Welcome
Welcome to Leanism: a Philosophy for Business in the Age of AI
In an age when artificial intelligence can infinitely sythesize, generate, determine and execute, but cannot inherently understand value itself, a new philosophy has emerged—one that empowers humans to lead with AI toward genuine value creation rather than merely accepting machine recommendations. Leanism represents the evolution of Lean thinking from its manufacturing origins into a holistic framework for leading in the Age of AI.
"In this epoch of human-AI collaboration, Leanism requires people to become action-oriented philosophers to provide the proper context, ask the right questions, and rigorously assess the outputs. Leading with AI requires developing an understanding of true value that AI will never have." — Benjamin Snipes, Leanism: a Philosophy for Business in the Age of AI
The Philosophy That Bridges Human Wisdom and Machine Intelligence
Leanism is not simply about using AI tools more efficiently. It's about thinking through and beyond AI as a tool—about leading with these stochastic, non-deterministic machines in uniquely human ways that amplify rather than diminish human judgment, wisdom, and dignity.
Just as Toyota's Production System revolutionized manufacturing by placing humans at the center of machine productivity rather than in a line, Leanism provides the philosophical framework for human-AI collaboration in all forms of work. While AI excels at information gathering, pattern-matching and optimization, only humans possess the embodied, philosophical emphathy necessary to identify what constitutes genuine value and why it truly matters to others.
The Book: Your Guide to AI Leadership
"Leanism: A Philosophy for Business in the Age of AI" by Benjamin Snipes is a comprehensive exploration of how to lead with AI systems toward true-north value—the genuine value that extends and optimizes human lives and existences. Available at www.leanism.org, this groundbreaking work synthesizes:
Western Philosophy of Science with its empirical rigor
Eastern wisdom traditions including Buddhist and Shinto concepts
Modern business strategy grounded in Toyota's Lean principles
Practical AI leadership through actionable LLM prompts
The book is structured around five Value Streams that take you from the philosophical foundations of Lean and expanding that understanding through money, existence, life, and ultimately people—culminating in a complete framework for leading with AI toward meaningful business outcomes.
The U/People Business Model
At the heart of Leanism lies the U/People (pronounced "You lean toward people") business model and acronym, which stands for: Uniquely-Profitably, Extending and Optimizing People's Lives and Existences.
This framework guides you to:
Understand Universal values that extend all human existence
Optimize Lean Processes that flow from humans to humans with minimal waste
Serve Personal needs of individual consumers in their daily lives
Through this model, you'll learn to analyze business challenges across three integrated levels, ensuring that AI recommendations genuinely serve human flourishing rather than merely optimizing arbitrary metrics that may lead to bad results.
What Makes Leanism Different?
Unlike typical books on Lean or AI implementation guides that focus on technical prompts and tools, Leanism provides the philosophical operating system you need to:
Think Through Business Problems Conscious of AI's Limitations – Understand what to do, and what AI can and cannot do, recognizing that AI lacks wisdom to grasp meaning
Lead with AI Rather Than Follow It – Maintain human judgment as primary while using AI's computational power as your instrument
Identify True-North Value – Discover what genuinely extends and optimizes human lives, not just what generates presumptively correct outputs
Avoid AI-Generated Waste – Recognize new forms of waste unique to AI collaboration: content that creates no genuine value, inconsistent prompts that cause varying outputs, and cognitive overburden from excessive AI-generated content
Build Sustainable Advantage – Create differentiation based on human philosophical insight that AI cannot replicate
Practical LLM Prompts Throughout
The book isn't purely theoretical—it provides dozens of battle-tested LLM prompts designed to:
Establish Lean philosophy as your personal operating system
Structure AI analysis through the U/People framework
Apply Socratic interrogation for deep value discovery
Identify waste in AI-augmented workflows
Conduct phenomenological empathy mapping
Evaluate AI implementations through Lean principles
Each prompt includes application notes explaining when and how to deploy it for maximum impact.
The Course: Learn to Lead with AI using Leanism
Beyond the book, Leanism offers structured learning opportunities to help you master these principles and apply them in your organization. The Leanism course teaches you how to:
Apply the U/People business model to real business challenges
Use the ID Kata (Inference-Deduction Kata) to discover true-north value through "who, what, why, and how" questioning
Train AI systems to recognize and serve human values
Build your organization's House of Quality—its philosophical foundation
Navigate the tension between AI efficiency and human dignity
The course combines philosophical depth with practical application, ensuring you can immediately implement Leanism principles whether you're a CEO, entrepreneur, consultant, or knowledge worker collaborating with AI systems.
Who Should Embrace Leanism?
Leanism is essential for:
Business Leaders seeking to maintain competitive advantage as AI commoditizes traditional sources of differentiation
Entrepreneurs building AI-augmented ventures who need philosophical clarity about value creation
Consultants advising organizations on AI strategy and implementation
Product Managers determining what to build in an age of infinite AI-generated possibilities
Anyone who wants to lead with AI systems rather than be led by them
The Core Insight
Lean is the perfect vehicle for leading with AI because it was conceived as a human-centered philosophy for achieving productivity with machines. But AI is fundamentally different from manufacturing equipment or legacy computing, so Lean must evolve as well.
At its essence, Leanism recognizes a profound truth: AI, and most particularly LLMs, represent the most powerful knowledge tool humanity has ever created, yet most approaches treat it as merely a sophisticated command-response system without understanding the question framing, context setup, or output critique necessary to succeed with AI. A deeper form of Lean with and beyond AI is now needed.
Leanism develops Lean into a metaphysical framework that allows you to think through and beyond AI, guiding these stochastic machines and all people toward true-north value creation.
Two Pillars of Leanism
Like all Lean systems, Leanism rests on two foundational pillars:
Sonchō (尊重) – Respect for People: Recognizing that AI is a tool serving human dignity, never an autonomous agent with its own interests
Kaizen (改善) – Continuous Improvement: Iteratively improving human-AI workflows by measuring whether true value gets produced once you know waht that is
These pillars, along with the range of Lean principals, ensure that as AI capabilities expand, they remain tethered to human values and directed toward human flourishing for the greatest profit possible.
Begin Your Journey
Whether you're just discovering Leanism or ready to dive deep into AI leadership:
Read the book at www.leanism.org to understand the complete philosophical framework
Explore the course to learn practical application and implementation
Join the community of leaders learning to guide AI toward genuine human value
The age of AI demands a new kind of leadership—one grounded in philosophical understanding of what makes human existence meaningful, what constitutes genuine value, and how to direct machine intelligence toward serving rather than replacing human judgment.
Leanism provides that framework.
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