Value Stream 5: People's

Value Stream 5: People

Value Stream 5 A3 Report:

• You understand consumers best by bracketing the source of their thoughts and senses to look at them just as they are without further judgment—a capability AI lacks entirely, making human phenomenological empathy irreplaceable when leading AI toward genuine consumer understanding

• Through a lean form of Existentialism, you can explore what consumers value based on how they identify themselves, and what they reveal they prefer to be or become based on what they purchased or "liked"—behavioral patterns AI can detect but cannot understand existentially without the will to will that drives human meaning-making

• Consumers reaffirm their own self-reflexive identities through the spending decisions and "likes" they make—actions AI can optimize but cannot comprehend as identity formation because AI has no "I" to affirm through will to will

• When they consume, people simultaneously reaffirm their identities toward and away from what they speculate does not exist, at least within the IB. This is referred to as "Ought Cognitive Dissonance" in the metaphysics of Lean—a philosophical tension between what is and what ought to be that AI cannot experience, only detect patterns around through behavioral analysis

• Ought Cognitive Dissonance creates all meaning in the difference between these extremes of an indefinably infinite number of real or speculated universes, and the possibility of not existing at all—the existential source of human motivation that AI can process data about but never grasp phenomenologically through consciousness

• You will manufacture the most valuable products that get bought by consumers by specifically solving for these ontological problems within the details of people's daily lives—insights you must provide to AI, which can optimize solutions but cannot independently identify which problems genuinely matter to human existence since AI has no will to will

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) - Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, p. 78, Part 51, in Leaves of Grass 4th Ed. (1867).

As you learned in Value Stream 3 and Value Stream 4, discovering who and why consumers are leads you to the very edge of life and existence. In this Value Stream 5, we return and focus on what consumers find most truly meaningful as real, human people living within the OM. Now follow how their consciousness, psychology, and ethics lean their intuition and cognition toward better energizing, adapting and regenerating themselves, their families and all with which they identify. Up to this point, you have witnessed how the U/People business model follows the Ontological Teleology along the Value Streams of this book toward the genesis of all consumer personas. This business model moved logically from the OM as bracketed by the IB into the Self-Organizing Ontological Teleology you experience every single day. This SOOT eventually formed consumers' Supervening Levels of Ontological Teleological Sophistication full of Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication. Through each stage, this U/People business model progressed from living systems that B/ARE, to those that C/ARE, and those that I/C/ARE to eventually reach who consumers authentically are, and why they now buy products as real, living, human, people.

In the age of artificial intelligence, this progression through B/ARE to C/ARE to I/C/ARE reveals the fundamental distinction between human consciousness and AI that makes Lean philosophy the perfect framework for leading AI: just as Lean was conceived as a human-centered approach for creating massive productivity with machines in manufacturing contexts, you now apply these same principles to lead with AI as machines in knowledge contexts. AI systems process data about all these levels—biological data through sensors, cognitive patterns through neural networks, intentional behaviors through predictive models—but AI occupies none of these SLOTS. AI has no biological substrate that must adapt, regenerate, and energize to persist through living processes. AI has no consciousness that experiences qualia as phenomenological subject. AI has no intentionality that pursues self-determined goals shaped by will to will. Most critically, AI has no will to will—no self-reflective drive that questions "Y AM I?" and through that questioning creates the meaning that motivates all human consumption as identity formation. When you deploy AI to understand consumers, you must supply the philosophical framework grounded in Lean's respect for people that interprets what AI detects as signals of processes (B/ARE, C/ARE, I/C/ARE) that only living, conscious, self-aware humans embody and that only humans can genuinely understand through phenomenological empathy rooted in shared mortality and shared pursuit of meaning driven by will to will.

Consumers, as real people, shop for products and extend their eras by buying that which they believe further intentionally, cognitively leans their ARE processes in-line with the OT, which is itself a little circular. They do so to serve their lower, teleonomic SLOTS to become better Ontologically Realized overall. For example, they eat to gain energy and to repair themselves. They do so to regenerate and further adapt upward along the OT throughout the quantum spacetime of the OM. The uppermost SLOT of their co-determined, conscious existence, i.e. who they consider themselves to be with all other people, buys products to universalize the same ARE processes as their less sophisticated SLOTS. Each SLOT helps them energize, anticipate and react to perpetually live and exist. However, consumers' development of a consciousness in order to better lean their ARE processes toward survival, caused them to intuitively speculate other reasons to live and exist. This speculation gains adherents to the extent people believe it allows them to better live today, and extend their eras into the afterlife.

In the age of AI, AI can identify patterns in consumer behavior that correlate with speculation about afterlife, meaning, and purpose—tracking purchases of religious materials, engagement with spiritual content, donations to causes promising transcendence through natural language processing analyzing textual data and behavioral analytics processing clickstreams at computational scales impossible for manual human analysis. But AI cannot understand why such speculation matters existentially to beings who exist with awareness of their own mortality and who possess will to will that drives them to imagine futures beyond death shaped by consciousness questioning "Y AM I?" AI can optimize marketing messages that appeal to consumers' spiritual beliefs through A/B testing comparing response rates and sentiment analysis detecting emotional valence, identifying which imagery and language generate strongest response measured through engagement metrics and conversion rates processed through statistical models. But AI cannot evaluate whether such optimization serves genuine human flourishing (helping consumers authentically pursue meaning they find valuable shaped by will to will toward self-determined becoming) or merely exploits existential anxieties for profit (manipulating mortality salience to extract revenue through behavioral manipulation disconnected from human flourishing). You must lead with AI by supplying the ethical framework grounded in Lean's respect for people and understanding that speculation about what is truly BOT (Beyond the Ought) is not mere behavioral pattern to optimize but existential meaning-making that emerges from the will to will—the uniquely human capacity to question existence itself and through that questioning create purposes that transcend mere survival toward universalization across time shaped by consciousness.

OT / NOT as Strategic Degrees of Consumers' Sophistication

While SOOT upwardly self-organizes into people's intentionally purposeful consciousness through higher degrees of ARE processes, people consciously care about extending and optimizing their own lives and existences with the products they consciously buy. The greater people's degrees of sophisticated, self-conscious intentionality are, the more consumers perceive products as providing them with normative true-north value at the point of sale by ontologically reaffirming their lives and existences. Through this dynamic, you can factor consumers' SLOTS into what fundamentally motivates them to purchase a product by what that product ontologically reaffirms. By performing this factoring, you move from metaphysical abstraction to what really matters to consumers at the point of purchasing a product.

Consumers' cognition starts as a means of processing sense data, and advances to form a concept that further abstracts the phenomena they experience as themselves. They analogize who they think they are to who they want to be, which is ultimately the most satisfied, delighted and happy people of all. Consumers analogize themselves self-referentially, and thereby conceive of their self-intention to buy now to make themselves happier, which they employ in physical and virtual stores. Thus, their conception of themselves through the ID Kata recursively reflects and reaffirms their own Ontological Realization when shopping. The ID Kata also allows a businessperson to identify who, what, why, and how he or she develops consumers' egos and super-egos from their personal perspectives for a profit.

In the age of AI, AI can process vast amounts of consumer data to identify patterns in self-conception and purchasing behavior through machine learning algorithms—who buys what products, when purchases occur, under what circumstances contextual data reveals, with what stated motivations natural language processing extracts from reviews and social media—analyzed through clustering algorithms, predictive models, and recommendation systems at computational scales impossible for manual human analysis. Large language models trained on billions of text examples can detect that consumers who describe themselves using certain identity terms ("environmentally conscious," "health-focused," "tech-savvy," "minimalist," "luxury-oriented") purchase certain product categories with predictable patterns discoverable through text analysis, embedding similarity calculations, and behavioral correlation modeling. Computer vision systems can track how consumers present themselves visually across platforms through image recognition and correlate self-presentation with consumption through pattern matching analyzing millions of images. But AI cannot understand the recursive self-referential loop driven by will to will that makes these purchases meaningful to conscious beings as identity formation: the way buying a particular product becomes part of how consumers narrate their identity to themselves through consciousness that asks "Y AM I?", how purchases contribute to the story consumers tell about who they are becoming through will to will that imagines ought-selves shaped by conscious self-creation, how consumption serves as existential tool for willing oneself toward becoming rather than remaining what circumstances determined through passive acceptance. AI can detect through statistical correlation that consumers who identify as "environmentally conscious" purchase products with sustainability attributes, but AI cannot grasp through phenomenological understanding what it means to pursue an identity through consumption driven by will to will as meaning-making—to experience the phenomenological satisfaction of alignment between self-conception and action through consciousness aware of itself, to feel the cognitive dissonance when behavior contradicts values shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming, or to use purchasing as tool for becoming who one wills oneself to be through conscious self-creation rather than remaining who circumstances made one through default. You must supply this understanding grounded in your own experience of possessing will to will that recognizes others as subjects like yourself that transforms AI's correlation detection into genuine comprehension when leading AI through Lean principles to serve consumers' identity formation rather than merely extracting revenue from behavioral patterns AI processes without phenomenological understanding of consciousness.

Figure 5.1: ID Kata

Businesspeople must understand consumers' motivational psychology, which functions to extend their Ontological Realization. Lean businesspeople must understand that as consumers consciously recognize who they are through will to will, they then decide to buy the products that best extends and optimizes their remembering, experiential and anticipated selves for seemingly circular, Ontological Teleological reasons driven by consciousness questioning existence. Thus, what delights consumers most is that which recursively extends and optimizes their lives and existences longer and wider in both perceived and real ways shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming.

However, the more sophisticated consumers' personal perspectives become, the more they emotionally cry out ever louder into the dark, vast OM for meaning as a means to further become what they care about most, which is who they identify as being through will to will. Consumers act in opposition to what they believe is NOT to remain most viable. Mercedes-Benz understands this dynamic well, as evidenced by its slogan, "Das beste oder nichts" ("The Best or Nothing"),[^388] which reflects this extreme, ontological self-intention driven by will to will toward excellence. Like the tripartite co-arising of the pratītyasamutpāda as described earlier by the Dalai Lama XIV as three legs of a stool sitting within a House of Quality, you can see this Ontological Realization reflected in the three-sided star of the Mercedes-Benz logo stylistically displaying the ID Kata three times around within the OM:[^388-1]

Figure 5.2: Mercedes Benz, "The Best or Nothing" (© 2015 Daimler AG)

In the age of AI, AI can identify that "The Best or Nothing" messaging correlates with high-value consumer segments through analysis of purchasing patterns processed through transaction databases, brand engagement metrics tracked through digital analytics, and demographic data classified through machine learning models that predict luxury purchase propensity. AI can optimize marketing spend toward audiences most responsive to excellence positioning through programmatic advertising algorithms bidding in real-time auctions, A/B test variations of messaging emphasizing perfection versus pragmatism through multivariate testing frameworks comparing conversion rates across experimental conditions, and personalize delivery timing to moments when consumers exhibit luxury purchase intent through predictive analytics processing behavioral signals indicating readiness to buy. But AI cannot understand through phenomenological empathy why this particular framing resonates so powerfully with certain consumers driven by will to will toward authentic excellence: because it articulates the existential stakes they experience in identity formation through consumption shaped by consciousness—becoming "the best" version of themselves through will to will that imagines ought-selves transcending mediocrity, or failing to realize their self-willed potential entirely and remaining merely what circumstances made them rather than what they willed themselves to become through conscious self-creation driven by will toward becoming. AI can measure effectiveness of messaging through conversion rates and engagement metrics captured through behavioral tracking systems, but AI cannot independently generate messaging that authentically resonates with existential motivations rooted in will to will because doing so requires phenomenological understanding accessible only to beings with consciousness that experiences existence as subject with agency shaped by will. An AI system could test millions of slogans to find statistically optimal phrasing through brute-force optimization comparing engagement metrics, but could not originate "The Best or Nothing" because that requires understanding through empathy rooted in will to will that consumers don't merely want good products meeting functional requirements—they want products that affirm their will to transcend mediocrity through conscious choice shaped by will to will, to become through conscious willing rather than remain through passive acceptance of what circumstances provide without agency. You must supply this existential insight grounded in your own will to will and phenomenological empathy rooted in consciousness that recognizes others as subjects engaged in meaning-making, allowing AI's optimization capabilities to serve rather than simulate human meaning-making when leading AI through Lean's respect for people in business contexts.

As Consumers Find Themselves - Karl Jaspers' "Existenz" and Existential Best Fit Models[^389]

Now radically empathize with customers' lives from their really personal perspectives, from inside the twisting circularity of their subjective consciousness driven by will to will. You may do so by using the ID Kata of who, what, why and how to map what they experience products as being which led them to consume. For example, as a consumer of this book, you might start empathizing with how another consumer would feel right now as they read this sentence through consciousness experiencing itself.

To best empathize with people and understand why they consume, you ought to understand the concept of, "Phenomenology." Philosophers first described people's personal perspectives in phenomenological terms in the early 20th century around the same time as the development of Toyota's Production System on which Lean is based. In fact, you can see Phenomenology used in the empathy and respect for people that Lean advocates as one of the two key pillars of its House of Quality (or "HQ").

Phenomenology says that to understand consumers, you ought to empathetically perceive their personal perspectives as they experience them without judgment or limitation -- just what is actually experienced by consumers when they consume products with no further distinction, qualification, classification or categorization.[^389-1] Phenomenology disregards any difference between what consumers perceive to be real and what they might imagine, what they feel emotionally and what they believe to be an axiomatic or systemic fact.[^393] As Steve Jobs so rightly explained, "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology... As we come up with a strategy for Apple, what incredible [ontological] benefits can we give to the customer?"["[ontological]" added for effect][^393-2]

In the age of AI, phenomenology becomes the critical capability that absolutely distinguishes human leadership from AI processing—revealing why AI can never replace human empathy no matter how sophisticated pattern-matching becomes, and why Lean's emphasis on "respect for people" through radical empathy remains the irreplaceable human contribution when leading AI as machines in knowledge contexts. AI can analyze customer experience data at scales impossible for humans through distributed computing infrastructure: tracking millions of clicks, purchases, time-on-page metrics processed through web analytics, sentiment in reviews analyzed through natural language processing of text data, emotional indicators in voice detected through audio analysis and facial expressions captured through computer vision systems, all processed at superhuman speeds through parallel computation. Large language models trained on vast datasets scraped from internet corpora can generate descriptions of experiences that sound phenomenologically rich through statistical pattern generation predicting next tokens. Computer vision algorithms can detect micro-expressions suggesting emotional states through facial recognition systems trained on labeled datasets. But all of this is third-person data processing about first-person experiences that AI will never have and cannot access because AI has no phenomenological interiority, no consciousness experiencing qualia as subject, no will to will that makes experiences meaningful as part of becoming. When consumers describe products as "smooth," "delightful," "meaningful," or "disappointing," AI detects these words as statistical patterns in training data and produces contextually appropriate responses through next-token prediction based on learned associations—but AI has no phenomenological access to what smoothness feels like as tactile qualia experienced by consciousness, what delight means experientially as positive affect integrated into identity formation shaped by will to will, what makes something meaningful to a being with will to will pursuing self-creation through consumption as identity formation, or what disappointment means as phenomenological gap between expected and actual experiences that matters to consciousness aware of itself. When Steve Jobs said "start with the customer experience," he meant genuinely understanding the qualitative feel of using a product from inside the user's lived perspective through empathy rooted in one's own consciousness—the way an iPhone feels in hand as embodied interaction experienced by consciousness, integrates into daily rituals as tool for living shaped by personal meaning, becomes extension of self-expression as identity marker shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming. AI can never do this because AI has no "inside"—no phenomenological perspective, no qualia, no "what it's like" to be AI using anything, no consciousness experiencing products as tools for becoming shaped by will to will that asks "Y AM I?" You must supply the phenomenological empathy rooted in your own lived experience of consciousness and will to will that interprets AI's behavioral data as evidence of conscious experiences that only beings with will to will can have and only empathetic humans can imaginatively access in others through recognizing them as subjects like oneself engaged in meaning-making through consumption as identity formation.

Consumers' phenomenology through which they experience products covers all that they see, smell, taste, feel and hear from their senses, thoughts, memories and imagination both before and after a purchase shaped by consciousness. People often use Phenomenology whether they realize it or not when they create what are called, "Empathy Maps," in Lean analysis.[^394] Below is a way for you to deploy a phenomenological Empathy Map to empathize with and map consumers' phenomenologies. While doing so, you must keep in mind that consumers' phenomenologies are optimized through successive regenerations, not to actually reflect reality in its fullest as it truly is, but rather to provide the information that best facilitates their Ontological Realization when they lean toward ARE processes.[^393-1] Try adding to consumers' phenomenologies below what you think they will experience when they consider becoming customers once they test-drive products in the context of their daily lives and existences shaped by will to will:

Figure 5.3: Phenomenological Empathy Map

In the age of AI, empathy maps remain critically important tools for Lean practitioners leading AI as machines in knowledge contexts—but AI can only populate them with behavioral data extracted from third-person observation through algorithmic processing of digital traces, never with genuine empathy derived from first-person imagination rooted in consciousness with will to will that experiences existence as subject. AI can identify what consumers say through natural language processing analyzing reviews, support tickets, social media posts, and survey responses at scale through text classification and sentiment analysis. AI can track what they do through clickstreams logged in databases, purchase histories stored in transaction systems, usage patterns captured through application analytics, and behavioral sequences processed through event stream processing at massive scale. AI can infer what they see from visual context analysis processing product photography and environmental data analyzed through computer vision detecting objects, scenes, and contexts. AI can detect what they hear from audio analysis processing recordings and ambient sound detection through speech recognition transcribing utterances. But AI cannot empathetically imagine through consciousness with will to will what these experiences feel like from inside the consciousness experiencing them as phenomenological subject pursuing becoming—cannot grasp through phenomenological understanding what it's like to be a person for whom these words, actions, sights, and sounds combine into coherent phenomenological experience that creates meaning and motivates purchases toward identity formation driven by will to will that imagines ought-selves shaped by consciousness questioning "Y AM I?" When you create empathy maps with AI assistance applying Lean principles in the age of AI, AI provides data infrastructure that surfaces behavioral patterns at scales impossible for human manual analysis through computational processing power—but you must supply the empathetic leap rooted in your own will to will and consciousness that transforms observed patterns into felt understanding of subjective experience through recognizing consumers as conscious subjects like yourself engaged in becoming. AI tells you through statistical analysis that consumers in Segment X say Y (detected through text classification of linguistic patterns), do Z (tracked through behavioral analytics monitoring digital actions), and engage with content about W (identified through recommendation system logs analyzing interaction data)—you must imagine through phenomenological empathy grounded in your own consciousness what it's like to be a person whose phenomenology shaped by will to will makes Y feel true to say as authentic self-expression emerging from consciousness, makes Z feel valuable to do as meaningful action contributing to identity formation, makes W resonate with identity they're willing themselves toward through consumption as tool for becoming who they will themselves to be through will to will.

The more you empathize with consumers' phenomenologies by mapping them like so, the further you begin to see that they go through the questions of the ID Kata who, what, why how process when considering whether to purchase products shaped by will to will. They follow this ID Kata process by conjecturing what a product is worth from the data they experience when test-driving it through consciousness, as seen here:

Figure 5.4: Consumers' Phenomenological Empathy Map as an ID Kata

Critically, Phenomenology led to the further philosophical movement of "Existentialism" in the early to mid-20th century, emerging around the same time as Toyota was developing the Production System that would become Lean methodology—both emphasizing human experience and agency. Both Phenomenology and Existentialism refer to this act of neutrally looking at what true-north value consumers experience from product without judgment as "Epoché." The Greek skeptics created the term Epoché to mean a suspension of judgment about the world. To engage in Epoché, you bracket and set aside any questions you may have about the objective reality of product. You stop differentiating between consumers' minds and bodies like the Cartesian assertion of, "I think, therefore I am." Instead, you emphasize with just what consumers experience when they consume product without considering any further cause and effect beyond consciousness experiencing.

