses Lean marketing as the business discipline investigating who customers are and why they want to consume products and/or services. The CMO is charged with describing how the Lean true-north value discussed in “Existence,” “Lives” and “People’s” value streams generates money meaningfully through the normative value that products and/or services produce by solving problems in exchange for the prices that people pay.

Marketers inconsistently define value in Lean business contexts, with some defining value as what people like and do, and others defining value as what people will pay—with Lean true-north value generally being the vaguest concept of all.¹ I hope this matter is perfectly clear at this point of the U/People business model, while you think about what Lean, true-north value truly means. Organizational leaders, if not all employees, really need to understand Lean value to lead their organizations toward producing desirable products and/or services, i.e. the structured matter and energy pulled from and flowed to consumers to solve their deepest problems. Thus, a CMO applies people’s previously defined normative, real and personal values to become a marketer who better identifies and measures true-north value and leans more meaningfully toward all people.

Value Stream 7: Optimizing, Chief Optimization Officer (COO)

– Operations, G.C., People Services

The Chief Optimization Officer functions to operate Lean business processes, guiding how a business reproduces salable products and/or services. The COO avoids all forms of waste by optimizing procurement, production, and human resources with the support of other guiding functions like the General Counsel that place systemic boundaries on what is possible. The COO optimizes the meaning that Lean products and/or services produce overall. The COO examines how an organization’s internal stakeholders’ normatively true and real values may be aligned with what customers truly value for greater business effect across all supporting departments. The COO’s optimization thus focuses true-north human value streams within the Lean business processes of energizing stakeholders, functioning finance, and uniquely innovating products and/or services.

Value Stream 8: Extending, Chief Energization Officer (CEO)

– Stakeholder Management

The Chief Energization Officer sits in the middle of the organizational Gemba, right where s/he reproduces Lean true-north value for customers, while always thinking about how to charge customers more effectively. With the guiding support and alignment of the CMO, COO, CFO, and IDEO, the latter two functions being further described below, the CEO leans toward people by energizing and extending their lives and meaning by solving their existential problems. The CEO does this by aligning sales and marketing, talent recruitment, employee motivation, legal operations, accounting, financial investment, research and development, design, innovation and strategy toward a business’ end-goal of making money meaningfully. The CEO is thus the most energy-centric of all employees by aligning the energy of all others toward expanding the volume and velocity of what customers and other stakeholders most truly value. CEOs do this by best understanding why and how all people do what they do.

Just as marketing assesses and measures customers’ normatively true and subjectively real values upward and through these activities, the CEO in-turn identifies, measures and aligns his or her organization’s lean energy with what the IDEO, CFO, COO, and CMO determine creates the most Lean true-north value for customers. This insight allows the CEO to produce the most optimized, unique and profitable products and/or services that customers want to buy to expand the company’s bottom line.

Value Stream 9: Profitably, Chief Function Officer (CFO)

– Finance, Accounting, Treasury

The Chief Function Officer guides the CEO by equating what customers truly value to money or other objective Lean performance metrics. This gives the CFO a haloed rôle in any organization. Accounting and finance measure the monetary value generated within customers’ lives and existences as developed through meaningful marketing, optimized operations, and expansive procurement of new products, investments and people. The CFO measures an organization’s net value and how that organization may best lean toward what customers most meaningfully value in exchange for what price you charge them.

People’s profitability explains how an organization can more effectively skew customers’ existential reality and fundamental needs with the concept of profit as a relative change in customers’ standard of existence. The CFO functions as a natural construct of the realities revolving around the monetary measurement of customers’ true-north value streams within a Lean business ideology.

Value Stream 10: Uniquely, Chief Information, Innovation & Design Officer (IDEO)

– IT, Strategy, R&D, Creatives

Finally, the Zen-like Chief information, Innovation, Design Officer uniquely optimizes customers’ lives and existences over all customer segments by meaningfully marketing, optimizing operations, and functionally analyzing product strategies. The IDEO is an organization’s turning point and reflection of its true-north knowledge and power.²

The information function of the IDEO coheres what people value with what form of Lean products an organization reproduces for profit. Information also directs what whole organizations ought to lean toward within their business ideologies. The IDEO fully recognizes that all products are fundamentally phenomenological information to customers however they experience when they consume. Customers interpret this information received from Lean products as either good or bad. This perception informs how a business ideology leans its organization toward innovation and profitable success.

The innovation an IDEO produces replaces what products consumers used with what more leanly extends and optimizes consumers’ lives and existences. Consumers’ quintessential problem of existence never changes, while innovation entirely improves what makes customers’ lives upwardly mobile. Design, on the other hand, symbolically describes the form, function and consumption of Lean products in ways that extend and optimize consumers’ highest values, particularly in regards to how money semiotically represents those values. The IDEO thus bridges Lean Thinking and Systems Thinking with Design Thinking across the 3WH Socratic value identification interrogatories.

The “Uniquely” part of what IDEOs do in the U/People business model thus analyzes all of an organization’s Lean channels in SUDS leading to specific SLOTS so a business ideology may most meaningfully increase the degree of consumers’ standard of existing, which causes them to push money back down in exchange. The IDEO is charged with leaning organizations toward an evolved method of business strategic analysis by applying the U/People business model for the greatest business results and competitive advantage while serving stakeholders’ normative, monetary and really personal true-north values.

For each of these positions within the U/People value stream leaning toward all other people, I finally ask you to consider the following questions:

Lexicon to Leanism³

Notes