Slow wisdom of David Fleming: leadership, lean logic, richness we've forgotten

Winnipeg Free Press

a day ago

Opinion
Imagine leading not with strategies and growth metrics, but with stories. Imagine a boardroom where 'value' isn't calculated in quarterly reports, but in rituals, friendships, skills passed down to apprentices and trust born from shared time and shared purpose.
David Fleming — the British economist and philosopher whose posthumously published Lean Logic: a Dictionary For the Future and How to Survive It has quietly found its way into the hands of community builders, transition leaders and ecological thinkers across the globe — made the case that we might do just that.
Though his name isn't widely known outside sustainability circles, Fleming's work explores the value of human culture and warns of what's lost when we focus solely on efficiency.
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David Fleming is the author of Lean Logic: a Dictionary For the Future and How to Survive It
He was no ivory tower idealist. Fleming trained as an economist, worked in the corporate world, chaired the Soil Association and was an early contributor to the United Kingdom's Green Party. But in Lean Logic, published six years after his death in 2010 at age 70, he stepped outside the structures of conventional economics and into a very different rhythm — one where community, ritual and meaning are not decorative, but essential.
Fleming called it the 'lean economy.' Unlike the lean management principles many leaders may be more familiar with — cutting waste, streamlining, maximizing throughput — his lean economy was rooted in something ancient.
It was lean in the way a forest is lean: abundant, but never excessive. It works through reciprocity, local knowledge, social capital and trust. It values depth over speed, relationship over transaction, memory over convenience.
In Fleming's world, a local festival is not an indulgence, it's an economic and social necessity. A song shared across generations is as vital as any spreadsheet.
His book, structured as a sprawling dictionary, touches on everything from carnival to collapse, from energy descent to conviviality, all cross-referenced in loops of meaning that reward the curious and the unhurried. It's not a manual, it's a conversation, one that assumes the reader is not just a brain with a credit card, but a citizen, neighbour and steward of culture.
For those in leadership today, whether in public institutions, private enterprise or community organizations, Fleming's ideas land as both a challenge and a balm.
The challenge is plain: the model we've been taught to lead within, the one that prizes scale, growth and efficiency above all, is unlikely to hold. Not because the ideas are bad, but because they are incomplete. As the systems we rely on (energy, environment, food, and labour) begin to fray under pressure, leadership will demand more than better KPIs. It will require soul.
The balm is this: we already know what to do. The knowledge is not new; it's old. It sits around kitchen tables and lives in language and story. It's found in the patience of teaching a skill by hand, in the integrity of fixing instead of replacing and in the joy of a potluck that feeds more than hunger. This is not anti-technology or anti-modern, it's post-hurry, post-extraction and deeply pro-human.
In the lean economy, wealth is not defined by accumulation, but by the capacity to sustain and regenerate life. It's a view that doesn't deny hardship (Fleming fully expected the future would be harder than the present), but insists richness is still available, especially when we let go of the idea that life must always be getting faster, bigger, richer in the narrowest sense of the word.
This can feel far away from the practical pressures of today's leadership. We are asked to deliver, to compete, to anticipate disruption, to do more with less. But Fleming offers a longer view — one where leadership is not only about steering the ship, but about asking where the ship is going, who built it and whether it's time to stop sailing and put down roots instead.
He doesn't write in slogans or 10-step frameworks. You won't find a TED Talk version of Lean Logic. What you will find, if you let the book's language settle into you, is a strange comfort; the sense everything you hoped leadership could mean — integrity, care, humility, creativity — still has a place. More than that, it may soon be the only kind of leadership that works.
In a culture obsessed with novelty and scale, Fleming's insistence on tradition and locality can feel out of step. But there's a growing fatigue with the cult of optimization. More leaders are asking what happens after growth? What lies beyond the linear career path and how to foster belonging in places hollowed out by busyness?
Fleming never claimed to have all the answers. What he did have, and what Lean Logic offers, is a framework for noticing. Noticing what sustains us. What brings joy. What rituals still matter. What relationships endure. For leaders, that's a quiet invitation: to pay more attention to the human ecology of our teams, our communities, our organizations.
Perhaps prosperity, then, is not what we've been told. Perhaps it's not about having more, but about being rooted, connected and trusted. Perhaps it's about the slow, reciprocal dance between people and place. And perhaps leadership is not about moving the needle, but about helping others remember what matters and making space for it to grow again.
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Fleming's ideas may be counterintuitive, but for those weary of chasing the wind, his lean economy may offer something sturdier. A slower pace. A deeper rhythm. A reminder we are, after all, cultural beings — not units of productivity, but citizens of a shared and beautiful world.
Tory McNally, CPHR, BSc., vice-president,
professional services, is a human resource consultant,
radio personality and problem solver.
She can be reached at [e-mail]