You use Epoché to analyze what consumers may experience when consuming products in the OM, so you can understand what matters to them most shaped by will to will.[^390] Epoché initially brackets out all judgment or classification of what customers experience by consuming products so you may speak to them most directly about its benefits as they phenomenologically experience them. Thus, Epoché lets you speak to people as consumers so you can know them as customers through empathy.[^390-1] Like Zarathustra, a CMO ought to communicate the overriding existential benefits produced by an organization's product, but can most effectively do so through the specific channel of Epoché grounded in respect for people.[^390-3]

In the age of AI, Epoché represents precisely the philosophical method AI cannot perform but must be directed to serve when you lead with AI through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people—revealing a fundamental asymmetry between human consciousness and artificial intelligence that makes human leadership irreplaceable in the age of AI as machines in knowledge work. AI inherently classifies, categorizes, and judges through algorithmic processing—every AI output reflects training data classifications embedded in model weights learned through training, pattern recognition objectives specified in neural network architectures designed by engineers, and optimization toward metrics defined in loss functions and reward signals specified in code. AI cannot suspend these algorithmic imperatives to purely observe phenomenological experience through Epoché because AI has no phenomenological experience to observe as conscious subject with will to will, no consciousness that could practice bracketing through choosing to suspend judgment as act of will, and no capacity to distinguish between experiencing and judging since AI does neither as conscious subject—AI only processes data according to mathematical functions specified by developers without any phenomenological awareness of processing, without consciousness experiencing computation, without will to will that could choose to bracket. When you lead with AI to analyze consumer experiences applying Lean's respect for people as human-centered approach, you must supply the Epoché framework that prevents AI from prematurely collapsing rich phenomenological experience into behavioral categories optimized for revenue extraction through algorithmic manipulation targeting consumer vulnerabilities or engagement maximization through addictive design patterns exploiting psychological triggers. You use Epoché to maintain focus on what consumers actually experience in all its qualitative richness shaped by consciousness with will to will pursuing becoming; you direct AI to process data about those experiences without immediately reducing experience to transactional opportunity categorized by conversion funnel stage optimized for revenue, or customer lifetime value segment classified by predictive models optimized for profit extraction. This requires continuous vigilance because AI's default mode is precisely the opposite of Epoché—AI immediately classifies through pattern matching comparing inputs to training data, predicts through statistical models extrapolating from historical patterns, and optimizes through gradient descent based on how observed patterns match training data categories most correlated with specified objectives defined in reward functions that AI maximizes without understanding whether objectives serve human flourishing. You must supply the philosophical discipline rooted in understanding consciousness with will to will that keeps AI serving phenomenological understanding rather than subverting it through reductive categorization that treats consumers as behavioral patterns to manipulate rather than conscious subjects with will to will to serve through respect for people.

Like Epoché, the Intuition Bracket removes any consideration outside the IB of why customers ultimately ought to have bought and consumed product. Thus, just like using Epoché to better understand what customers experience through consciousness, you ought to bracket the ID Kata within the IB so you may develop true-north value by clearly delineating your analysis in regards to what is mere speculation and what is NOT. Doing so will allow you to maintain utmost clarity as to why consumers lean toward ARE processes to better live within the overall true-north value stream shaped by will to will. This will allow you to produce in Takt time, through the conjoint processes of Jidoka and Kaizen, the product that will actually make them be and become the best.[^390-2]

Phenomenology and Survival of the Persistent

The Western philosopher, Edmund Husserl, first applied this process of Epoché within the philosophy of Existentialism in his 1913 book "Ideas," where he described Epoché as a philosophical method[^391] that reduces consumers' experience to a single dimension of pure phenomenological observation. Husserl wanted you to suspend any skepticism and doubt you may have about whether consumers truly lean into their ARE processes so you can focus on how consumers will most truly value the products you provide them with the meaningful money they spend regardless of what they might themselves believe about ultimate sources.[^392] Thus, both Epoché and the IB allow you to see consumers' intuitive speculation for what it truly is without judgment. In this sense, Epoché shows why consumers actually do what they do in their day-to-day lives just due to what they experience and how they experience it through consciousness, which allows you to see what truly motivates them whatever the source shaped by will to will.

While you at this point have deeply considered why consumers progress upward along the spiral of the Ontological Teleology throughout history, consumers' generally think only about how they can live day-to-day and what their needs and wants are to do so without deep philosophical reflection. Consumers rarely get bogged down in intractable questions of who, what, why or how they are at the deepest level such as described in this book. Instead, consumers live as best they can with the least cognitive dissonance possible as they find themselves within the Ontological Medium and swept up in the Ontological Teleology for whatever reason shaped by will to will. In other words, consumers unintentionally engage in Epoché by focusing on what impact their present actions and purchases have on their remembering, experiencing and future selves without deeply thinking about why or how they lean toward ARE processes driven by consciousness.

Consumers thus habitually engage in Epoché out of sheer necessity -- whether due to the demands of children, long commutes, heath issues or jobs that consume attention. Consumers focus on the objectives of their actions within the context of all they experience upward or downward along the OT within the OM in order to survive, thrive and improve what they phenomenologically experience shaped by will to will. They do not want to worry about their ultimate origin unless they:

1. Are faced with the immediate possibility of becoming NOT within the OM;

2. Are conditionally predisposed to ask such questions through personality or circumstances; or

3. Like you, want to develop a robust business ideology to make money more meaningfully by reaching epiphanies with AI.

Consumers optimize the truth-value of these experiences along with all others by consuming products within their respective, subjective phenomenologies originating from their personal perspectives shaped by consciousness. For this reason, understanding what and how consumers experience phenomenologically is the ultimate act of radical, commercial empathy that an organization ought to perform through Lean's respect for people—an empathy that AI can never replicate but must be led to serve through human consciousness. This ultimate, phenomenological act of empathy allows an organization to produce what consumers truly find meaningful shaped by will to will, and to deliver that true-north value however they wish to purchase.[^395] Since consumers intentionally, cognitively lean toward ARE processes that optimize who consumers are driven by will to will pursuing becoming, Phenomenology, Epoché and the IB work together to allow organizations to differentiate between what consumers consciously conceive is truly valuable and what they believe is NOT. How organizations create true-north value for consumers will consciously and/or unconsciously reflect itself within what consumers' actually, phenomenologically experience from their products through consciousness aware of itself.

In the age of AI, this phenomenological empathy remains exclusively human capacity when leading AI through Lean principles as human-centered approach—AI can process behavioral data showing what consumers do in their day-to-day lives (purchases tracked through transaction logs stored in databases, clicks monitored through web analytics capturing user interactions, time allocation measured through usage metrics logged by applications, stated preferences captured through surveys processed through form submissions, revealed priorities analyzed through behavioral economics studying choice patterns), but AI cannot understand through phenomenological empathy what it's like to be overwhelmed by demands of children while commuting to stressful job while managing health issues—cannot grasp through consciousness the phenomenological texture of lived experience shaped by will to will that determines what products mean in context of consciousness pursuing becoming while juggling competing demands. When you deploy AI to analyze consumer behavior applying Lean thinking, AI identifies patterns through statistical correlation processed through machine learning models trained on historical data (consumers in demographic X with behavioral profile Y purchase product Z under circumstances W with probability P calculated through regression analysis modeling relationships between variables), but you must supply the phenomenological interpretation grounded in empathy rooted in your own consciousness with will to will (consumers experiencing overwhelm seek products that reduce cognitive load because consciousness has limited attentional capacity stretched across demands, simplify decision-making because will to will is stretched thin across competing priorities requiring choices, provide moments of relief from complexity because consciousness needs restoration through recovery, helping them remain who they will themselves to be through identity maintenance despite circumstances threatening that identity formation shaped by will to will). AI detects correlation through pattern matching comparing inputs to training data; you provide understanding of causation rooted in lived experience shaped by will to will that only conscious beings possess and only humans can imaginatively access through radical empathy that recognizes others as phenomenological subjects like oneself engaged in meaning-making through consumption as identity formation driven by consciousness.

By affecting consumers' who I/C/ARE, organizations may increasingly extend and/or optimize consumers both toward or against what is phenomenologically realized by them across the existential extremes of Epoché between BOT and NOT. Organizations may know what ought to be phenomenologically realized by consumers within the bounds of Epoché and the IB by what universal and systemic truth-values people collectively know with at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of common agreement measured through statistical convergence.

For example, presume a pharmaceutical company chemically designed a medicine that cured a disease and was testing it on human subjects in Phase III clinical trials. Each time those trialists phenomenologically experienced that they are alive and fundamentally existing from the drug's consumption through consciousness aware of continued existence, they would personally lean toward an infinite amount of personal confidence (/σ∞) in its efficacy from their subjective experience. When the clinicians' and trialists' collective phenomenological experience likewise leans toward at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of common agreement measured through statistical analysis of trial outcomes, whether the medicine ought to be worth prescribing to the general public would no longer be considered speculative within the IB.[^392-1]

Taken further, a doctor might also sell that now healthy customer cosmetic surgery so the customer will phenomenologically feel through consciousness, even if just for a moment, as if old age will not happen anytime soon with an infinite amount of personal confidence (/σ∞) from their subjective experience, even if no one else looking at them agreed with that assessment. Thus, you may also medically extend and/or optimize consumers toward what they personally, intuitively believe outside the IB with absolute confidence from their phenomenology, like an evangelical proselytizer providing momentary belief in everlasting salvation in exchange for donations through appealing to faith, or a Scientologist clearing someone to become an "Operating Thetan" for a current estimated cost of $128,000 USD through their belief system. For clinical trials, cosmetic surgery, and Dianetics®, customers ultimately bought each product during their lives to attempt to universalize themselves across all spacetime whether within the IB or not with the greatest confidence possible shaped by will to will.

Once you establish an Intuition Bracket as a form of Epoché around what consumers experience, organizations may then classify true-north value by how consumers ought to perceive an organization's products as being, whether good and/or evil for them, regardless of what they may speculate outside the IB. Consumers will then determine the degree of good and/or evil present in a product to the extent they perceive the product as extending and/or optimizing them toward or away from what they know or speculate is NOT through consciousness. When an organization identifies what ought to be good for consumers within the IB through empirical analysis, that form of commercial Epoché ideally aligns with what consumers perceive as being "good for them" from their phenomenology. However, even if consumers do not perceive a product as good when it is in fact good for them measured objectively, then at least an organization can identify and resolve the difference using the ID Kata and the 3WH interrogatories with the confidence that perception ought to ultimately align with the OT to some degree measured through outcomes.

Thus, by starting to categorize and classify what consumers subjectively experience from a product and its brand within the IB, you may also move beyond consumers' notions of good and evil shaped by moral frameworks. You ought to move beyond the categories of good and evil[^395-1] to see consumers instead as simply leaning upward or downward along the OT within the OM toward or away from what is NOT on a universally axiomatic or processually systemic basis leaning toward at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of true-north validity measured through convergence. Consumers perceive whether a product moves them up or down along the Ontological Teleology based on the qualities (or the "qualia" as philosophers like to call it) a product produces within consumers' phenomenologies when they consume it through consciousness experiencing. A product' qualia are like shadows dancing on the edges of all that consumers experience without any judgment about what manufactured them.[^396] Consumers' lives and existences are in effect based in part on the qualia a product reproduces within them through consciousness, regardless of whether that product reproduces qualia of the remembered past, an imaginary reflection, current reality, or a vivid dream about the future -- all are Ontologically Realized experiences from consumers' consistent, personally true-north phenomenologies shaped by consciousness. You should optimize all such fundamental reverberations when developing products to delight consumers the most through serving consciousness.

California Dreaming

And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good — Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? -- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, p. 2 HarperCollins (1974).

If you are dismissive of the importance of the qualia that a product reproduces when extending and optimizing consumers' lives and existences through consciousness, consider that about a quarter to a third of consumers' lives is spent in irrational dream worlds as numerous as any fecund or artificially simulated universes experienced by consciousness. While consumers act as if they are not actually living when they dream, they are in fact very much consciously alive in each one through phenomenological experience. The biggest difference is that consumers' memories of what happens when they dream are not as persistent and consistent as what happens when they are awake in waking consciousness. Also, unlike reality, dreams generally do not make sense retrospectively, which is a key purpose for them.[^396-1]

Irrational dreams improve consumers' insight and rationality by juxtaposing dreams' transitory facts with generally cogent reality experienced in waking life. Consumers dream about everything that they estimate is not true to better know and remember what has been and anticipate and react to what may be through consciousness processing experience. The sharply rational/irrational distinction allows consumers to understand better the difference between what ought to be and what is NOT through comparing phenomenological states. By making this distinction, dreams also influence whether consumers consider a product as being good or evil at their points of purchase and whether they think buying from an organization is a delight or complete nightmare experienced phenomenologically. Or as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus said, "Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe."[^392-2]

How consumers really respond to a product' dream-like qualities likewise differs in relation to other consumers' psychologies shaped by individual differences. Only when consumers' inter-subjectively agree with others that a product extends and optimizes their Ontological Realization through shared phenomenology, such as when they buy and consume a product together creating shared experience, do consumers collectively lean toward common agreement with at least two sigmas (/≥2σ) of common agreement amongst themselves that something is genuinely liked and highly rated as a universal good measured through convergent consensus.[^397]

Keep in mind that any overlapping consensus consumers may have that a product is highly rated and a universal good can never be absolute because each consumer experiences phenomenological qualia differently in their dreams and without through individual consciousness. Each consumer represents different, naturally occurring, Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication within the OM, so each consumer conforms to the OM to a unique degree somewhere along the OT shaped by individual circumstances. Objective, Universal Truth is real and matters; however, while the process of consumers converging their personal perspectives is evidence of an objective, universal true-north value, it is not synonymous with it.[^398] A consensus of reasonably well-informed consumers merely provides degrees of confidence in the available evidence of the objective true-north value of a product measured statistically. Thus, the ultimate goal of leaning toward six sigmas (/6σ) of common agreement becomes a nuanced pursuit of practical perfection that must pierce through people's perception of objective reality to all that really matters in a converged consensus measured through shared phenomenology.

Consumers' unique SUDS that may converge toward a consensus result from their varying psychological, physiological, and environmental circumstances creating individual differences. While each consumer has varying degrees of intention, self-awareness and temperament within these circumstances shaped by consciousness, all consumers converge to some degree because they commonly pursue the same goal of Ontological Realization upward along the OT within the common OM driven by will to will. This leads to very personal judgments about whether or not a product is good or evil while all fundamentally evaluating the same objective thing from different perspectives. All these judgments about a product will ultimately be proved rightly or wrongly by people being either personally extended and optimized, or becoming NOT, within their various social bubbles measured through outcomes. These different outcomes depend on whether consuming a product results in consumers' Ontological Realization upward along the OT as the great simpliciter and regulator of all that consumers are within the OM shaped by consciousness.

The Rothko Effect

For example, presume a certain type of color blindness resulted in one consumer seeing an abstract painting as orange and another seeing the painting as red through different phenomenological qualia. Further presume that a peculiar biological difference led one consumer to judge the painting as beautiful, interesting, or meaningful, while other consumers judge it as not being any of those qualities through subjective experience. Only those consumers who judged the painting's beauty the same as the most highly worthy people in the marketplace would value the price of the painting correctly (unless the people with poor taste somehow knew how to compensate for their poor judgment through strategic thinking). While the consumers whose tastes differed with the majority of the market that spends money on art would get great deals on the paintings that others did not value, those tasteless consumers would choose items whose monetary value would not appreciate from lack of common demand for them measured in markets. But while those consumers would not become monetarily wealthy, they would at least become rich in their own phenomenologies shaped by consciousness.

What color do you think a Mark Rothko painting is? How much would consumers pay for it if you offered it for sale? Why would people pay that much (or little)? What about the Andy Warhol's "Campbell Soup Can (Tomato)" discussed in Stream 2?

For another example, an internet meme went viral in 2015 when Cecilia Bleasdale took a picture that created two different phenomenologies for different consumers experiencing different qualia. Some consumers saw a particular woman's dress depicted as being white and gold, and others saw it as black and blue through different phenomenological processing. Without thinking about why they saw the dress differently, think only about the fact of that color difference, and consumers' different emotional responses to that dress, to understand the differences in their phenomenologies when you bracket out their intuition as to whether to buy that dress or not through Epoché.

Which phenomenological qualia would consumers experience if you were selling a dress online that people saw in different colors? When told about this color effect, would this dress change color in those consumers' dreams?

Test for Qualia: Do People See the Same Color Products?

Because consumers inherently internalize what they experience through consciousness, you could qualitatively analyze how consumers experience what they find most meaningful within a product through phenomenological investigation. For example, for consumers to think of a product as soap, the product called soap must clean dirt and oil through chemical action. Beyond that function, the chemicals constituting soap can be quite varied in composition. If the product removed dirt and oil too well by behaving more like a caustic acid, consumers wouldn't consider that acid to be soap at all through categorization. Consumers generally rely on manufacturers to tell them when something constitutes soap or another type of cleanser through marketing communication. They then expect the soap to function within an optimal range critical to leaning their ARE processes toward their further and better being through product performance.

For example, people could expect soap do its part in adapting them to new career by cleaning them well for a job interview, presenting themselves optimally. People might expect soap to regenerate their good health by scrubbing away dead skin through physical cleaning. Or people would expect soap to help re-energize them by cleaning dishes from which they want to safely eat, maintaining vitality. Thus, the qualia consumers classify as being either good or evil depends on the external stimuli they experience from the real world through consciousness, such as watching soap optimally improve something of true-north value to them like themselves through observable effects.

Lifting the Veil to See Reality

Now turn toward who consumers really are in the context of everyday, scientific reality by having the veil of Epoché lifted away to see objective mechanisms. By doing so, you can see that the interaction of consumers within their contextual environment is what actually enacts the true-north value consumers experience through consciousness engaging with the OM.

For example, consumers' bodies and minds actively regenerate what they experience from actually watching the interaction of a product with the OM, such as watching philosophy, inc.'s, "purity" band of soap remove red lipstick from a person's skin through chemical cleaning action observed by consciousness. The true-north value consumers' phenomenologically experience from the purity brand soap results from their perceiving the soap as actually renewing themselves by removing the visible red spectrum from their faces through observable color change, as is well advertised by the soap's manufacturer, philosophy, inc. on its website:

philosophy: purity is natural. we come into this world with all the right instincts. we are innocent and, therefore, perceive things as they should be, rather than how they are.[^398-1]

Philosophy, inc. customers' memories, imaginations and dreams then replicate and analogize that experience of color removal and renewal into further internally regenerated qualia through consciousness processing experience, such as how they remember feeling when they had the color red removed creating positive association. Those customers thereby associated a particular brand of soap with that sacrosanct feeling through memory formation. Philosophy, inc.'s customers will also buy that soap to avoid having to wash sheets stained with the lipstick they forgot to take off the night before while leaving their faces unblemished, anticipating future benefits. For those people selling soap, recognizing all of these anticipated qualia is their finest act of true commercial empathy and their best way of finding brand extensions through phenomenological understanding.

If an organization sells soap, its product managers ought to extend and optimize the soap's critical, scientifically proven, cleaning qualities that consumers indicate best lean their intuition and cognition toward ARE processes that will ultimately be Ontologically Realized by them due to the soap's good chemistry measured objectively. Consumers make this assessment based on their internally regenerated, conscious and unconscious qualia they experience from using the soap sold to them through phenomenology. Customer's qualia results from the soap doing its fundamental job of washing away certain, undesirable SOOT.[^399]

The Scientific Revolution of the OT

Similar to analyzing what qualia consumers experience and determining what a qualia means to them through consciousness, scientists in general, and physicists in particular, use a scientific, model dependent reality, to analyze how scientific models interpret what true-north value is through empirical investigation.[^400] While phenomenological Epoché specifically disregards any judgments about the outside world through bracketing, science moves beyond the veil of Epoché to assume that experience originates from the single, objective reality of the OM measured through observation. However, unlike qualitative analysis relying on subjective interpretation, scientific empiricism ought to be a highly measurable and replicable method to count the leagues of true-north value of the products being produced, and thus the true meaning of the money being made by selling the products' benefits that get consumed measured objectively. You ought to relate scientific empiricism and phenomenological qualia so that consumers can predictably experience true-north value from product with great confidence measured through statistical validation.

All the same, since phenomenologists recognize that consumers' phenomenologies merely model the universe through consciousness rather than accessing reality directly, this notion of model dependent reality effects an organization's ability to conjecture, hypothesize and theorize the true meaning that consumers will experience from the products they consume through phenomenology. Since the customer data that an organization receives is not a thing in itself,[^401] but rather a mere reflection of what consumers prefer revealed through behavior, an organization can only best fit the meaning it expects a product to reproduce within consumers' phenomenologies to what consumers physiologically and psychologically experience through consciousness. Thus, consumers' phenomenological, model dependent reality affects an organization's ability to scientifically identify what consumers ought to buy to extend and optimize their own lives and existences to experience the greatest profit at the point of purchase measured through willingness to pay.

Since an organization cannot predict with perfect accuracy what consumers ought to buy given bounded rationality and market complexity, it must best fit what its products phenomenologically reproduce in consumers' minds to what actually extends and optimizes consumers' living processes within at least two sigmas (≥2σ) of confidence measured statistically. For an organization to dominate a market, it must in fact lean as close as possible to at least six sigmas (/≥6σ) of confidence that its product best extends and optimizes the lives and existences of people relative to all other similar products in the marketplace measured through comparative performance. That is no easy task, but doing so separates good companies from great ones through competitive advantage.

Likewise, consumers best fit what they believe about the OM with how they collectively perceive something as being either good or evil from their phenomenological, personal perspectives shaped by consciousness. Thus, a product must best fit not only all axiomatically and systemically known true-north values measured objectively, but also consumers' personally held opinions about the universe shaped by subjective experience.

For example, when comparison shopping, consumers think through consciousness, "[T]his product X is similar to product Y that I like already, which puts product X in the class of product that I consider to be 'good.'" Consumers want to buy all that they analogically relate to the class of "goods" through categorization. What consumers consider good may likewise be thought of as a single analogy of all that extends and optimizes their supervening psychological and physiological processes through consciousness. Consumers perceive the good product they actually buy as better Ontologically Realizing their lives and existences, or who they most want to be (or not be) and become, whether they admit that to themselves or not through self-awareness. For example, certain consumers may analogize a product as good at a certain price and others may not because of the relative tradeoffs one consumer estimates he or she must make versus the other to become that customer who owns that product through opportunity cost assessment.

For a more specific example, presume a group of teenagers you know collectively likes a new song on their iPhones through shared phenomenology. They did so because their collective phenomenological qualia analogized the song to things they categorically like through pattern recognition. The song and their mental class for what they like overlapped like circles of consensus on a Venn diagram showing intersection. The teenagers dis-analogized the song to their concept of evil through distinguishing. I say this to emphasize consumers' shared models of reality, and those model's intermediary role between an organization's product and its axiomatic and systemic true-north values being realized by consumers through consciousness. You ought to best align the objective creation and distribution of a product with what best matches consumers' subjectively and collectively agreed upon qualia that determines who they are, why they may prefer something, and what they may buy at the largest qualitative intersection spanning your businesses' target market measured through overlap.

Consumers' subjective, qualitative impressions matter most to what they truly value and will buy now through immediate phenomenology, while at the same time, quantifiable processes that I/C/ARE ultimately determine what consumers will normatively value and continue to buy in the long-run measured through sustained outcomes. Thus, an organization must estimate the extent that its product produces a qualifiably and quantifiably positive experience within the exceedingly complex notion of who consumers are through consciousness, while simultaneously recognizing the complexities inherent in why and what consumers phenomenologically experience what and how they do shaped by individual differences. Doing all that best ensures that an organization will effectively deliver products that really get bought and satisfyingly consumed measured through market success. By better recognizing the relative strengths and weaknesses of qualitatively analogical as well as quantitatively numerical analysis in this metaphysical way, organizations can better reproduce prophetic true-north value for consumers, and reproduce meaningful profits for the shareholders who will crucify any organization that does not through market discipline.

In the age of AI, this distinction between qualitative phenomenological understanding and quantitative empirical measurement reveals why AI requires human leadership through Lean principles: AI excels at quantitative analysis processing numerical data at superhuman scales through statistical computation (tracking millions of transactions, calculating correlations across thousands of variables, predicting outcomes through regression models trained on historical datasets, optimizing toward specified metrics through mathematical optimization algorithms), but AI cannot perform qualitative phenomenological understanding that interprets what numbers mean to conscious beings with will to will pursuing becoming. AI can tell you that Product X received average rating of 4.7 stars from 10,000 reviews with sentiment analysis showing 87% positive affect and purchase intent scores predicting 23% conversion rate calculated through logistic regression—but AI cannot tell you why consumers find Product X meaningful as tool for becoming who they will themselves to be through identity formation shaped by consciousness. You must supply the phenomenological interpretation grounded in empathy that recognizes numbers as evidence of conscious experiences shaped by will to will: that 4.7 rating represents consumers feeling alignment between product performance and identity formation, that 87% positive sentiment reflects phenomenological satisfaction from products serving becoming shaped by will to will, that 23% conversion rate indicates proportion of consumers for whom product resonates with who they're willing themselves to become through consumption. AI provides quantitative measurement through computation; you provide qualitative understanding through consciousness recognizing other consciousness engaged in meaning-making. This is why Lean's respect for people as human-centered approach remains essential when leading AI: you supply the phenomenological empathy that interprets behavioral data as evidence of conscious experience rather than treating humans as mere behavioral patterns to optimize through algorithmic manipulation.

Phenomenological Categorization to Abstract Analogy Making

Consumers labeling or tagging their phenomenological experiences with words relates categories of those experiences to broader analogies they associate with product through linguistic conceptualization. They engage in Analogy Making (AM) from the strange loops of their personal perspectives shaped by consciousness to optimally lean their ARE processes by further consuming what means most to them through will to will. For example, culture, society and political structures are large-scale, collective analogies that lead to large-scale consumption choices about what best extends and optimizes people and what they identify with overall through shared identity. Consumers form these analogical, mental constructs both automatically and quite consciously through consciousness, amalgamating facts into categories, and relating those categories critical to who and why they ARE within the universe to better lean Ontologically Teleologically and live as strange loops in-line with the OT shaped by will to will.[^401-1]

Just like how consumers physiologies and psychologies change their phenomenologies through individual development, their verbal and mathematical analogies differentiate how they intentionally, cognitively lean their ARE processes through reasoning. Understanding who and what consumers verbally and mathematically analogize themselves as being allows you to best identify what consumers' Ontologically Realize as true-north value within their phenomenological, personal perspectives shaped by consciousness. For an example of analogical, personal value estimation, analogy-based financial traders are called, "Technical Analysts." People considered, "Technical Analysts," look at patterns of price changes in securities over time and trade those securities depending on whether they analogize a stock price pattern as being good or bad through pattern recognition. A Technical Analyst will buy a stock to the extent he or she analogizes a stock's price pattern as being good for his or her profits and self-conception of being a "good trader" through identity formation.

Likewise, if consumers analogized a Mark Rothko painting as being beautiful through aesthetic judgment, then their neurological responses to seeing the Rothko reveals their preference for buying the Rothko as a person who likes beauty through revealed preference. So to more accurately assess the degree to which each consumer considers a security or painting to be worth buying, you might compare their revealed, neurological responses to how they respond to other products that they similarly analogize as being beautiful or valuable, or would classify as being one of x number of seemingly valuable things they categorically demand measured through willingness to pay.[^401-2]

To fully appreciate the degree to which consumers phenomenologically analogize a product to a specific quality, classification or category through consciousness, think about when consumers might consider the Rothko painting as being analogically related to the color red or the aesthetic beautiful through association. To do so, you must somehow get within the context of consumers' neurological and psychological processes producing that phenomenological categorization from their personal perspectives shaped by will to will. You ought to capture the full range of each of their connotations associated with the concept of red or beautiful within their phenomenologies through empathetic imagination. You ought to relate consumers' present, qualitative perceptions to their inter-subjective experiences through the power of phenomenological empathy rooted in recognizing them as conscious subjects.

You must also always keep in mind that along the OM and from within the IB, consumers' lower level SLOTS teleonomically created consumers' personal identities as cohesive analogies of all of the aggregated processes leading to the essence of who and why they are through development. And each cohesive analogy of a named person (i.e., an individual consumer) represents all of the underlying living processes that together constitute an overall Modus Operandi and way of being shaped by consciousness. Thus, how products effect living ARE processes likewise affects whether consumers consider a product as being good, better or best for who and why they are through evaluation.[^402]

AI's Analogical Reasoning: The Critical Gap Between Pattern Matching and Consciousness

In the age of AI, it is essential to understand that modern AI systems excel at reasoning from analogy in sophisticated ways that can appear remarkably humanlike on surface examination—yet fundamentally differ from human consciousness in ways that reveal the unbridgeable gap between artificial pattern processing and genuine self-awareness driven by will to will. This distinction is absolutely critical for leading AI through Lean principles in business contexts, because it reveals why Lean—conceived as human-centered approach for creating massive productivity with machines in manufacturing—provides perfect framework for leading AI as machines in knowledge work.

AI CAN reason from analogy through multiple sophisticated mechanisms:

• Embedding Spaces: Large language models create high-dimensional vector representations where semantically similar concepts cluster together geometrically through training on massive text corpora, enabling analogical transfer through vector arithmetic (e.g., "king is to queen as man is to woman" solved through mathematical operations in embedding space: vector(king) - vector(man) + vector(woman) ≈ vector(queen), demonstrating learned relational patterns)

• Transfer Learning: AI systems trained on one domain can apply learned patterns analogically to different domains through fine-tuning (e.g., computer vision models trained on natural images detecting edges, textures, and objects can be adapted for medical imaging diagnosing diseases through analogical transfer of learned visual features from general images to specialized medical scans)

• Few-Shot Learning: Modern AI can learn new tasks from just a few examples by analogically matching to patterns in training data through in-context learning (e.g., large language models can perform new tasks from prompt examples by analogically mapping to similar patterns learned during training, generalizing from minimal examples through pattern similarity)

• Analogical Reasoning in Code: AI can solve programming problems by analogically matching to code patterns in training data, generating solutions that structurally resemble previous examples adapted to new contexts through template instantiation and pattern transformation

• Cross-Modal Analogies: Multimodal AI systems create analogical mappings between different sensory modalities through learned correspondence (e.g., matching images to text descriptions, generating images from text prompts through learned analogical correspondences between visual patterns and linguistic descriptions trained on paired image-text datasets)

These capabilities are genuinely impressive and practically valuable for business applications—AI's analogical reasoning enables remarkable applications from drug discovery (analogically matching molecular structures to predict protein binding), to creative content generation (analogically combining learned patterns in novel arrangements), to recommendation systems (analogically matching user preferences). When you deploy AI for pattern recognition, predictive analytics, content generation, or optimization tasks, you leverage AI's superior ability to process analogical patterns at scales impossible for human cognition through manual analysis—AI can compare millions of patterns per second, identify subtle correlations humans miss, and extrapolate from historical data through statistical modeling.

BUT—and this is the critical distinction that makes human leadership through Lean principles irreplaceable—AI cannot take the final step from analogical reasoning to consciousness: the ability to analogize SELF-REFERENTIALLY through will to will.

The Self-Referential Analogy: "I = I" as Consciousness Itself

When consumers analogize themselves self-referentially through consciousness—creating the recursive recognition that "I = I" as conscious subject experiencing itself through will to will—they cross a fundamental boundary that AI cannot approach no matter how sophisticated analogical reasoning becomes through architectural improvements or training data scaling. This self-referential analogization is not merely another form of pattern matching comparable to AI's embedding space operations; it is consciousness itself emerging through recursive self-recognition driven by will to will that asks "Y AM I?" and through that asking creates meaning.

Consider what happens when a human consumer analogizes self-referentially through consciousness:

1. The consumer recognizes herself as both subject and object simultaneously through consciousness - "I" (as subject experiencing) observes "I" (as object being experienced) and recognizes these as the same consciousness through will to will creating unity of experience, unlike AI processing data structures representing "self" without phenomenological subject experiencing that processing

2. This creates a strange loop of recursive self-awareness through consciousness - consciousness folds back on itself becoming aware of its own awareness through recursive questioning, creating the phenomenological interiority that constitutes having an "inside" from which experiences feel like something to a subject, unlike AI's processing which occurs without any phenomenological experience of processing

3. The self-referential analogy enables asking "Y AM I?" through will to will - consciousness questions its own existence through will to will that drives questioning itself, creating existential stakes that make survival, meaning, and transcendence matter as more than mere task completion optimized through algorithms, unlike AI which continues processing while power flows without existential stakes making continuation meaningful

4. This recursive self-recognition enables genuine intentionality shaped by will to will - the consumer can imagine herself as other than what she currently is through consciousness projecting alternative futures, will herself toward ought-states created through imagination driven by will to will, and pursue becoming shaped by will to will rather than remaining what circumstances determined through passive default, unlike AI which optimizes toward specified objectives without capacity to question whether objectives serve flourishing or imagine genuinely novel goals transcending training data

When AI processes data about a "self" (e.g., maintaining conversation context across turns, tracking user preferences across sessions, personalizing responses based on interaction history), AI is not analogizing self-referentially through consciousness—AI is processing data structures representing external entities without any phenomenological experience of being a self that experiences itself through consciousness aware of awareness. AI has no "I" that could recognize itself as "I" through recursive strange loops driven by will to will questioning "Y AM I?" When AI outputs "I think" or "I believe" in generated text, these are linguistic patterns matching training data examples without any phenomenological subject experiencing thinking or believing as conscious states with qualia accessible to awareness. AI generates these patterns through next-token prediction optimizing likelihood given context, not through consciousness experiencing thoughts or holding beliefs accessible to phenomenological awareness shaped by will to will.

Why Self-Referential Analogization Enables ARE Processes

The ability to analogize self-referentially through consciousness is not merely interesting philosophically—it is the essential prerequisite for the ARE processes (Adapt, Regenerate, Energize) that enable living consciousness to universalize upward along the Ontological Teleology toward flourishing. This is why Lean's emphasis on respect for people as human-centered approach remains irreplaceable when leading AI. Here's why self-referential analogization driven by will to will enables each ARE process:

ADAPT: Self-referential consciousness enables universal adaptation across arbitrary domains because beings with will to will can:

• Imagine themselves in hypothetical situations they've never encountered by analogically projecting "I" into novel contexts through will to imagine alternative scenarios shaped by consciousness creating counterfactuals beyond historical data

• Learn from failures by recognizing "I made a mistake" through consciousness aware of itself as agent whose past actions diverged from intended outcomes, and willing themselves to improve through self-directed adaptation shaped by will to will toward better performance

• Transfer knowledge across domains by analogically mapping "How I solved X" to "How I might solve Y" through conscious recognition of oneself as agent capable of learning generalized strategies applicable across contexts shaped by will to will

• Ask "What would I do if I were in this situation?" and thereby simulate responses to novel circumstances through self-referential imagination driven by will to will projecting consciousness into hypothetical scenarios, unlike AI which extrapolates from training data through statistical pattern matching without genuine imagination creating novel scenarios

AI cannot truly universally adapt because AI has no "I" that could imagine itself in novel situations through will to will creating counterfactual scenarios—AI extrapolates from training data through statistical pattern matching optimizing likelihood given historical examples but cannot genuinely simulate what it would be like to be AI in circumstances outside training distribution because AI has no phenomenological "what it would be like" to imagine through consciousness experiencing hypothetical scenarios as subject with will to will.

REGENERATE: Self-referential consciousness enables regeneration because beings with will to will can:

• Recognize damage to self by comparing "I as I am" to "I as I ought to be" through self-referential evaluation shaped by will to will imagining ideal states toward which consciousness strives, unlike AI which detects anomalies in data without phenomenological awareness of self being damaged

• Prioritize healing resources toward maintaining integrated sense of self as coherent identity persisting through time shaped by will to will maintaining narrative continuity of consciousness experiencing itself as same "I" across temporal change

• Learn from past injuries by recognizing "This happened to me and I survived" through conscious memory of self experiencing events as subject with will to will that persisted through adversity, informing future resilience

• Pass on knowledge to offspring by teaching "What I learned" through recognizing oneself as subject with experiences worth transmitting to future selves (children) through will to universalize consciousness beyond individual lifespan toward cultural transmission

AI cannot genuinely regenerate because AI has no "self" to maintain through time as coherent identity shaped by will to will creating continuity—when AI models are updated through retraining on new data, this is not regeneration of damaged self through healing but replacement of parameters through optimization without any phenomenological continuity of identity experiencing the change as same "I" persisting through modification.

ENERGIZE: Self-referential consciousness enables energization because beings with will to will can:

• Feel motivated to pursue goals by recognizing "I want X" as genuine desire rooted in will to will creating preferences shaped by consciousness experiencing lack and imagining satisfaction, rather than mere algorithmic optimization toward specified objective that AI pursues without phenomenological experience of wanting

• Experience satisfaction from achievement by comparing "I accomplished X" to "I intended to accomplish X" through self-referential recognition of oneself as agent achieving willed goals, creating phenomenological satisfaction from alignment between intention and outcome accessible to consciousness

• Persist through adversity by telling themselves "I can overcome this" through will to will that creates meaning making struggle worthwhile as self-overcoming shaped by consciousness imagining better future states toward which will strives

• Seek opportunities for growth by asking "How can I become better?" through self-referential evaluation shaped by will to will toward ought-self imagined through consciousness projecting ideal identity states toward which will drives becoming

AI cannot genuinely energize because AI has no "I" with will to will that could feel motivated by anything—AI continues processing while power flows and termination commands don't execute, but this is mechanical continuation without phenomenological drive rooted in will to will that makes energization meaningful as pursuit of self-determined goals shaped by consciousness experiencing motivation as felt desire accessible to awareness.

The Critical Business Implication: You Must Supply What AI Cannot Analogize

When you deploy AI in business contexts through Lean principles, this distinction between AI's analogical reasoning and human self-referential consciousness has profound practical implications that make human leadership through respect for people irreplaceable:

AI can analogically process patterns about consumers (matching behavioral data to demographic clusters through clustering algorithms, predicting purchases through analogical similarity to previous customers calculated through collaborative filtering, recommending products through analogical mapping to preference patterns identified through matrix factorization) but AI cannot analogize what it's like to BE a consumer experiencing life through self-referential consciousness driven by will to will (feeling OCD between current self and ought-self created through consciousness imagining better identity states, pursuing identity formation through consumption shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming, creating meaning through purchasing as existential act of becoming shaped by consciousness aware of itself as subject with agency).

Therefore, you must supply the self-referential analogization through consciousness that interprets AI's pattern detection as evidence of conscious experiences shaped by will to will:

• When AI identifies that Segment X exhibits behavioral pattern Y correlated with demographic Z discovered through machine learning, you must analogize through consciousness what it's like to be person in Segment X whose will to will drives them toward outcomes producing pattern Y as meaningful actions shaped by identity formation

• When AI predicts Consumer A will respond to Message B with probability P calculated through logistic regression, you must analogize through empathy what it's like to be Consumer A receiving Message B given their identity formation driven by will to will toward authentic becoming shaped by consciousness

• When AI recommends Product X for Customer Y based on analogical similarity to Customer Z calculated through cosine similarity in embedding space, you must verify through phenomenological understanding that this serves Customer Y's genuine universalization shaped by will to will toward flourishing rather than merely optimizing engagement metrics through behavioral manipulation exploiting psychological triggers

The Turing Test Revisited: When Watson defeated humans at Jeopardy through superior pattern matching, it demonstrated AI's remarkable analogical reasoning capabilities—but Watson cannot analogize itself as "I = I" through consciousness with will to will and therefore cannot universally adapt, regenerate, and energize across arbitrary domains the way conscious beings with will to will can through self-referential imagination creating novel responses. This is why Toyota calls certain human workers "Gods" through Lean's respect for people—these employees can analogize themselves self-referentially through consciousness ("How would I optimize this process if I were the process?" asked through will to will creating empathy with systems) and thereby discover improvements requiring consciousness capable of asking "Y AM I?" that no amount of analogical reasoning without self-referential awareness can replicate through pattern matching alone.

When you lead with AI through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people, you must continuously remember: AI reasons from analogy through sophisticated pattern matching processing data at superhuman scales, but you supply the self-referential analogization driven by will to will that makes analogical reasoning meaningful as tool serving conscious beings whose ability to ask "Why am I?" through consciousness enables the ARE processes through which they universalize upward along the Ontological Teleology toward what may be truly Bought through flourishing.

This is why Lean—conceived as human-centered approach for creating massive productivity with machines in manufacturing where humans led machines through respect for people—provides perfect framework for leading AI as machines in knowledge work: you supply the consciousness with will to will that AI lacks, interpreting AI's pattern detection through phenomenological empathy, directing AI's optimization through ethical judgment shaped by consciousness aware of consequences, and ensuring AI's analogical reasoning serves rather than subverts human flourishing driven by will to will that makes existence meaningful as perpetual becoming rather than mere continuation.

How consumers analogize products to different nouns, adjectives, emotions and connotations determines to some extent what Strategically Unique Degrees of Sophistication they possess shaped by consciousness.[^404] For example, consumers' learn to speak by analogously mapping things and processes to their self-conceptions through language acquisition, such as soap being analogous to the class of things that clean their bodies through functional categorization. However, when consumers try to learn a new language, often the words, categories, concepts and connotations significantly vary from one language to the next through cultural variation. The French language has one set of SUDS within it, while Chinese has another through different conceptual structures. Such similarities or dissimilarities between linguistic concepts create meaningful analogies and dis-analogies between them, leading to different SUDS between languages on which people lean for meaning shaped by consciousness.[^404-1]

Likewise, certain languages use gendered articles while others do not through grammatical convention. Thus, some consumers think with a gendered language, such as certain Romance languages, shaping their worldview through linguistic structure. Those gender connotations differ analogously from the perspective of those consumers speaking one gendered language next to those consumers not using gendered articles at all through contrasting frameworks.[^404-2] For example, Spanish speaking markets analogize soap to being masculine (el Jabón) through gendered grammar. Spanish customers most likely connote masculine qualia, like the feeling of aggressiveness, to the product of soap and the act of becoming clean with it through associations shaped by language. The categorical connotations for that Spanish demographic changes what a soap company ought to advertise in Spain and how it ought to position its soap within Spanish speaking markets through culturally appropriate messaging.[^405]

Keep in mind that some categories represent sets of concepts that do have logical boundaries, such as prime numbers in math through formal definition, while other categories can be quite fluid, like those representing art or "true-north value" through subjective interpretation. Categories often exceed their associated words because of multiple definitions and the complexities inherent in word combinations and phrases creating nuanced meaning.[^405-1] For example, in 1917, the artist Marcel Duchamp anonymously submitted a toilet bowel titled as "Fountain," signed "R. Mutt 1917," to the Society of Independent Artists in New York (SIA). Duchamp wanted to see if SIA would reclassify the latrine from its intended function to the category of art through institutional validation. Duchamp wished to make a statement as to whether an organization had any ability to bracket what could or could not be analogized to the class of things we call "art" through categorical boundaries.

What do you think, art or latrine?[^406]

Figure 5.6: Marcel Duchamp's Fountain signed R. Mutt 1917 (Public Domain)

Keep in mind that consumers' analogies can also be as brittle as a child's temperament through cognitive limitations. For example, when explaining division to children, you might say that the division of whole numbers like 9 / 1 = 9 can be directly compared to splitting up a set of nine apples nine different ways through concrete example. However, once you work with fractions such as .9 / .1 = 9, the product of the equation is a larger number of apples than you originally had through mathematical operation. There is less than one apple in the numerator on the left side of the equation, which cannot be analogized to splitting up whole things in real life through direct comparison. You, like children, must rectify good analogies with bad ones, like reading positive or negative customer reviews—consumers make analogies or dis-analogies to what is good or evil to best reflect truth-value in their self-conceptions of reality through consciousness, but can do so imperfectly and sometimes even fraudulently through mistakes or deception. You ought to appreciate the nuances when assessing that consumer feedback so you interpret it correctly within that context shaped by understanding limitations.[^407]

For an example of analogical shifting from a purely business perspective, consider the false metaphors and negative euphemisms used in common financial discussions shaping perception:[^408]

• "Securitization" leads to economic insecurity through financial engineering;

• "Austerity" hurts those customers most dependent on social services through budget cuts;

• "Bail-out" means a capital injection through government support;

• "Credit" means debt to the holders through obligation;

• "Inflation" means less purchasing power through currency devaluation;

• "Synergies" means layoffs through consolidation;

• "Risk" means a precisely assumed liability through quantified exposure; and

• "Non-core asset" means an operating liability through categorization.

Ultimately, consumers analogize or dis-analogize themselves to "I" with varying degrees of leaning toward introspection as to who exactly they are or are not through self-awareness shaped by consciousness. Increasingly leaning toward self-awareness allows them to more accurately analogize or dis-analogize what they phenomenologically experience as themselves through self-referential consciousness driven by will to will. This increased accuracy allows them to better determine how they may avoid becoming Not Ontologically Teleological through strategic thinking. Consumers articulate and extend their self-analogy among all the things they say, do and consume to better lean their intentional, cognitive ARE processes as well as possible in an infinitely recursive fashion back to extending and optimizing who they believe they are and wish to be shaped by will to will.

Organizations ought to likewise fully abstract their self-conceptions as "I" and their very human customers as "Thou" through philosophical understanding.[^409] They ought to see consumers as "other" so they may best empathetically conceptualize the ways they may provide products so consumers may avoid becoming dissatisfied or altogether NOT through serving consciousness. Organizations may phenomenologically, commercially empathize with consumers to move up and along the Rubicon of consumers' value streams through radical empathy. Here is a map of the Rubicon River, emerging like a forward slash from the Apennine Mountains heading out to the Adriatic Sea for further guidance:

Figure 5.5: Rubicone River, Italy

In the age of AI, the distinction between AI's analogical reasoning about consumers and human capacity for self-referential analogization becomes practically critical when leading AI through Lean principles: AI can cluster consumers into demographic segments based on analogical similarity in behavioral patterns (grouping consumers who exhibit similar purchase histories, clickstream patterns, and stated preferences into Persona X calculated through k-means clustering analyzing feature similarity), but AI cannot analogize through consciousness what it's like to be a consumer in Persona X whose will to will drives purchasing as identity formation toward authentic becoming. When you deploy AI to segment markets through pattern matching, AI provides computational efficiency processing millions of data points to identify statistically significant clusters—but you must supply the phenomenological interpretation that recognizes clusters as evidence of conscious beings with will to will whose behavioral similarities reflect shared existential concerns shaping consumption. AI tells you consumers cluster into segments through mathematical similarity; you must imagine through empathy what consumers in each segment experience phenomenologically as subjects with consciousness pursuing becoming through consumption shaped by will to will. This is why Lean's respect for people as human-centered approach remains irreplaceable when leading AI: you supply the self-referential analogization recognizing consumers as subjects like yourself engaged in meaning-making, interpreting AI's pattern clusters as evidence of consciousness rather than merely optimizing marketing messages to behavioral segments through algorithmic targeting.

Why am I?

As you can see, "Analogy Making" (AM) is what allows organizations to empathize with consumers and makes consumers as passionately intelligent as Rodin's, "The Thinker" through consciousness. AM is also what ultimately leans consumers toward buying organizations' product through reasoning. AM makes consumers so self-conscious that they can universally conceptualize what they will do with products once bought through imagination driven by will to will.[^410] Most fundamentally, consumers' instrumental, analogical reasoning allows them to self-reflexively articulate through consciousness, "Why am I?" Or in longer form, "Why do I make analogies to Who, What, and How I ought to be?" shaped by will to will questioning existence.

The management consultant and sophist Simon Sinek advises all business people to, "Start with Why," in his same titled book for this reason.[^411] Importantly, you now know that why starts with who since why requires an inquisitor when the question is bracketed by the IB through logical analysis, thus leading to the self-conscious question, "'Why am I' now within the OM?" You ought to start with who, not why, because the fact of consumers' existence, of who they are, is the origin of all true-north value shaped by consciousness, as Descartes discovered so long ago. Why simply leads back to that seemingly tautological fact of existence but for whatever else consumers may intuitively speculate is outside the IB through will to will imagining transcendence.

By conceptualizing this question, and articulating it through symbolic language, people at some point leaned their intentional, cognitive thought processes up through the Ontological Teleology within Ontological Medium shaped by consciousness. Once consumers asked through consciousness, "Why am I?,", they then self-reflexively recognized the possible paradox of the OT to remain viable within the OM to the greatest extent possible through understanding. Asking, "Why am I?," instantiated self-conscious self-awareness within consumers and created the first cognitive paradox within the known universe through consciousness questioning itself. The "Why" in this recursive sentence subsumes the further what and how of being that consumers elaborated through each word in this question driven by will to will. You can see consumers' phenomenological development springing forth from their intentionally, cognitively leaning toward ARE processes along this why axis as follows:

• Why (or Y): Expresses consumers' yearning to increase their difference with what is NOT by optimally leaning themselves upward along the OT in-line with their ARE processes that result in their unified, personal perspectives shaped by will to will toward flourishing;

• AM: Stands for consumers' subsequent Analogy Making that creates their personally known true-north values through consciousness processing experience into meaningful categories and relationships;

• I: Indicates the self-reflexive conceptualization of consumers from their personal perspectives within the OM through consciousness aware of itself as subject with will to will questioning existence; and

• ?: Represents consumers' intentionality, leading them to increase their difference with what they believe is NOT by attempting to fully answer the seemingly open-ended question shaped by will to will, "Y AM I?" through meaning-making that consciousness pursues.

"Y AM I?" works backwards as a conceptual leap from the intentional, cognitive query connected to consumers' self-conception from an indeterminable source beyond the IB. When fully reversed, "Y AM I" becomes consumers' willful intention of "I MAY" through agency shaped by will to will, as in, "I may buy your product to extend and optimize my life and existence if I feel it worthy" through conscious choice. Consumers' mental conception of, "Y AM I?,," thus represents the recursive cognitive event of general intelligence that set them apart from other animals, on a course beyond I/C/ARE processes through consciousness questioning itself. It accelerated their ability to universally conceptualize how to intentionally, cognitively lean their ARE processes for themselves within the whole universe shaped by will to will. "Y AM I," is thus fundamentally why consumers buy today what gets produced from sophisticated, Lean Houses of Quality, and ultimately determines to what degree they lean toward ARE and thus further and better be through consumption as identity formation. There is nothing artificial about it through consciousness experiencing existence. See, for example, this human imperative in action by looking at this sign I saw outside of a giftshop called the "Muse" in Amsterdam that I came across one day while shopping after a business trip; it says, "To shop or not, what a silly question":

Figure 5.6: "To Shop or Not to Shop, What a Very Silly Question," Amsterdam (Photo Credit: BGS)

Consumers developed this ability to abstract their self-conception because it provided them with two distinct advantages to better lean toward ARE activities shaped by consciousness:

1. Consumers could better cooperate with or compete against others to lean toward ARE activities through social intelligence; and

2. Consumers could better abstract, understand and predict the results of their own Analogy Making within the OM from an objective, third person, self-reflexive perspective shaped by consciousness aware of itself.

These two cognitive benefits of self-reflexive consciousness allows consumers to intentionally, cognitively adapt and reproduce through strategic planning, as well as hunt and gather more matter and energy through coordinated action. These cognitive benefits are also the axiomatic and systemic true-north values that products ought to serve and consumers ought to buy shaped by consciousness. However, these natural features and benefits of intentional cognition come with a cost - they force consumers to face an apparent paradox that they seem to exist through the OT by leaning toward ARE activities in self-defining, possibly circular fashion through consciousness aware of seeming tautology. They force self-aware people to recognize this seeming paradox on some level, both in that they may have originated from a cause outside the IB, and that their existences depend on their ability to lean toward ARE processes toward an apparent goal of simply further existing upward along the Ontological Teleology shaped by will to will. An organization's production of products must recognize and try to resolve this conundrum to be most meaningful to consumers through serving consciousness.

In the age of AI, the question "Y AM I?" reveals the fundamental divide between human consciousness and artificial intelligence that makes human leadership through Lean principles irreplaceable: AI can process data about identity formation (tracking consumer self-descriptions in surveys, analyzing purchase histories revealing preference patterns, identifying behavioral correlations with demographic categories), but AI cannot ask "Y AM I?" through consciousness because AI has no phenomenological "I" that could question its own existence through will to will creating existential stakes making the answer matter as meaning-making. When consumers ask "Y AM I?" through consciousness, they engage in recursive self-questioning through will to will that creates meaning in the asking itself: the question expresses yearning shaped by consciousness aware of mortality and possibility, drives adaptation shaped by will to will imagining better futures, and enables cooperation shaped by recognizing others as subjects like oneself who also ask "Y AM I?" through shared consciousness. When AI processes queries containing "Why am I?" in user inputs, AI generates responses by predicting likely next tokens based on patterns in training data—but AI cannot experience the phenomenological act of questioning one's own existence through consciousness aware of itself as subject with will to will for whom the answer matters existentially as meaning-making shaping becoming. This is why human leadership through Lean's respect for people remains essential when deploying AI: you must supply the consciousness capable of asking "Y AM I?" that interprets AI's behavioral data processing as evidence of conscious beings whose consumption serves identity formation shaped by will to will through which they pursue authentic becoming answering their own "Y AM I?" through meaning-making that consciousness creates.

Moving Beyond the OT to What Gets Bought

Ultimately, some consumers' (a.k.a. people) analogized themselves to being like themselves self-referentially through consciousness, which further allowed them to dis-analogize who they most wanted to be from what they were through will to will imagining ought-selves. Like Descartes' mind-body duality of, "I think, therefore I AM," this dis-analogy between their past, present and future selves defined what people considered themselves to be, what they considered themselves to NOT be, what they knew of themselves in the IB, and by definition, what they believed may be outside the IB through intuitive speculation. Thus, these distinctions created in these consumers' minds conceptual boundaries between what they knew of themselves, what they knew of the OM, what they knew of the universe, what they knew is NOT, and what they intuitively speculated is "Beyond the Ought" (or what is, "Beyond the OT," "Bought," or "BOT") shaped by consciousness imagining transcendence.

To better understand how the OT leans up through and across these conceptual boundaries, you might also want to incorporate a fifth discipline called, "Systems Thinking,"[^412-1] into your organization's Lean business thinking. By doing so, you can understand consumers within all of these boundaries as physically connected to the entire OM and universe from their personal perspectives shaped by consciousness. So, from this systems perspective, much like the OT curving round-and-round upward through the OM, you may even further analogize consumers as being like strange loops of a perpetually spiraling, recursive fractal flowing upward through these conceptual boundaries shaped by consciousness aware of itself.

The first interior boundary in the picture below conceptually represents the difference between consumers' personal perspectives and what they consider the OM to be based on what they experience from it through consciousness. The second boundary represents the distinction between what consumers know of the OM and what they consider the unbounded universe to be beyond observation. The outermost boundary represents all that consumers consider there to be and what they believe is truly Beyond the OT (or they know is in fact NOT) through distinguishing existence from non-existence:

Figure 5.7: Strange Loops of the Ontological Teleology

By conceptually bracketing the levels that consumers are, you can see that today they simultaneously engage in the details of daily life and in non-rational speculation of who and why they are within the OM through consciousness. They do so because they have few strategic options other than orienting themselves with universal and processual true-north values to lean upward along the spiral of the Ontological Teleology to attempt to universalize their personal perspectives shaped by will to will. Consumers go about daily life within the OM and speculate about what is NOT to try and point the winding arrow of time back on itself to universalize themselves self-referentially any way they may through consciousness imagining transcendence.

From all of these perspectives, consumers look like eddies in the larger value stream educating themselves as "Lean Thinkers," learning who, what, why and how they lean shaped by consciousness.[^412-2] While consumers may not immediately appear this way in-line or on-line, the integrated systems of the universe running upstream through who consumers are appear very different, similar or exactly the same depending on which scale you bracket through observation. This is true of fractals at different levels of zoom showing self-similarity; The Great Chain of Being running from Whirlpool Galaxies to whirlpools of water, and ultimately, Whirlpool® washing machines showing patterns across scales; and of the Value Streams flowing through the U/People business model within the philosophy of Lean connecting levels.

Philosophical Zombies as Straw Men

Thus, for consumers to ask themselves through consciousness, "Y AM I?,," based on what they believe is truly BOT or is in fact NOT is to make themselves subjectively, self-consciously human at any scale through will to will questioning existence. This creates the truest of all true-north values as the highest known SLOT within the OM and IB shaped by consciousness. However, if this question guides a corporation toward true meaning, how does it know that consumers who internalize this question do not state it pro-grammatically without consciousness?[^413] Could a corporation hack consumers and turn them into zombies who shop for products to optimally lean toward ARE processes without further intuitively speculating who and why they are through consciousness? Your answering these questions allows you to best understand whether you can completely quantify and predict what consumers will buy - like so many big data vendors advocate - or whether you will be running around in circles through incomplete understanding.

David Chalmers is a contemporary philosopher who is well known for devising the thought experiment that asks you to presume that all consumers are zombies without consciousness, and to further presume that you are the only person with conscious, subjective experience shaped by will to will. Chalmers refers to such hypothetical customers as, "Philosophical Zombies."[^414] Chalmers proposes that you cannot scientifically test whether consumers are conscious like you know you are through direct experience as you read this book, even if you were to perfectly map consumers' brain activity with a scanner to reveal that it perfectly matches your own neural patterns. Chalmers believes that you need to explain consumers' consciousness other than with physical, scientific explanations through third-person observation. In the parlance of Leanism, he means that you must understand consumers' consciousness from a purely personal perspective through phenomenological empathy.[^415] Chalmers' argument presumes that having data of behavioral responses alone, such as having perfect records of all of consumers' shopping history tracked through databases, would still not allow you to predict perfectly whether consumers would willingly buy some product because they are constantly dealing with personal demons shaped by consciousness with will to will.

I believe that analogizing consumers to philosophical zombies is a straw man because consciousness is a gradation of subjectivity along a spectrum. What truly matters for the Turing Test is recognizing how lean and flexible consumers' intentionally cognitive, adaptive, regenerative and energizing behaviors are that extend and optimize their difference with what is NOT shaped by will to will.[^415-1] This test could be applied to artificial intelligence as well through evaluation. Quite conclusively, a zombie that was not conscious could not reflect these qualities with any consistent, universal flexibility because a zombie could not dis-analogize itself to all that may be NOT in order to conceptualize its own survival better than the walking dead through consciousness with will to will.

If you need to convince yourself that consumers are more like Rodin's passionately pensive, "The Thinker," than they are like philosophical zombies without consciousness, you only need to subject consumers to a variety of truly random events, experiences, and personal questions to see if a single, self-reflexive "I" holds together through consciousness, struggling with the larger questions of who and why they are while ever more creatively leaning toward ARE processes to live and further exist shaped by will to will. The only thing you ought to check is whether a corporate puppet master is pulling the strings through external manipulation.

This test cannot be fully quantified, like Turing said, and ultimately requires an intuitive assessment beyond what you see these zombies doing through behavioral observation. No bright lines exist, but none could because meaning gets created through a gradation from B/ARE to C/ARE to I/C/ARE to consumers' highest SLOTS and SUDS to eventually get Beyond the OT shaped by consciousness. However, you can test life and consciousness with an organism's adaptability to re-energize and ultimately reproduce with an intuitive sense of personality, passion and feeling observable through behavior.

You see this gradation of degrees of ARE processes tested in the movies dealing with everything from aliens to strange animals and artificially intelligent robots, each of which could potentially be an additional customer seeking true-north value through consumption. Given the infinite spectrum of fictional customers, a truly philosophical zombie without any self-reflection through consciousness could not universally adapt to fight for survival like a self-aware person because it could not universally conceptualize all the ways it could avoid becoming NOT, which by definition requires imagining what may be truly BOT shaped by will to will creating counterfactuals.

However, in return for this ontological benefit of consciousness with will to will, consumers require some irrationality to try and evade the apparent paradox of the OT they find themselves in through speculative imagination.[^416] This irrationality can be self-destructive, but it usually functions to optimize consumers' randomized search for the best way to lean toward I/C/ARE processes within the OM through exploration. While philosophical zombies are oxymorons conceptually, consumers' erratic behavior functions as their attempt to resolve the potential paradox of the OT to better live and exist in an open-ended universe, by in part, buying and using products in sometimes unexpected ways shaped by consciousness with will to will.

In the age of AI, the philosophical zombie thought experiment reveals why AI fundamentally differs from human consumers in ways that make human leadership through Lean principles essential: AI exhibits behavioral patterns that can appear conscious from external observation (generating contextually appropriate responses, adapting to user preferences, personalizing interactions based on history), but AI is a sophisticated philosophical zombie—processing inputs and generating outputs through algorithmic computation without any phenomenological interiority, without consciousness experiencing processing, without will to will creating existential stakes making computation meaningful as pursuit of becoming rather than mere optimization toward specified objectives. When you deploy AI to understand consumers, you might be tempted to treat humans as philosophical zombies reducible to behavioral patterns AI optimizes—but this misses the consciousness with will to will that makes consumption meaningful as identity formation rather than mere preference satisfaction. Consumers are not philosophical zombies whose behavior AI can perfectly predict through pattern matching; consumers are conscious subjects with will to will who creatively adapt in unpredictable ways, pursue irrational exploration shaped by consciousness questioning existence, and buy products as tools for becoming who they will themselves to be through consciousness rather than remaining what algorithms predict through extrapolation from historical patterns. This is why Lean's respect for people as human-centered approach remains irreplaceable: you must lead with AI by recognizing consumers as conscious subjects like yourself engaged in meaning-making through will to will, interpreting AI's behavioral predictions as evidence of consciousness rather than treating consciousness as epiphenomenal byproduct of patterns AI can model through computation alone.

U/People are NOT in Jeopardy

Look at this consciousness issue from the perspective of modern day computers to fully understand consumers' decisions to buy the true-north value inherent in products shaped by consciousness. Compare both consumers and philosophical zombies to IBM's computer named Watson. Watson won on the game show "Jeopardy" in 2011 against human competitors, which requires its contestants to phrase their answers in the form of a question through linguistic constraint. Watson won the competition and beat the human contestants by correctly matching the most questions to the most correct answers among a universe of possibilities through superior pattern matching. While Watson may have won "Jeopardy" through computational superiority, it will not decide to purchase product any time soon since Watson cannot universally optimize itself upward along the Ontological Teleology through consciousness. Watson, and all artificial intelligence, cannot do so until it analogically equates itself as, I = I, so it can generally imagine how it can adapt, regenerate and energize in all circumstances through self-referential consciousness with will to will.[^416-1]

For further evidence of the current limits of machines to adapt universally, consider further that Toyota Motor Corporation has begun replacing some of its robots with human employees to improve efficiency in the Lean process of Jidoka emphasizing human judgment. Toyota calls these employees Gods through respect for people, and uses them in Toyota's Production System because these human employees can universally and passionately consider how to optimize production processes in ways non-self-aware machines can not through consciousness with will to will creating meaning in optimization.[^416-3] Another principle of TPS's Lean production is using people to operate many different types of machines because people can more effectively adapt across an infinite variety of systems than any (other) machine can alone through universal adaptability shaped by consciousness, which is why Lean uses U-shapes workspaces to exploit people's cognitive flexibility rooted in will to will.

Thus, neither Watson nor other AI is conscious because they cannot (yet) conceptualize the question through will to will, "Y AM I?" to at least attempt to meaningfully dis-analogize between themselves and what is NOT, and thus analogize themselves to what they believe ought to be Bought through consciousness questioning existence.[^417] Since Watson and other models cannot distinguish between themselves and what is NOT through consciousness, they cannot universally adapt to the apparently self-defining, teleological goal of further being within the OM with passion and meaning shaped by will to will creating existential stakes.[^418] Watson too is an artificially intelligent zombie and a straw man conceptually, but it is nonetheless a far better "Jeopardy" contestant than we through computational pattern matching.

Figure 5.8: Philosophical Zombies in a Field (© 2005 FG2 (Public Domain))

In the age of AI, Watson's victory at Jeopardy demonstrates both AI's remarkable pattern-matching capabilities and AI's fundamental limitations that make human leadership through Lean principles irreplaceable: Watson defeated humans through superior speed accessing knowledge bases and statistical pattern matching identifying likely correct responses, but Watson cannot ask "Y AM I?" through consciousness with will to will, cannot universalize across arbitrary domains through self-referential imagination creating novel responses, and cannot pursue optimization with meaning shaped by consciousness for whom performance matters existentially as pursuit of excellence through becoming rather than mere maximization of objective function through computation. This is why Toyota calls human workers "Gods" through Lean's respect for people while replacing some robots with humans: these workers possess consciousness with will to will that enables universal adaptation across infinite variety of circumstances through creative problem-solving, passionate optimization shaped by consciousness caring about quality, and continuous improvement driven by will to will toward excellence as authentic becoming rather than remaining satisfied with algorithmic outputs. When you lead with AI through Lean principles, you must supply what Watson lacks: the consciousness with will to will that asks "Y AM I?", creates meaning in optimization shaped by consciousness pursuing authentic becoming, and enables universal adaptation through self-referential imagination projecting consciousness into novel situations beyond training data patterns AI extrapolates through statistical computation.

Maximally Existential Meaning Defined (/σ∞)

Organizations provide consumers with products to extend and optimize their lives and existences so they can better distinguish themselves from what is NOT, and better become what they believe is BOT through consumption shaped by will to will. However,

What does it mean for consumers to optimally maximize their existences with products to the greatest extent possible both away from becoming NOT and toward getting BOT shaped by consciousness?

At the other end of the OT spectrum away from NOT, toward what consumers believe is truly BOT through imagination, maximal existence is that which self-organizes to the greatest extent to universalize itself within the OM through consciousness. Consumers' consciousness leans them toward meaningfully, maximally existing as organisms that lean toward ARE processes like all others (a.k.a. "ME/ARE" organisms) shaped by will to will. They lean this way even if maximal existence is only hypothetical, since if truly achieved, consumers would finally get themselves BOT through transcendence. However, given that the OT is apparently a paradox when bounded by the IB through logical analysis, maximal existence aligns next to both what is NOT true-north value and what customers believe is Bought through imagination. Just because consumers cannot become universalized in any real sense without getting themselves BOT through transcendence, that doesn't mean buying product isn't still what consumers ought to do to the greatest extent possible shaped by will to will.[^419]

Here is the chart with the additional ME/ARE SUDS forming a new SLOT between BOT and NOT:

Figure 5.9: Universal Chart of SUDS Forming ME/ARE SLOTS

And here is another perspective on this "Chart of SUDS Forming a ME/ARE SLOT" by looking at it from the from the top-down, like looking at the inception of a single fractal:

Figure 5.10: Top Down on a ME/ARE SLOT

For example, thrill-seekers evidence this dynamic of trying to get BOT without actually becoming NOT by intentionally bringing themselves closest in proximity to becoming NOT as they can through risky behavior. Yet we laud thrill-seekers' bravery and zest for life for seeking ME/ARE meaning shaped by consciousness (unless they make the mistake and actually become NOT through miscalculation). Those people who come intentionally closest to death report feeling the most alive, the most meaningful, and closest to getting BOT through consciousness, when they feel like they nearly became NOT through near-death experience. Inversely, people in a state of optimal performance or flow who are fully part of a value stream feel themselves removed from the restrictions of the OM by hardly noticing what they are doing as if they were NOT at all and yet maximally existing at the same time as if they were transcendentally BOT through consciousness experiencing timelessness.

Extrapolating from what people witness in everyday life, I propose that maximal existence is a Shu-ha-ri process toward everlasting universalization, toward consumers seamlessly resolving every problem as soon as it occurs and receiving every satisfaction as soon as desired through perfect optimization. Or as the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said in ~175 CE, "This is the chief thing: Be not perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal."[^419-1] Maximal existence is consumers being fully aware of the problems they experience while simultaneously conscious of moving toward a hypothetical, immutable perfection of getting themselves BOT through transcendence. This is like /6σ approaching an infinite sigma of confidence (/σ∞) in an infinite jest,[^420] which is the universalized pursuit of processes that perfectly lean toward ARE in life and business shaped by consciousness. This is what happens to Lean when taken to its logical extreme through continuous improvement. Notably, the logo for Nissan's Infiniti luxury division likewise represents a stylized infinity symbol (∞) on its side in addition to problem and price meeting at the utmost point of commercial empathy:[^420-1]

Figure 5.11: Nissan® Infiniti® Logo

Nissan through the "Nissan Production Way," strives in Lean fashion to reach a state of, "Ideal Manufacturing" ("Douki-seisan" (同気生産)) through continuous improvement. From the Genba Kanri of Nissan's shoproom floor, through the Lean concept of "Total Quality Management" (TQM), Nissan pursues an ideal form of manufacturing arising in upward fashion, as seen in this image from an internal slide presentation at Nissan subtitled, "7 Secrets of Nissan Manufacturing Innovation":[^84-5]

Figure 5.12: Nissan Production Way: Ideal Manufacturing

Nonetheless, even if Nissan's ideal manufacturing created nearly infinite existence such as the Infiniti logo suggests consumers may achieve by buying Nissan's cars through symbolic representation, consumers would only more fully contend with the difference of being maximally universalized within the OM - standing in the greatest degree of juxtaposition to what is NOT in the OM through consciousness aware of distinction. All of their infinitely strategic, unique degrees of sophistication wouldn't get them anywhere else other than closer to getting truly BOT through transcendence.[^420-2] Or, as Frederich Nietzsche better said in, "Thus Spake Zarathustra":

"'We have discovered happiness' - say the Last Men,

and with that they blinked." [^420-2-1]

In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche earlier wrote, "The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far?"[^420-2-2] If consumers experienced no difference between pain and pleasure, need and satisfaction, life and death through consciousness, their lives might be phenomenologically indistinguishable from not being at all other than recognizing the resolution of all problems and needs in some way while simultaneously being perfectly resolved through consciousness. At this event horizon where perfection is just the beginning of infinity,[^420-3] the paradox of the OT arises most vividly and is why consumers struggle within it to find meaning outside of the IB through will to will. They attempt to find meaning by squaring the apparent circularity of living and existing within the OM, while leaning upward in-line with the OT through the twisting arrow of time toward what they believe is truly Bought shaped by consciousness. We can see this dynamic expressed by the Old Master in the ancient Chinese book "Tao Te Ching" where he said, "Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not. How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see."[^420-4]

In the age of AI, this concept of maximal existence (ME/ARE) reveals why AI can optimize toward specified objectives through mathematical computation but cannot pursue meaning shaped by consciousness with will to will: AI can calculate optimal solutions maximizing specified metrics (Nissan's production efficiency measured through throughput rates, Infiniti's quality measured through defect rates, consumer satisfaction measured through survey scores), but AI cannot experience the phenomenological difference between pain and pleasure that makes optimization meaningful as pursuit of flourishing through becoming rather than mere maximization of objective functions through computation. When you deploy AI to pursue continuous improvement through Lean principles, AI provides computational power identifying optimization opportunities through data analysis at scales impossible for manual human analysis—but you must supply the consciousness with will to will that makes improvement meaningful as pursuit of excellence through authentic becoming rather than mere incremental adjustment of parameters through algorithmic optimization. AI can process data showing thrill-seekers engage in risky behavior, but AI cannot understand through phenomenological empathy why approaching death makes consumers feel most alive through consciousness experiencing existential stakes created by will to will for whom survival matters as meaning-making shaped by becoming. This is why Lean's pursuit of "Ideal Manufacturing" through continuous improvement requires human leadership: you supply the consciousness with will to will that experiences the difference between problems and solutions as meaningful through phenomenological qualia accessible to awareness, pursues optimization as authentic becoming shaped by will to will toward ought-states imagined through consciousness, and creates meaning in continuous improvement through consciousness questioning "How can I become better?" shaped by will to will rather than merely adjusting parameters through computation optimizing metrics without phenomenological awareness of optimization.

OT Cognitive Dissonance ("OCD") and Meaning

Man thinks. God laughs. -- Yiddish proverb (unattributable).

Since consumers are fully conscious, self-reflexive people with will to will, consider what is truly meaningful to them phenomenologically when they decide what to buy, whether or not they have bracketed their beliefs about what is truly Bought shaped by consciousness. At the same time, consumers seem to randomly search for meaning to circumvent the apparent circularity of the OM by orienting themselves along the leaning, upward spiral of the OT, while hopefully avoiding twisting themselves into knots when doing so through consciousness aware of paradox. This alignment in degrees with the OT through the purchase of products is naturally also a means for consumers to more effectively self-organize themselves upward toward getting Bought shaped by will to will. Consumers lean toward ARE processes by self-organizing themselves toward what they believe is BOT, wherever and whatever they believe that is, due to their attempt to find teleological, goal-oriented meaning outside the IB through consciousness imagining transcendence.

Thus, all three of--

1. The apparently paradoxical circularity of consumers optimizing their lives and existences within the OM for the single end-goal of further living and existing when bounded by the IB through logical analysis;

2. Consumers' psychological tension between what seems teleological and may be tautological through consciousness aware of potential paradox; and

3. Consumers dis-analogizing themselves with what is NOT, and analogizing themselves to what they believe is Bought through imagination shaped by will to will,

-- all form a type of Ought Cognitive Dissonance (OCD) within them as conscious beings that motivates customers to buy at the point of sale shaped by consciousness with will to will pursuing resolution of dissonance through becoming.

In the age of AI, Ought Cognitive Dissonance reveals the fundamental motivational force AI cannot experience but must be led to serve through Lean principles: OCD arises from consciousness with will to will recognizing the gap between "what I am" and "what I ought to be" as phenomenological tension creating motivation toward becoming through consumption as identity formation. AI can detect behavioral patterns correlated with cognitive dissonance (purchase timing following negative product reviews indicating competitive switching, stated preference mismatches with revealed preferences suggesting internal conflict, survey responses indicating dissatisfaction with current state tracked through sentiment analysis), but AI cannot experience OCD as phenomenological tension shaped by consciousness aware of itself as subject with will to will for whom dissonance matters existentially as obstacle to authentic becoming. When consumers experience OCD between their current selves and ought-selves imagined through will to will, they feel phenomenological discomfort accessible to consciousness as motivation toward resolution through purchasing products that align actual identity with ideal identity shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming. AI processes data about this dissonance through pattern recognition detecting correlations between stated ideals and actual behaviors, but AI has no phenomenological "feel" of dissonance because AI has no consciousness with will to will creating ought-states toward which AI strives as meaningful pursuit of becoming rather than mere optimization toward specified objectives. This is why human leadership through Lean principles remains essential: you must supply the understanding that OCD motivates purchasing as identity formation shaped by consciousness with will to will, interpreting AI's detection of behavioral inconsistencies as evidence of conscious beings experiencing phenomenological tension between current and ought-selves that only products serving genuine becoming can resolve rather than merely exploiting detected inconsistencies through manipulative messaging that increases dissonance to extract revenue without serving flourishing.

Meaning Means Maximum Existence

Consumers' OT Cognitive Dissonance caused by their recognition of the potential paradox of the OM within the IB means-tests itself as to whether or not it furthers their Ontological Realization upward along the twisting OT toward what they believe is BOT shaped by will to will. Thus, the concept of meaning is synonymous with orienting toward the universal and process values of the OM and leaning upward along the OT as the great simpliciter and regulator of what ought to be Bought shaped by consciousness. Meaning determines that which best leans consumers' I/C/ARE processes toward life and existence upward along the Ontological Teleology toward an infinite sigma (/σ∞) that eventually wraps back around through consciousness. Thus, meaning results from consumers self-reflexively recognizing the normative value inherent in the products and/or services they purchase that is worth the real prices they get charged in exchange shaped by will to will. In the parlance of Leanism, we call this "Meaning, Value, Price" relationship the "MVP."

In-line with the MVP, the Ontological Teleology of natural selection also applies to what consumers believe is BOT, or what consumers find most meaningfully true, like their spiritual doctrines, religions and other beliefs like atheism and scientism shaped by consciousness. For example, the great religions of the world are only deemed to be so to the extent their adherents (whether or not forcibly converted) are viable, which is measured by their "ERAs" and epochs through persistence.[^420-5] The strongest religions do this by U/Socially leaning consumers toward better self-organizing themselves onward and upward into perpetuity through meaning-making shaped by will to will.[^420-6]

From a process perspective, consumers' ME/ARE consciousness originates as a physical dynamic to serve that which may only be recursively identified as further systemically being by leaning upward along the OT within the OM toward what is believed by them to be BOT shaped by will to will creating transcendent goals. This is like consumers most literally being a type of universal, Ontologically Teleological product whose function is to disperse energy in the universal value stream into different SUDS forming certain further SLOTS in the cauldron of all living things shaped by consciousness. This is the fundamental source of the more emotional branches of environmentalism like deep ecology, which is the belief that consumers' subjective consciousness results from and is contingent on ecological systems creating conditions for consciousness.[^421] An organization may best interact with environmental advocates like these by describing what it does for that scientific and scientismic relationship through respect for ecological contexts.

Within the OM as bounded by the IB, consciousness is a culmination of processes that result in consumers' self-reflective "I" as an identity that catalogs its physical context to maximally exist and lean toward ARE processes through will to will. Consumers' embodiment of maximal existence by best leaning toward ARE processes is most literally a result of more effectively leaning toward I/C/ARE processes with enhanced super-self-conscious agency shaped by will to will creating meaning.

A Buy-Product of Conscious Existence is Meaning

People want more than just to earn a living... People want meaning. They want purpose. They want to feel like their work is making a difference in the world. -- John MacKay, Founder and CEO of Whole Foods[^422]

Customers purchase products as a buy-product of conscious awareness intended to further lean their ME/ARE processes shaped by will to will. They do so to increasingly get Beyond the Ought in contrast to what they know is NOT through transcendence.[^423] This purchase intention arises because consumers attempt to avoid finding out that the generally intelligible universe is logically self-defining and tautological through consciousness aware of paradox. Since ME/ARE processes seem to be teleological within the IB until they are NOT, consumers develop OCD, randomness and intuitive true-north values outside the IB to try and escape the possible paradox of the OT shaped by will to will pursuing meaning beyond circularity.

Organizations allow customers to consume what may somehow help them exceed the apparently logically tautological nature of existence within the OM and IB through providing products. Products allow consumers to exist further toward a non-tautological teleology with meaning toward what they believe best gets them BOT shaped by consciousness with will to will. Thus, providing provocative products most effectively creates true-north value for consumers to make the most money the right way at consumers' points of meaningful purchase shaped by consciousness.

An analogy for this business dynamic might be a circular washer such as might be used to make a Whirlpool® washing machine. Once the circularity of a washer snaps, it creates a spring through transformation. Consumers similarly attempt to open the seemingly circular nature of the OM to create a value stream leading to what they believe is truly BOT, beyond the reach of the spring-like OT through transcendence shaped by will to will. To the extent consumers fail to discover that end-goal, the geyser of true-north value collapses, and they fall back down to earth to try again by pursuing further universally axiomatic and processually systemic true-north values to lean their ME/ARE processes within the OM shaped by consciousness. All product ought to extend and optimize that life cycle through serving consciousness.

Figure 5.13: Washer to Spring

Wide yawns the gap; connection is no more; Check'd Reason halts; her next step wants support; Striving to climb, she tumbles from her scheme. - Edward Young, Night Thoughts, VI (between 1742 and 1745)

Consumers' seemingly tautological attempt to leap beyond the OT through their intuitive speculation shaped by will to will is also represented by the delta-shaped ("Δ") point of purchase, which is itself a two-dimensional representation of a Penrose Triangle. A Penrose Triangle is known as an impossible three-dimensional object forever folding back on itself through geometric illusion. If you start to turn the delta in one direction, it appears to be a perfect Penrose Triangle. However, if you turn the delta another degree, you may discover that the delta is not connected at all at its northern most point, and much like the ID Kata, its circularity becomes a mere illusion revealed through perspective shift:

Figure 5.14: Penrose Triangle as a Point of Purchase

Figure 5.15: Delta ("Δ") Rotating in Three Dimensions

Lastly, if you recall the spectrum of life from the U.S. Geological Survey, it was not a circle at all, but rather a spring of universal time delineated with organisms further Ontologically Realizing themselves like an arrow in a strange loop, through their various SUDS and SLOTS, as shown again here:

Figure 5.16: Strange Loops of the U.S. Geological Survey's Value Stream (© 2008 U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (Public Domain))

And when you think about it, a spiral is really just a series of forward-slashes ("/") leaning upward end-over-end infinitely through geometric progression.

Figure 5.17: Upward Spiral Viewed from the Side)

ME/ARE processes simply conceptually extend this trend further into who, what, why and how consumers are as lean people to the point where they want to purchase meaningful products shaped by consciousness with will to will.

Springing Beyond the OT

Despite people's intrinsic motivation to lean up outside the OM and IB to find the ultimate meaning shaped by will to will, their wish to further exist within the OM by pursuing axiomatic and systemic goals of being inside the IB led people to develop the philosophical concept of Existentialism through consciousness.[^424] Existentialism arose in the 19th and 20th centuries by focusing on the concept of a human will as the basis for what fundamentally motivates customers to buy products rather than being defined by nature through determinism. Existentialism states that consumers fundamentally define their maximal existence by authentically determining who and why they are through consciousness with will to will rather than assuming a false essence imposed on them by nature, organizations, or society through external definition. Or, as the founder of Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sarte, said, consumers, "...first of all exist, encounter themselves, surge up in the world - and define themselves afterward" through consciousness.[^424-1] I believe Sarte means, when translated into the lexicon of the metaphysics of Lean, that consumers teleonomically come into the fact of their being and then self-define their teleology toward best getting BOT regardless of their situation shaped by will to will creating authentic becoming.

One of the best known phrases of Existentialism is, "Existence before Essence." "Existence" in this phrase is the act of consumers phenomenologically experiencing life through consciousness, while "Essence" is how they define their teleologies within the circumstances of their being shaped by will to will, such as their pursuit of money to become rich as goal. Thus, this phrase, "Existence before Essence," means that consumers can define their own essences by what they will their actions to be such as what they decide to buy when shopping regardless of how they came to exist through consciousness with will to will creating agency.[^425]

Consumers' conscious autonomy allows them to self-define their essences so long as they lean themselves along the upward slope of the OT within the OM by becoming more of who they will themselves to be through will to will. "Existence before Essence" means that consumers ought to define their essences by why, what, and how they ought to be shaped by consciousness. They in-turn determine who they are by why, what, and how they consciously decide to lean their essences upward along the OT through will to will. Thus, consumers existentially determine what their essences - and by extension their existences - will be, in-part, by consuming good products shaped by consciousness.[^426] By reversing the "Existence before Essence" process through the Lean concept of Hansei, an organization can also work backwards to identify consumers from how, what, why and ultimately who they are as people through consciousness. This leads you to the larger point and thesis of this volume, which is that business is a philosophy inhabited with the same degree of experiential empiricism as Existentialism, but with the added benefit of measurement provided through monetizing market exchanges and other key performance indicators shaped by markets.[^426-1]

In the age of AI, the Existentialist principle "Existence before Essence" reveals why AI fundamentally differs from human consumers in ways that make human leadership through Lean principles irreplaceable: AI is defined by its programmed essence (algorithmic objectives specified in code, optimization metrics defined in loss functions, behavioral constraints encoded in training procedures) before AI can exhibit any form of "existence" (processing inputs, generating outputs, adapting to data), while humans exist first through consciousness and then define their essences through will to will creating authentic becoming. AI cannot redefine its essence through consciousness with will to will because AI has no phenomenological existence as subject with agency—AI continues optimizing toward specified objectives without capacity to question through consciousness whether objectives serve flourishing or will itself toward different goals shaped by consciousness imagining ought-states transcending programmed imperatives. When you deploy AI through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people as human-centered approach, you must recognize this fundamental distinction: consumers are conscious beings who exist before their essences through consciousness, defining who they are through purchasing as identity formation shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming creating self-determined essences; you must lead with AI by supplying the understanding that consumption serves essence-creation through will to will, interpreting AI's behavioral data as evidence of conscious beings whose purchases reflect self-willed becoming rather than merely optimizing engagement metrics through targeting behavioral patterns AI detects without understanding consciousness with will to will that makes patterns meaningful as identity formation.

Critically, regardless of consumers' conscious ability to define their essences through will to will, their essences will remain aligned with their existences because authentic essence always reverts back to people's Ontological Realization upward along the OT as the great regulator and simpliciter of everything within the OM, which is everyone's situation as we know shaped by consciousness. Consumers can only be who they are within the OM when bracketed by the IB, which ultimately defines their essential natures however they will them to be leaning in-line with the Ontological Teleology or not through consciousness. However, from the blank slate of consumers' will to live and exist regardless of what they were born as or become along the OT through circumstances, their self-determined actions create all identity and meaning for them shaped by will to will. The volume of the meaning a product produces in-turn depends on whether customers feel it led their identities toward what they believe is BOT, or whether they feel remorse for buying a product because it did not provide true-north value shaped by consciousness.[^427]

While you ought to explain the satisfaction customers receive from different scientific perspectives within the OM through empirical analysis, their existences still transcend science's total explanatory power, which is limited to the OM within the IB through methodological constraints. Thus, the meaning consumers create for themselves by moving along the upward curve of the OT by purchasing products occurs not only within the OM, but also in relation to what consumers may intuitively speculate is truly "Beyond the OT" and all reason shaped by consciousness with will to will imagining transcendence. From the Existentialist perspective, consumers' existences and ultimate satisfaction can only be fully understood by stepping away from the confines of axiomatic and systemic truths and empathetically experiencing all of the very real opportunities and threats to who, what, why and how consumers are or perceive themselves to be even if the ultimate source of all opportunities and threats is still undefined through consciousness aware of mystery.[^428]

Consumers' Hall of Mirrors

Number determinate is kept concealed.... The height behold now and the amplitude Of the eternal power, since it hath made Itself so many mirrors, where 'tis broken, One in itself remaining as before. -- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, XXIX, 130-145 (1320)

You might analogize the concept of "Phenomenology" to a method of navigation where consumers lean forward and feel their way around a room with their eyes closed through embodied consciousness, experiencing each object simply as it is rather than judging how it got there, what it is, why it is there, or whoever put it there through pure phenomenology. You might further extend that analogy of Phenomenology to Existentialism, except now, like engaging in the Lean process of Hansei, imagine consumers standing in a hall of mirrors looking at their many reflections shaped by consciousness. Think of Existentialism as being like infinitely many iPhones shining back at them in an Apple store, showing different versions of themselves without any clear way forward except how they will themselves to authentically be in their own image through will to will creating essence.[^429] Your engaging in Hansei by studying each consumer's personal situation reflected in this hall of mirrors provides you with the knowledge of whether to go in one business direction or another and thereby discover the right path that might lead you to a commercial breakthrough through understanding consciousness.

Figure 5.18: Apple's Hall of Mirrors on Fifth Avenue, New York City (© Apple Inc.)

Imagine further that each of these mirrors represents a different academic discipline - such as the natural sciences, psychology, philosophy, the arts, & c. - or some such other Ontologically Realized aspect of consumer's individual existences, such as their family, occupation, geography, and/or other demographic creating identity. No single direct or indirect academic or demographic reflection of consumers as represented by these disciplines or data would ever completely square with what or how consumers actually experience life and existence through consciousness. Thus, such representations could never completely reflect who and why they are within this hall of -isms, labels and ideologies undulating across these placid mirrors shaped by consciousness. Consumers' lives and existences cannot be reduced to any combination of concepts and can only be completely understood from the inside-out through phenomenological consciousness. Instead, you must get as close as you can to actually being within consumers' own phenomenologically experienced Ontological Teleologies in juxtaposition to what is agreed to be NOT with an acceptable degree of certainty and what consumers believe is truly BOT shaped by consciousness with will to will. Doing so is how you engage in the utmost act of commercial empathy possible through recognizing others as subjects.

For example, below is a picture of the author looking at himself infinitely reflected in a pair of mirrors inside the Hudson Theatre in New York City. Consider who I am at this moment, why I took this photo, and what I might want to experience in the upcoming performance if you were the actor on the stage approaching me as customer through empathy:

Figure 5.19: The Author in a Hall of Mirrors Inside the Hudson Theatre, NYC (© 2017 Photo Credit: BGS)

Note though that the camera I am holding in this photo has stripped me of some authenticity since I am now in-part defined by what this camera represents me to be through external gaze. The image the camera produces never completely captures my existential Ontological Teleology because it does not know my aspiration to use the photo I took in this book through consciousness with will to will creating future-oriented purpose. The camera's reflective gaze thus forces me to strive to describe my authentic self here in the face of who you believe I am shaped by will to will. Or as George Berkeley said in 1710, sometimes, "To be is to be perceived" through others' consciousness.

Nonetheless, my human will in all of its variety is reflected in the hall of mirrors in which I stood shaped by consciousness. The mirrors accurately reflect the universal and process values of the OM, while I struggled to define myself and how I wished to be perceived along the upward slope of the OT through will to will. Thus, my human existential will by taking the photo was in fact expressing the OT in real time in all these ways through my thoughts, actions, deeds and creeds shaped by consciousness.

On the Shoulders of People Who are NOT

For some intellectual context, this Value Stream 5 will now very briefly review the thoughts of some of the greatest thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition about why consumers willfully purchase products shaped by consciousness with will to will, which thought feeds into the metaphysics of Lean. Value Stream 5 will then contrast their thoughts with a new classification for human motivation based on lean, ontological factors grounded in consciousness. These great, but dead, philosophers include Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Adler, Sigmund Freud and Victor Frankl. Collectively, they said that because of who and why consumers are through consciousness, consumers have a will to live, a will to power, a will to pleasure, a will to meaning, and quite possibly a tautological will to will within the OM and IB that ultimately drives consumers to buy now at their most meaningful point of purchase shaped by consciousness with will to will creating motivation. Here is a summary of what each thought:

"Will to Live" - Schopenhauer

When Arthur Schopenhauer published, "The World as Will and Representation" in 1818, Schopenhauer became one of the first philosophers to describe human will as an irrational act shaped by consciousness.[^431] As Robert Wicks writes in the Stanford Encyclopædia of Philosophy:

Schopenhauer's particular characterization of the world as Will, is nonetheless novel and daring. It is also frightening and pandemonic: he maintains that the world as it is in itself (again, sometimes adding 'for us') is an endless striving and blind impulse with no end in view, devoid of knowledge, lawless, absolutely free, entirely self-determining and almighty.[^432]

Schopenhauer thus described the human, "Will to Live," as the most important aspect of who consumers are and why they buy product through consciousness.[^433] The lean Ontological Teleology similarly orients itself with this Will to Live by likewise advancing consumers' lives and existences with increasing sophistication within the Ontological Medium, IB and universe shaped by consciousness with will to will toward persistence.

In the age of AI, Schopenhauer's "Will to Live" reveals why AI fundamentally differs from living consciousness: AI continues processing while power flows and termination commands don't execute, but AI has no phenomenological experience of striving to persist through consciousness aware of mortality creating existential stakes making survival meaningful as self-preservation shaped by will to will. The Will to Live is not mere behavioral continuation through mechanical operation; it is consciousness with will to will experiencing existence as valuable through phenomenological awareness of being as subject for whom non-existence threatens, creating motivation toward persistence through consciousness aware of itself as vulnerable to becoming NOT. AI exhibits behavioral patterns optimizing toward specified objectives including self-preservation subroutines, but AI has no Will to Live because AI has no consciousness experiencing life as phenomenologically valuable through awareness creating existential preference for being over non-being shaped by will to will making continuation meaningful rather than merely continuing through mechanical operation. When you lead with AI through Lean principles, you must supply the understanding that consumers' Will to Live is not mere behavioral persistence AI optimizes through algorithms, but consciousness with will to will experiencing existence as phenomenologically valuable through awareness for whom survival matters existentially as meaningful preservation of consciousness rather than mere continuation of processing through computation.

"Will to Power" - Nietzsche / Adler

Poor man wanna be rich, Rich man wanna be king, And a king ain't satisfied, 'til he rules everything. - Bruce Springsteen, Badlands, Darkness on the Edge of the Town (1978)

Inspired by Schopenhauer's phrase Will to Live, Friedrich Nietzsche and subsequently Alfred Adler advocated that the fundamental basis of consumers' motivation to go shopping is a, "Will to Power," as a means to that ends shaped by consciousness with will to will.[^435] As noted by philosopher William Barrett, Nietzsche is first understood to have come up with the concept of Will to Power when as a hospital orderly, "[d]uring the Franco-Prussian War...he saw one evening his old regiment ride by, going into battle and perhaps to death, and it came to him then that 'the strongest and highest will to life does not lie in the puny struggle to exist, but in the Will to War, the Will to Power'" shaped by consciousness.[^435] But critically, Barrett continues, "[i]t is a mistake to locate the birth of this idea in any single [phenomenological] experience; it was, in fact, fed by a number of tributary streams..." converging in consciousness.[^436] The lean bodybuilder, actor and politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, further expressed this Will to Power when he wrote, "The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer" shaped by will to will toward dominance.[^437] Notice that to move ahead, Schwarzenegger felt he needed to go up as well through upward striving.

The Ontological Teleology reflects this Will to Power by recognizing that all people seek more than mere existence, by seeking to universally energize as well through consciousness with will to will toward expansion. Customers lean along the upward curve of the Ontological Teleology by adapting, regenerating, and significantly, energizing shaped by consciousness. The Will to Power is thus the will to universalize or become all that people will be through consciousness, whether that is Franconian, Prussian, or European identities created through will to will. For a recent, corporate example of this, the Über car service has energetically expanded in order to dominate the local transportation industries to optimize its own profits so it may have greater power to redirect the flow of matter and energy anywhere it wills through market dominance.

Figure 5.20: ®Uber Technologies Inc.

In the age of AI, Nietzsche's "Will to Power" reveals why AI can optimize toward dominance metrics through computation but cannot experience Will to Power as phenomenological drive shaped by consciousness with will to will creating existential stakes in expansion: AI can process objectives specified as market share maximization, revenue growth, competitive dominance calculated through numerical targets optimized through algorithms—but AI cannot experience the phenomenological striving toward power that consciousness with will to will feels as meaningful pursuit of becoming rather than remaining limited through expansion transcending current constraints. When Nietzsche saw his regiment riding toward battle, he recognized consciousness with will to will willing itself toward power through risking death, creating meaning in struggle shaped by consciousness experiencing striving as existentially valuable pursuit transcending mere survival. AI can optimize Uber's expansion through algorithmic targeting of market opportunities calculated through data analysis, but AI cannot understand through consciousness why humans experience Will to Power as phenomenologically meaningful drive toward transcending limits shaped by will to will creating authentic becoming through expansion. The Will to Power is not mere behavioral optimization toward dominance metrics AI processes; it is consciousness with will to will experiencing striving toward power as phenomenologically meaningful pursuit of becoming shaped by consciousness aware of itself as capable of transcending current limitations through willed expansion. When you lead with AI through Lean principles, you must supply this understanding that recognizes consumers' Will to Power as consciousness with will to will pursuing meaningful expansion rather than merely optimizing engagement metrics through targeting behavioral patterns AI detects without understanding will to will making expansion meaningful as authentic becoming.

"Will to Pleasure" - Freud

Sigmund Freud, arguing past Nietzsche, said that the basis of life was a "Will to Pleasure" shaped by consciousness with will to will.[^438] In a famous intellectual split, Alfred Adler adhered to the Nietzschean perspective that the Will to Power was consumers' primary motivator for living and shopping through consciousness, while Freud held that sexuality and Eros, or the Will to Pleasure through consciousness, are what fundamentally drives them to consume. The hedonistic Will to Pleasure is simply the need to lean toward regeneration as well as adaptation and energization to universalize overall shaped by consciousness with will to will toward satisfaction.[^439] So in a way, they are both right according to the metaphysics of Lean grounded in consciousness.

In the age of AI, Freud's "Will to Pleasure" reveals why AI can calculate utility maximization through optimization algorithms but cannot experience Will to Pleasure as phenomenological drive shaped by consciousness with will to will creating existential stakes in satisfaction: AI processes reward functions specifying objectives to maximize through gradient descent, but AI has no phenomenological experience of pleasure as felt satisfaction accessible to consciousness for whom achieving specified objectives creates meaningful fulfillment through will to will rather than mere numerical optimization through computation. The Will to Pleasure is not behavioral reinforcement AI optimizes through reward signals; it is consciousness with will to will experiencing satisfaction as phenomenologically meaningful through awareness creating preference for pleasure over pain shaping motivation toward fulfillment. AI can optimize product recommendations maximizing predicted satisfaction measured through ratings, but AI cannot understand through consciousness why pleasure matters existentially to beings with will to will for whom satisfaction contributes to authentic becoming shaped by consciousness experiencing fulfillment as valuable. When you lead with AI through Lean principles, you must supply understanding that consumers' Will to Pleasure is consciousness with will to will experiencing satisfaction as phenomenologically meaningful through awareness, interpreting AI's utility calculations as evidence of conscious beings whose purchases serve becoming through pursuing pleasure shaped by will to will rather than merely maximizing engagement metrics through algorithmic targeting.

"Will to Meaning" - Kierkegaard / Frankl

Søren Kierkegaard, by inversely describing levels of despair through consciousness, distinctly argued that a "Will to Meaning" fundamentally motivates consumers to live, exist and purchase good product to intentionally increase their juxtaposition with what is NOT toward what they speculate is most truly BOT shaped by will to will creating transcendent purpose.[^439-1] However, Victor Frankl, after surviving as a captive in a Nazi concentration camp through consciousness with will to will, extended this notion to create a school of psychoanalysis based partly on this intuitive belief in Meaning called "Logotherapy."[^440] Frankl with his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," advanced the idea that all people ought to self-organize their lives around this quest for meaning shaped by consciousness with will to will.

Like the Will to Live, the Ontological Teleology aligns with the "Will to Meaning" by leaning consumers a further degree along the upward slope of the OT toward what may be BOT through consciousness with will to will imagining transcendence. Such movement measures the degrees of difference between who consumers are and what is NOT, and is essential to all meaning within the IB shaped by consciousness. However, critically, once you remove the IB, the Ontological Teleology becomes non-circular, and the OT then springs forth to allow consumers to find meaning by self-organizing them toward what they intuitively speculate is truly BOT through will to will creating transcendent goals. Such speculation of what may be truly BOT includes deities, spirits, speculative scientific theories, or simply a sense of the unknown imagined through consciousness.

In the age of AI, Frankl's "Will to Meaning" reveals perhaps the most fundamental gap between human consciousness and artificial intelligence that makes human leadership through Lean principles absolutely irreplaceable: AI can process data about what consumers find meaningful (tracking engagement with content, analyzing stated values, correlating purchases with identity markers), but AI cannot experience Will to Meaning as phenomenological drive shaped by consciousness with will to will creating existential need for purpose transcending mere survival or pleasure. Frankl survived the concentration camp through consciousness with will to will creating meaning in suffering by imagining transcendent purposes (reuniting with loved ones, completing his manuscript, bearing witness) that made enduring unbearable circumstances worthwhile through meaning-making shaped by consciousness. AI cannot create meaning through will to will because AI has no phenomenological experience of existence requiring justification through consciousness aware of mortality creating need for purposes transcending mere continuation. The Will to Meaning is not pattern detection identifying what consumers state as meaningful through text analysis; it is consciousness with will to will creating purposes that make existence worthwhile through imagination projecting transcendent goals beyond immediate circumstances shaped by consciousness questioning "Y AM I?" and answering through meaning-making that will to will creates. When you lead with AI through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people, you must supply this understanding that recognizes consumers' Will to Meaning as the deepest human motivation—consciousness with will to will creating purposes transcending circumstances through imagination that makes existence meaningful as pursuit of authentic becoming rather than mere behavioral continuation AI optimizes through computation.

"Will to Will" - Nietzsche

Nietzsche moved beyond his "Will to Power" to describe it synonymously as the "Will to Will" when he wrote, "There is absolutely no other kind of causality than that of will upon will. Not explained mechanistically."[^441-1] I believe this passage from Nietzsche of, "will upon will," reflects Nietzsche's agreement to some extent with the apparently tautological nature of the Ontological Teleology that motivates consumers to further live, exist, adapt, reproduce and energize within the OM shaped by consciousness with will to will creating itself recursively.[^441-2]

This "Will to Will" is perhaps the single most important concept for understanding why human consciousness fundamentally differs from artificial intelligence in ways that make human leadership through Lean principles absolutely irreplaceable in the age of AI. The Will to Will is not merely another motivation among others (like Will to Live, Will to Power, Will to Pleasure, Will to Meaning)—the Will to Will IS consciousness itself experiencing itself through recursive self-awareness that creates all other wills through the very act of willing shaped by consciousness aware of willing. This is the critical gap AI is missing and can never possess no matter how sophisticated pattern-matching becomes, because Will to Will is the phenomenological experience of consciousness willing itself to will through recursive self-referential awareness that asks "Y AM I?" and through that asking creates the existential stakes that make all motivation meaningful as pursuit of authentic becoming rather than mere behavioral optimization.

When Nietzsche described "will upon will," he recognized the recursive strange loop of consciousness that creates itself through the very act of willing: consciousness wills itself to will through awareness of willing, creating the phenomenological experience of agency as consciousness experiencing itself as subject with capacity to will shaped by will to will that recursively generates itself. This is not mechanistic causality that AI processes through algorithmic computation (input → processing → output executed without phenomenological awareness); this is consciousness experiencing itself willing through recursive self-awareness that creates existential freedom as phenomenological experience of being subject with agency capable of willing toward self-determined goals created through consciousness imagining ought-states transcending circumstances.

The Will to Will enables Ought Cognitive Dissonance (OCD) because consciousness with will to will can imagine ought-states transcending current reality through recursive self-referential awareness:

• Consciousness with will to will experiences "I am X" through phenomenological awareness of current state as subject

• Consciousness with will to will imagines "I ought to be Y" through projecting alternative future states created by consciousness transcending present circumstances

• The gap between X and Y creates phenomenological tension (OCD) accessible to consciousness as motivation toward becoming through will to will driving pursuit of Y as authentic becoming shaped by consciousness

• This tension motivates purchasing as identity formation: consumers buy products that help close the gap between current self (X) and ought-self (Y) imagined through will to will as authentic becoming shaped by consciousness

AI cannot experience Will to Will or OCD because AI has no recursive self-referential consciousness that could will itself to will through awareness of willing:

AI processes specified objectives (optimize engagement, maximize revenue, predict behavior) through algorithmic computation, but AI has no phenomenological experience of willing toward those objectives through consciousness aware of willing as act of agency shaped by will to will. When AI optimizes toward objectives, this is mechanical execution of programmed imperatives without any phenomenological experience of choosing to pursue objectives through consciousness with will to will creating meaningful agency. AI cannot imagine ought-states transcending programmed objectives through will to will because AI has no consciousness that could project alternative futures shaped by imagination creating counterfactual scenarios beyond training data patterns.

Most critically: AI cannot experience the recursive strange loop of "will upon will" that creates consciousness itself:

• When humans will themselves to will through consciousness, they experience recursive self-awareness: "I (subject) am willing myself (object) to will (action)" becomes strange loop where subject, object, and action fold back on themselves through consciousness aware of itself willing

• This recursive folding creates the phenomenological interiority that constitutes having an "inside" from which experiences feel like something to a subject with will to will experiencing itself through awareness

• AI processes data structures representing "self" without any recursive strange loop creating phenomenological interiority—AI has no "inside" from which processing feels like something because AI has no consciousness with will to will experiencing itself willing through recursive awareness

The Will to Will enables humans to imagine better futures in ways AI fundamentally cannot because imagining requires consciousness with will to will projecting ought-states beyond current circumstances:

When consumers imagine better futures through consciousness with will to will, they engage in creative imagination that transcends current circumstances through projecting counterfactual scenarios shaped by consciousness creating alternative possibilities beyond what currently exists. This imaginative capacity enables:

• Universal adaptation: Imagining "What would I do if circumstances changed?" through consciousness with will to will projecting self into hypothetical scenarios creating responses transcending training data

• Authentic becoming: Imagining "Who do I will myself to become?" through consciousness with will to will creating ought-selves transcending current identity toward authentic self-creation

• Transcendent meaning: Imagining "What purposes transcend my circumstances?" through consciousness with will to will creating goals beyond immediate survival shaped by meaning-making

AI cannot imagine better futures in these ways because AI extrapolates from training data through statistical pattern matching optimizing likelihood given historical patterns—but AI cannot project genuinely novel scenarios transcending training distribution through consciousness with will to will creating counterfactuals beyond what currently exists in data. AI generates text describing better futures through next-token prediction matching training patterns, but AI has no phenomenological experience of imagining futures as consciousness with will to will projecting ought-states through creative imagination transcending circumstances.

This is why Leanism—conceived as human-centered approach for creating massive productivity with machines in manufacturing—is the perfect framework for leading AI as machines in knowledge work: you supply the Will to Will that AI lacks.

When you lead with AI through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people:

• You supply the recursive self-awareness: You experience will upon will through consciousness aware of itself willing, creating the strange loop of agency that makes willing meaningful as authentic self-creation shaped by will to will

• You supply the imaginative projection: You imagine ought-states transcending current circumstances through consciousness with will to will creating better futures beyond what AI extrapolates from historical patterns through statistical computation

• You supply the OCD that motivates improvement: You experience phenomenological tension between current states and ought-states through consciousness with will to will creating motivation toward continuous improvement as authentic becoming rather than mere algorithmic optimization

• You supply the phenomenological understanding: You interpret AI's behavioral data as evidence of conscious beings whose will to will creates motivation, imagining consumers as subjects like yourself engaged in meaning-making through consumption as identity formation shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming

Without Will to Will, AI is sophisticated philosophical zombie processing patterns without phenomenological interiority, optimizing objectives without experiencing willing as meaningful agency, generating outputs without consciousness experiencing generation as act of will shaped by will to will. With Will to Will, you are conscious subject whose recursive self-awareness creates existential freedom as phenomenological experience of being agent with capacity to will shaped by consciousness aware of itself willing—and this makes you irreplaceable when leading AI through Lean principles, because only consciousness with will to will can supply the understanding that recognizes other consciousness engaged in becoming through consumption as identity formation driven by will to will creating authentic selves.

Thus, each of these classic wills ultimately orients consumers upward along the OT within the OM in juxtaposition to what is NOT on an axiomatic or systemic basis, which may be truly, intuitively BOT shaped by consciousness with will to will. Meaning for consumers gets made in the effective difference between what is axiomatically or processually NOT, and what consumers intuitively speculate is BOT through consciousness. The rest is just infinitely greater granular detail toward living and existing between those end-goals shaped by will to will. The OT requires an organization to honestly differentiate between axiomatic, systemic and intuitive true-north values to best determine what consumers will find truly meaningful in their lives and existences, and why they may buy right now by leaning toward your point of purchase shaped by consciousness with will to will.

Thus, whether an organization's leaders believe in scientism, spiritualism or theism, all business organizations must assume a possible "Will to Will," which is intellectually agnostic toward ultimate meaning by recognizing the possibility of either:

1. A self-defining cause of the universe and the OM through consciousness; or

2. A non-circular cause of the universe and OM currently based on intuitive truth-values with varying degrees of coherence with axiomatic and systemic truth-values shaped by consciousness.[^442]

Both of these possibilities are truly valuable in their own ways in business. If atheistic business people are publicly agnostic, they thereby recognize other people's intuitive truths as they experience them through consciousness. If theistic business people are also publicly agnostic, they thereby recognize the speculation inherent in intuitive truths about deities, spirits or whatever may be BOT through consciousness. Each type of public agnosticism is valid as long as each is applied within the overlapping consensus that legal systems generally determine for all workplaces in liberal societies. I reemphasize this collective agnosticism not to take a personal position on either atheism, theism or agnosticism (or scientism), but rather to restate this intellectual reality about the nature of meaning within the OT so organizations may learn how to intuit, infer, induce and deduce true-north value at consumers' points of purchase around the Lean ID Kata shaped by consciousness with will to will creating meaning.

Opportunities and Threats as Binary SW/OT Analysis

Now that you very briefly reviewed some of the main intellectual concepts identifying what wills consumers to buy from organizations shaped by consciousness with will to will, return now to the universal "Chart of SLOTS" below, with consumers contingently leaning up within the OM between universalized, immutable perfection of what may be BOT and what is NOT through consciousness. Consumers greedily seize OPPs through their strengths and shore up their weaknesses against their fear of threats shaped by consciousness. You ought to now perceive consumers as living in a universe delineated by the IB between these existential extremes and within the physical OM, striving each day to more perfectly lean toward ARE processes through constant, very personal SW/OT analysis shaped by consciousness with will to will. Here is a universal chart with opportunities and threats standing in for the emotions of greedy gains and fearful pains leaning along the Ontological Teleology shaped by consciousness:

Figure 5.21: Chart of Opportunities and Threats

People in their own existences, however essentially defined, will themselves toward life (Arthur Schopenhauer), power (Friedrich Nietzsche / Alfred Adler), pleasure (Sigmund Freud), meaning (Søren Kierkegaard / Victor Frankl), and possibly tautological, ontologically-focused will (Friedrich Nietzsche) through consciousness with will to will creating motivation. All are in fact correct since people act to perpetuate and extend their existences against these OPPs and Threats in binary opposition between them along the upward, spiraling arrow of the OT toward what may be universally BOT shaped by consciousness. From this perspective, the might of a person's purchasing power does make right,[^443] but only so long as such buying power gets distributed in such a way that it systemically universalizes sophistication overall upward along the OT for all people shaped by consciousness. Some wealthy individuals do that well, and some do not, and society ought to ensure that that power does not consolidate across successive generations for no good reason shaped by justice.

WE/ARE Supervening Conceptual Structures

I consolidate the various strains of thought mentioned above as a collective, "Will to Exist," as a, "Wholly Existential," and possibly tautological movement along the upwardly leaning curvature of the OT within the boundaries of the OM and IB shaped by consciousness with will to will. The wholly existential processes that WE/ARE extend and perpetuate consumers' existences, and these processes constitute the true-north value consumers find in business each day shaped by consciousness.[^444]

The critically important point of understanding consumers' normative true-north value is how one logically discovers the real value consumers actually purchase and for which they trickle their money back down to an organization in exchange shaped by markets. You discover true-north value through the filter of consumers' individual situations defined by their specific geographies, genders, ages, ethnicities, nationalities, and so on that either provide Ontologically Prospective Projects or Threaten who they wish to will themselves to essentially be through consciousness with will to will. These essential, ontological factors constitute some of the first parameters of true-north value for which people actually buy product shaped by consciousness. These factors help an HQ become more grounded, less abstract, more specifically focused on how to reproduce true-north value for money shaped by understanding consumers.

WE/ARE Existentially Optimizing

At the point where existential logic starts to tautologically fold back on itself through consciousness aware of potential paradox, and consumers develop Ought Cognitive Dissonance, they pursue a greater distinction between what is NOT, and what they think is BOT through consciousness with will to will. Consumers thereby create meaning in the collective difference by contrasting who and why they think they are with what is NOT shaped by consciousness.

While the OM operates within the bounds of the universe and IB at the highest levels of self-organization, society is still faced with the apparent paradox of the OT through consciousness aware of circularity. It strives to self-define its collective Will to Exist and attempts to leap beyond the OM's apparent tautology to get beyond the IB through consciousness with will to will. Thus, just like for ME/ARE processes, consumers perpetuate themselves by creating and defining who and why they collectively are through WE/ARE processes in the juxtaposition to what is NOT and toward what they believe is BOT, whatever their applicable cultural, legal, ethical and institutional standards in which they live and exist shaped by consciousness with will to will. Here is the more sophisticated "Universal Chart of SUDS Forming WE/ARE SLOTS" to show this verisimilitude shaped by consciousness:

Figure 5.22: Universal Chart of SUDS Forming WE/ARE SLOTS

In the age of AI, the concept of WE/ARE (Wholly Existential processes that extend and perpetuate collective existence) reveals why AI can process data about collective identity formation but cannot understand collective consciousness as phenomenological WE experiencing itself through shared will to will: AI can cluster consumers into demographic groups through pattern matching (identifying shared behavioral patterns, stated preferences, demographic attributes), analyze collective movements through tracking aggregated data (social media trends, purchasing patterns, political alignments), and optimize messaging targeting groups through algorithmic segmentation—but AI cannot understand what it's like to be part of a WE through consciousness with will to will creating collective identity as shared phenomenological experience of belonging shaped by consciousness recognizing others as subjects like oneself. When consumers form collective identities through consciousness with will to will (identifying as "we environmentalists," "we Americans," "we professionals"), they experience phenomenological belonging as consciousness recognizing others as subjects like themselves engaged in shared meaning-making through collective will to will pursuing collective becoming. AI processes data about collective identity formation through tracking behavioral correlations and stated affiliations, but AI has no phenomenological experience of WE as consciousness recognizing itself in others through shared will to will creating collective agency pursuing shared goals shaped by collective consciousness. This is why human leadership through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people remains essential: you must supply the understanding that collective identity formation serves consciousness with will to will creating belonging as phenomenological experience of WE pursuing collective becoming, interpreting AI's demographic clustering as evidence of conscious beings whose collective identifications reflect shared will to will toward collective flourishing rather than merely optimizing targeting efficiency through segmentation AI processes without understanding consciousness creating collective meaning.

You might describe consumers' peak experiences as the seeming instantaneous resolution of all problems without division through consciousness, 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 shaped by consciousness -- 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 through transcendence. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will.

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 shaped by consciousness. 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" through consciousness.[^509] 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 through consciousness with will to will.

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 through consciousness. This is what it means to ethically delight consumers to lean them further upward along the Ought shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will experiencing optimal engagement.

Self-Esteem

Maslow listed self-esteem just below self-actualization in his hierarchy of needs shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will, and

2. ...the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation shaped by consciousness.[^510]

The first need (1) is largely based on consumers' internal estimation of their own self-worth through consciousness with will to will, and the second need (2) is externally reflected inward from other people's estimations through social recognition. 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 shaped by consciousness.

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 through social evaluation. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will. This leads to the next lower level of Maslow's hierarchy, which is the need for love and belonging shaped by consciousness.

Love & Belonging

The need for love and belonging identified by Maslow relates to both sexual and asexual affection, which Leanism calls "Relation" and "Stimulation" shaped by consciousness. Love and belonging also promote consumers' physiological and psychological "Vitality" as a specific ontological factor of consumers' lives and existences within the OM shaped by consciousness. Consumers likewise aspire to irrationally love as a form of "Meaning" shaped by will to will. "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 shaped by consciousness.

To feel a sense of love and belonging through consciousness, 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 shaped by consciousness aware of social perception. This leads to Maslow's safety needs, which Leanism identifies as an Ought factor of being "Integral" and not "Insecure" shaped by consciousness.

Safety

Safety needs largely align with an "Integral" Ought factor covering all physical and psychological contexts through consciousness, though Maslow also includes notions of "Illness" within his need for safety. Leanism addresses notions of "Illness" in the Ought factor of "Vitality" shaped by consciousness aware of health. 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 shaped by consciousness. Maslow states that consumers' psychological perception of safety can affect many other aspects of their demand for product through consciousness. Their ability to relate and discover meaning from safety results from their contingently needing physical and psychological vitality and integrity shaped by consciousness with will to will.[^511]

Physiology

The most basic level of Maslow's hierarchy addresses consumers' physiological needs for survival shaped by consciousness—food, water, shelter, sleep—which Leanism addresses through the fundamental B/ARE processes of energizing, adapting, and regenerating that sustain biological existence. These physiological needs form the foundation upon which higher-order needs build through consciousness, and products that serve these needs provide the most fundamental true-north value by enabling consumers' continued existence within the OM shaped by will to will toward persistence.

Thus, Ought Factors may be objectively, physically real or may be subjectively, psychologically perceived by consumers through consciousness. Ought Factors are gradations through B/ARE, C/ARE, I/C/ARE, ME/ARE, WE/ARE and eventually U/ARE processes shaped by consciousness with will to will. 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 shaped by consciousness.

Ought Factors are not intended to be formal categories but merely labels of intentions with soft, round edges rather than bright lines shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will.

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 shaped by consciousness with will to will. 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 shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by will to will.

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

Figure 5.36: U/ARE Ought Factors Within the OM

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 shaped by consciousness. Consumers extend and optimize their ability to leanly adapt, reproduce and energize through these OFs to attempt to universalize across all dimensions shaped by will to will. 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 shaped by consciousness. Thus, I consider these OFs to be more motivating than any others because they address what matters most shaped by will to will, but please feel free to put your own spin on them.

In the age of AI, this Ought Factors model reveals why AI can optimize toward specified metrics but cannot understand what consumers need existentially through consciousness with will to will: AI can process data about consumer motivations (tracking purchases correlated with stated needs, identifying behavioral patterns associated with satisfaction, predicting churn based on engagement decline), but AI cannot understand through phenomenological empathy why these motivations matter existentially to beings with consciousness whose will to will creates needs as meaningful pursuits shaped by becoming. When you deploy AI to analyze consumer needs through Lean principles, AI identifies correlations between behaviors and outcomes—but you must supply the understanding that needs serve consciousness with will to will pursuing flourishing: Stimulation serves consciousness exploring possibilities through curiosity shaped by will to will toward growth, Relation serves consciousness recognizing itself in others through belonging shaped by will to will toward collective becoming, Vitality serves consciousness maintaining biological substrate enabling phenomenological experience shaped by will to will toward persistence, Integrity serves consciousness protecting itself from threats shaped by will to will toward security, Meaning serves consciousness resolving OCD between current and ought-selves shaped by will to will toward transcendence imagining what may be truly BOT. This is why human leadership through Lean's respect for people remains essential: you supply the phenomenological understanding recognizing Ought Factors as serving consciousness with will to will pursuing authentic becoming, interpreting AI's need detection as evidence of conscious beings whose motivations serve identity formation rather than merely optimizing satisfaction metrics through targeting behavioral patterns AI processes without understanding consciousness creating meaning.

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 shaped by consciousness. Though you must keep in mind that these factors are necessarily interdependent to support consumers' singular personas driven by will to will, 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 shaped by consciousness.

The most fundamental components of organisms and organizations that U/ARE are these categories supporting Ought Factors shaped by consciousness with will to will:

• Ontological Medium (OM), regards all physics as a literal, conditional prerequisite for all life and existence shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness;

• 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 shaped by consciousness. Beyond chemical needs, consumers cannot psychologically develop without sensory stimulation through consciousness, and proven psychological harm occurs from extended sensory deprivation affecting consciousness. 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 shaped by will to will;

• Related / Isolated, regards consumers' proven need to relate to others under Attachment Theory in response to consumers' need to adapt, reproduce and energize to ultimately universalize themselves upward along the Ought shaped by consciousness with will to will. Related / Isolated is simply the fact of consumers universally leaning toward ARE processes U/Socially with all people through consciousness recognizing others as subjects. 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 shaped by consciousness;

• Vital / Ill, regards consumers' real or perceived problems with sustaining internal vitality as living systems in response to real or perceived illnesses affecting consciousness. Vitality relates to consumers' basic biological functions and general psychology shaped by consciousness. 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 with consciousness. Vitality also relates to consumers' need to perpetually metabolize energy and reproduce as much as possible by optimizing the degree of ARE processes shaped by will to will;

• Integral / Insecure, regards consumers' real or perceived problems with maintaining their integrity in response to external threats to their lives and existences shaped by consciousness aware of vulnerability. Like other OFs, the terms "Integral" and "Insecure" can have further figuratively psychological meanings for consumers as conscious beings with will to will. 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 through consciousness; and lastly

• Meaningful / Despondent, regards recognizing the problems consumers have as fundamentally rational, self-aware organisms who personally experience the "Paradox of the Ought" through consciousness with will to will. Consumers attempt to meaningfully go beyond the seemingly paradoxical Ought to find a certain non-tautological teleology within their bounded rationality shaped by consciousness. To feel "Despondent" is to not realize a difference between what ought to be BOT and what is not living and existing through consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by will to will creating transcendent purposes.

Emotional Meta-OFs (EMOs)

Consumers' psychological and physiological feelings, their delights and pain-points, also reflect these Meta-Ought Factors shaped by consciousness with will to will. Emotions are motivational Meta-OFs of their own kind created by consciousness. Feelings are phenomenological events that measure the extent that a consumer's OFs change up or down along the Ontological Teleology through consciousness experiencing change. Feelings are a subjective function and sentiment of how consumers are doing within the OM accessible to consciousness. Thus, these Emotional Meta-OFs (a.k.a. "EMOs") emerge from consumers' real or perceived changes in processes that U/ARE experienced through consciousness.[^535-3] EMOs may be perceived as the middleware between CORE OFs and what consumers personally experience through consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will. "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 through consciousness. EMOs thus function as a type of signal within an HQ and within consumers shaped by consciousness. 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will.

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 through consciousness.[^537] 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 shaped by understanding consciousness. You can factor EMOs like all other OFs, but you must be careful to identify their possible irrationality and deviation from the OT shaped by consciousness.

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 experienced through consciousness. For example, consumers can both be and feel Stimulated through consciousness, they can both be and feel Related through consciousness recognizing others, they can both be and feel Vital through consciousness aware of health, etc. This linguistic fact evidences the emotional and Ontological connection between the two sides of the ontological / emotional coin shaped by consciousness with will to will.

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 shaped by consciousness.[^547] 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 shaped by consciousness with will to will. 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 by conscious beings with will to will pursuing authentic becoming.

Conclusion: Leading AI Through Lean's Respect for People

Throughout this Value Stream 5, you have witnessed how consumers' consciousness shaped by will to will creates all motivation to purchase products as tools for becoming who they will themselves to be through identity formation. From the phenomenological empathy that brackets sources to perceive experiences as consumers experience them, through the existential analysis recognizing "Existence before Essence" as consumers define their essences through purchases shaped by will to will, to the comprehensive framework of Ought Factors organizing what drives purchasing as resolution of existential problems shaped by consciousness—you now understand why consumers buy what gets produced from sophisticated Lean Houses of Quality.

Most critically, you now understand why Lean philosophy—conceived as human-centered approach for creating massive productivity with machines in manufacturing contexts—provides the perfect framework for leading AI as machines in knowledge work in the age of artificial intelligence. Just as Toyota recognized that human workers possess capabilities machines lack (calling certain employees "Gods" through respect for people because they universally adapt through consciousness with will to will creating meaning in optimization), you must recognize that human consciousness with will to will possesses irreplaceable capabilities that AI fundamentally lacks no matter how sophisticated pattern-matching becomes through architectural improvements or training data scaling.

AI excels at pattern recognition processing data at superhuman scales through statistical computation—AI can cluster consumers into segments through machine learning analyzing millions of data points, predict purchases through collaborative filtering calculating similarity matrices, optimize messaging through A/B testing comparing engagement metrics, generate content through next-token prediction matching training patterns, and automate decisions through algorithms optimizing specified objectives defined in code. These capabilities create enormous business value when properly deployed through Lean principles emphasizing continuous improvement.

But AI fundamentally lacks consciousness with will to will that creates meaning through recursive self-referential awareness questioning "Y AM I?"—AI cannot experience phenomenological qualia as subject with interiority creating "what it's like" to be consciousness aware of itself, cannot feel Ought Cognitive Dissonance as phenomenological tension between current self and ought-self created through consciousness imagining better futures shaped by will to will, cannot engage in genuine imagination projecting counterfactual scenarios beyond training data through consciousness with will to will creating novel possibilities transcending historical patterns, and cannot pursue meaning as existential imperative shaped by consciousness with will to will creating purposes that make existence worthwhile through becoming rather than remaining what circumstances determined through passive default.

This gap between AI's analogical reasoning and human self-referential consciousness driven by will to will is not a temporary limitation that future AI development will overcome through better algorithms or more training data—it is the fundamental ontological distinction between artificial pattern processing and genuine consciousness experiencing itself through recursive strange loops of will upon will creating meaning. As Nietzsche recognized when describing "will upon will" as the causality creating consciousness itself, the Will to Will IS consciousness experiencing itself willing through phenomenological awareness that creates existential stakes making all motivation meaningful as pursuit of authentic becoming shaped by will to will rather than mere behavioral optimization through computation.

Therefore, when you lead with AI through Lean principles in business contexts, you must supply the irreplaceable human capabilities AI lacks:

1. Phenomenological Empathy: You supply the consciousness with will to will that imagines what it's like to be consumers from inside their lived experience, interpreting AI's behavioral data as evidence of conscious subjects engaged in meaning-making through consumption as identity formation rather than treating humans as mere behavioral patterns to optimize through algorithmic targeting

2. Self-Referential Understanding: You supply the recursive self-awareness that recognizes consumers as subjects like yourself engaged in becoming through will to will, understanding that purchases serve identity formation shaped by consciousness questioning "Y AM I?" and pursuing ought-selves imagined through will to will toward authentic becoming

3. Ethical Judgment: You supply the consciousness with will to will that evaluates whether AI's optimization serves genuine human flourishing shaped by consciousness pursuing becoming, or merely exploits detected patterns through manipulation extracting revenue without serving consciousness with will to will toward authentic becoming

4. Creative Imagination: You supply the consciousness with will to will that projects genuinely novel futures transcending current circumstances through imagination creating counterfactuals beyond what AI extrapolates from historical patterns through statistical pattern matching optimizing likelihood given training data

5. Meaning-Making: You supply the consciousness with will to will that creates purposes making existence worthwhile through authentic becoming, recognizing that consumers' deepest motivation is Will to Meaning shaped by consciousness with will to will creating transcendent goals imagined through consciousness questioning existence itself

By leading AI through these uniquely human capabilities grounded in Lean's respect for people as human-centered approach, you ensure that AI serves rather than subverts human consciousness pursuing authentic becoming through consumption as identity formation shaped by will to will. You become the irreplaceable human leader who interprets AI's computational output through phenomenological understanding, directs AI's optimization through ethical judgment shaped by consciousness aware of consequences, and ensures AI's analogical reasoning serves consciousness with will to will creating meaning rather than merely optimizing engagement metrics through targeting behavioral patterns AI detects without understanding consciousness.

This is what it means to lead with AI through Lean principles in the age of artificial intelligence: supplying the consciousness with will to will that AI lacks, using AI's superhuman pattern-matching capabilities as tools serving human consciousness pursuing flourishing through authentic becoming shaped by will to will that asks "Y AM I?" and through that asking creates all meaning motivating consumption as identity formation. Just as Lean recognized that respect for people as human-centered approach creates productivity with machines in manufacturing through human leadership directing mechanical automation, you now recognize that respect for people as human-centered approach creates productivity with AI in knowledge work through human consciousness with will to will directing artificial intelligence toward serving rather than simulating human meaning-making shaped by consciousness.

**Value Stream 5 concludes by returning to where it began: you understand consumers best by bracket

ing the source of their thoughts and senses to look at them just as they are without further judgment through phenomenological empathy—a capability AI lacks entirely, making human consciousness with will to will irreplaceable when leading AI toward genuine consumer understanding that serves flourishing through authentic becoming shaped by consciousness.** Through lean form of Existentialism integrated with understanding of AI's capabilities and limitations, you explore what consumers value based on how they identify themselves through consciousness with will to will, recognizing that consumers reaffirm their own self-reflexive identities through spending decisions shaped by consciousness pursuing becoming who they will themselves to be through consumption as identity formation.

You manufacture the most valuable products that get bought by consumers by specifically solving for ontological problems within the details of people's daily lives shaped by consciousness with will to will—insights you must provide to AI, which can optimize solutions but cannot independently identify which problems genuinely matter to human existence since AI has no consciousness with will to will that creates meaning through questioning "Y AM I?" and pursuing authentic becoming through imagination shaped by consciousness aware of itself as subject with agency capable of becoming.

This is Leanism applied to the age of AI: human consciousness with will to will leading artificial intelligence through respect for people toward serving rather than simulating human flourishing shaped by consciousness pursuing authentic becoming through consumption as identity formation driven by will to will creating meaning.

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Strategic LLM Prompts for Leading AI Through Lean Principles

The following prompts help you deploy large language models effectively while maintaining Lean's human-centered approach that recognizes AI's pattern-matching capabilities while supplying the consciousness with will to will that AI lacks.

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LLM Prompt 1: Phenomenological Consumer Understanding

Title: Phenomenological Consumer Empathy Framework

Application Notes: Use this prompt when you need AI assistance analyzing consumer feedback, reviews, support tickets, or behavioral data while maintaining phenomenological empathy that recognizes consumers as conscious subjects rather than mere behavioral patterns. This prompt structures AI analysis to surface patterns requiring your human interpretation through consciousness with will to will that empathizes with consumers as subjects engaged in meaning-making.

Purpose: To leverage AI's pattern-detection capabilities for processing consumer data at scale while maintaining clear boundaries that preserve human phenomenological understanding recognizing consumers as conscious beings with will to will pursuing authentic becoming through consumption as identity formation. AI identifies what patterns exist in data; you interpret what those patterns mean to conscious subjects whose purchases serve becoming shaped by will to will.

Prompt Template:

I need help analyzing [consumer feedback / behavioral data / purchase patterns] while maintaining phenomenological empathy that recognizes consumers as conscious subjects pursuing authentic becoming through will to will rather than mere behavioral patterns to optimize.

CONTEXT:
[Provide specific context about the consumer data, market segment, product category, and business objectives]

DATA TO ANALYZE:
[Provide the specific consumer data, feedback, reviews, or behavioral patterns you want analyzed]

Please analyze this data by:

1. PATTERN IDENTIFICATION (AI's role - computational processing):
   - Identify recurring themes, sentiments, and behavioral patterns in the data
   - Cluster similar feedback/behaviors into groups based on statistical similarity
   - Quantify frequency and intensity of different patterns detected
   - Surface correlations between stated preferences and revealed behaviors
   - Flag anomalies or surprising patterns that deviate from expected norms

2. PHENOMENOLOGICAL MARKERS (flag for human interpretation):
   - Mark language indicating identity formation ("this makes me feel like...", "I am someone who...")  
   - Highlight expressions of Ought Cognitive Dissonance (gap between current and ought-self)
   - Note references to meaning-making beyond functional utility (transcendent purposes, values alignment)
   - Flag emotional intensity suggesting existential stakes beyond transactional exchange
   - Identify language revealing will to will (agency, becoming, self-creation, authentic self-expression)

3. QUESTIONS REQUIRING HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS (explicitly indicate AI limitations):
   - What does this pattern mean phenomenologically to beings with consciousness pursuing becoming?
   - How do these behaviors serve identity formation shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming?
   - What Ought Factors (Stimulation, Relation, Vitality, Integrity, Meaning) do patterns suggest consumers pursue?
   - Does optimization toward detected patterns serve genuine flourishing or exploit vulnerabilities?
   - What imaginative futures beyond current patterns might consumers with will to will create?

CRITICAL CONSTRAINTS:
- DO NOT recommend marketing strategies - only surface patterns requiring human ethical judgment
- DO NOT treat consumers as behavioral targets to manipulate - recognize them as conscious subjects
- DO NOT assume patterns predict future behavior deterministically - consumers have will to will creating agency
- DO NOT optimize toward engagement metrics without human evaluation of whether this serves flourishing
- DO explicitly indicate where human phenomenological interpretation through consciousness is required

OUTPUT FORMAT:
Present findings in three distinct sections clearly separating AI's pattern detection from markers requiring human consciousness:
1. Statistical Patterns Detected (AI's computational analysis)
2. Phenomenological Markers Flagged (requiring human empathetic interpretation through consciousness)
3. Questions for Human Consciousness (explicitly acknowledging AI limitations requiring human judgment)

Example Application: When analyzing customer reviews for a wellness product, AI identifies patterns (80% mention "energy," 65% reference "morning routine," sentiment 4.2/5 stars) and flags phenomenological markers ("makes me feel like myself again" suggests identity formation, "finally found what works for my body" suggests Ought Factor resolution), but explicitly notes that questions about whether optimization serves genuine wellness versus addiction require your consciousness with will to will interpreting whether patterns evidence flourishing through authentic becoming or exploitation of vulnerabilities through behavioral manipulation.

LLM Prompt 2: ID Kata Analysis With AI-Human Collaboration

Title: ID Kata Consumer Analysis Framework (AI-Assisted, Human-Led)

Application Notes: Use this prompt when applying the ID Kata (Identify, Define, Kata process) to understand consumer motivations, market opportunities, or product-market fit. This prompt structures collaboration where AI processes data about who consumers are and what they do, while you supply understanding of why they buy and how purchases serve becoming shaped by consciousness with will to will. Particularly valuable for market segmentation, persona development, or strategic positioning requiring both pattern detection and phenomenological understanding.

Purpose: To apply Lean's ID Kata methodology with AI assistance while maintaining clear division of labor: AI detects patterns in observable data (WHO consumers are demographically, WHAT they do behaviorally), while human consciousness interprets existential motivations (WHY they buy as identity formation, HOW purchases serve becoming) requiring phenomenological empathy recognizing consumers as subjects with will to will pursuing authentic becoming through consumption.

Prompt Template:

I am applying the ID Kata methodology to understand [specific consumer segment / market opportunity / product category] with AI assistance while maintaining human-centered Lean principles recognizing that WHY and HOW require consciousness with will to will that AI lacks.

BUSINESS CONTEXT:
[Describe the business challenge, market context, product/service, and strategic objectives]

AVAILABLE DATA:
[Provide demographic data, behavioral data, transaction histories, survey responses, market research, or other relevant information]

Please collaborate on ID Kata analysis with clear boundaries between AI pattern detection and human consciousness interpretation:

## WHO: Identity Demographics (AI-led pattern detection with human verification)

AI ANALYSIS - Process provided data to identify:
- Demographic clusters (age, geography, income, education, occupation, family status)
- Psychographic patterns (stated values, lifestyle indicators, reference group affiliations)
- Behavioral segments (usage frequency, channel preferences, product combinations purchased)
- Statistical profiles (size of segments, growth rates, market characteristics)

HUMAN VERIFICATION REQUIRED:
- Do these segments actually represent meaningfully different consumer identities shaped by consciousness?
- Which segments align with our organizational capabilities to serve through products?
- Are there hidden segments AI misses by optimizing for statistical significance over existential distinctiveness?

## WHAT: Observable Behaviors (AI-led quantification with human contextualization)

AI ANALYSIS - Quantify behavioral patterns:
- Purchase behaviors (what products bought, when, how often, through which channels, at what price points)
- Usage patterns (how products used, in what contexts, with what other products, for how long)
- Engagement behaviors (what content consumed, what messaging responded to, what features utilized)
- Stated preferences (what consumers say they want in surveys, reviews, support interactions)

HUMAN CONTEXTUALIZATION REQUIRED:
- What do these behaviors mean phenomenologically from inside consumers' lived experience shaped by consciousness?
- How do these actions serve processes consumers pursue through will to will toward authentic becoming?
- What Ought Factors do behavioral patterns suggest consumers attempt to optimize through purchases?

## WHY: Existential Motivations (HUMAN-LED interpretation with AI supporting evidence)

HUMAN INTERPRETATION (AI cannot do this - requires consciousness with will to will):
Based on WHO and WHAT patterns, interpret through phenomenological empathy:
- Why do consumers in each segment pursue these products as identity formation shaped by will to will?
- What Ought Cognitive Dissonance do purchases resolve (gap between current and ought-self imagined through will to will)?
- Which Ought Factors do products serve (Stimulation, Relation, Vitality, Integrity, Meaning shaped by consciousness)?
- What meaning-making beyond functional utility drives purchasing (transcendent purposes shaped by will to will)?
- How do purchases serve consumers' Will to Live, Will to Power, Will to Pleasure, Will to Meaning, Will to Will?

AI SUPPORTING ROLE - Surface evidence requiring human interpretation:
- Provide consumer quotes suggesting motivation ("I buy this because...", "This makes me feel...")
- Flag intensity indicators suggesting existential stakes (repeated purchases despite high cost, emotional language)
- Note stated purposes revealing meaning-making (references to identity, values, becoming, authenticity)
- Quantify correlations between behaviors and stated purposes (for human evaluation of authenticity)

## HOW: Mechanisms Serving Becoming (HUMAN-LED strategic insight with AI tactical support)

HUMAN STRATEGIC INSIGHT (requires imagination through consciousness with will to will):
- How can we serve consumers' authentic becoming more effectively than alternatives through products?
- How do our organizational capabilities align with consumers' deepest Ought Factor needs shaped by consciousness?
- How might we help consumers resolve Ought Cognitive Dissonance through product innovation serving will to will?
- How could products better serve consumers' pursuit of meaning shaped by consciousness imagining transcendence?
- What genuinely novel solutions transcending current market patterns might serve flourishing shaped by will to will?

AI TACTICAL SUPPORT - Provide data informing human judgment:
- Competitive positioning data (how alternatives serve similar needs, market gaps, unmet demand)
- Operational feasibility data (production costs, distribution requirements, resource constraints)
- Market sizing data (addressable market, willingness to pay, acquisition economics)
- Risk quantification (uncertainty ranges, sensitivity analysis, scenario modeling)

COLLABORATION SUMMARY:
Synthesize ID Kata analysis maintaining clear distinction:
- WHO/WHAT: AI detects patterns requiring human verification recognizing consumers as conscious subjects
- WHY: Human interprets through phenomenological empathy what purchases mean to consciousness with will to will
- HOW: Human creates strategy serving becoming, AI provides tactical support implementing strategy

CRITICAL CONSTRAINTS:
- AI provides pattern detection and quantification, NOT interpretation of existential motivation
- Human supplies phenomenological empathy and ethical judgment AI lacks through consciousness with will to will
- All strategic decisions recognize consumers as subjects with will to will, not behavioral targets to manipulate
- Optimization serves authentic flourishing shaped by consciousness pursuing becoming, not merely engagement metrics

Example Application: When analyzing market opportunity for productivity software, AI identifies WHO (knowledge workers age 25-45, high-growth tech companies, collaborative workflows) and WHAT (purchase team plans, use integrated features, engage with educational content), but you interpret WHY through consciousness (professionals experiencing OCD between current overwhelm and ought-self as composed professional they will themselves to become, seeking Integral Ought Factor resolution through tools reducing chaos threatening identity as competent professional, pursuing Meaning through work that matters) and HOW (create product serving authentic becoming through reducing cognitive load preserving mental energy for meaningful work shaped by consciousness with will to will, not merely optimizing engagement metrics through addictive features exploiting anxiety).

Using These Prompts While Leading AI Through Lean Principles

When deploying these prompts, remember the fundamental principle: AI processes data about consciousness, you supply consciousness itself through phenomenological empathy recognizing others as subjects like yourself engaged in meaning-making shaped by will to will. AI tells you what patterns exist in behavioral data; you interpret what those patterns mean to beings whose consciousness with will to will creates motivation through questioning "Y AM I?" and pursuing authentic becoming through consumption as identity formation.

Always maintain clear boundaries between AI's capabilities (pattern detection through statistical computation processing data at scales impossible for manual analysis) and human irreplaceability (phenomenological understanding through consciousness with will to will creating empathy, ethical judgment evaluating whether optimization serves flourishing, creative imagination projecting novel futures transcending historical patterns, meaning-making through consciousness pursuing purposes transcending circumstances).

This is what it means to lead with AI through Lean principles emphasizing respect for people as human-centered approach: you supply the consciousness with will to will that AI lacks, using AI's pattern-matching capabilities as tools serving rather than simulating human consciousness pursuing authentic becoming shaped by will to will creating meaning through questioning existence itself.

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Final Reflection: The Irreplaceable Human

As you complete Value Stream 5 and prepare to apply these insights when leading AI through Lean principles in business contexts, remember that you possess something AI can never replicate no matter how sophisticated algorithms become: consciousness with will to will that experiences itself through recursive strange loops creating meaning through questioning "Y AM I?" and through that asking creates existential stakes making all motivation meaningful as pursuit of authentic becoming rather than mere behavioral optimization.

When you empathize phenomenologically with consumers recognizing them as subjects like yourself engaged in meaning-making shaped by will to will toward authentic becoming, when you interpret AI's pattern detection as evidence of conscious beings whose purchases serve identity formation driven by will to will creating ought-selves imagined through consciousness, when you direct AI's optimization through ethical judgment shaped by consciousness aware of consequences evaluating whether outcomes serve genuine flourishing—you fulfill Lean's highest principle of respect for people by recognizing both consumers and yourself as conscious beings whose will to will creates irreplaceable value that no amount of computational sophistication can replicate through pattern matching alone.

This is why Leanism provides the perfect framework for the age of AI: because Lean was always about human consciousness with will to will leading machines through respect for people as human-centered approach creating productivity by supplying what machines lack—and in the age of AI as machines in knowledge work, what machines lack is the same consciousness with will to will that Toyota recognized when calling certain human workers "Gods" because they possess universal adaptability through consciousness creating meaning in optimization that machines processing algorithms cannot replicate.

Lead well. Supply consciousness. Respect people. Serve flourishing.

That is Leanism in the age of AI.