Sense & Signal: Leading Through Sensemaking Daniel Tarker and Jodah Jensen

In this episode of the Sense & Signal Leadership & Sensemaking podcast, co-host Dan Tarker delves into how non-teleological thinking can help leaders navigate the metacrisis. He spends time defining what the meta crisis is, investigating the concept of moloch as defined in the Bible and Allen Ginsburg's poem Howl, and how these concepts inform our response to global crises like the war between Israel and Hamas. He then provides a history of John Steinbeck and Ed Rickett's trip on the Western Flyer that resulted in the book "The Log From the Sea of Cortez" and the 14th chapter where they present their ideas on non-teleological thinking. After defining non-teleological thinking, he connects it back to the metacrisis and complexity theory to begin to lay a foundation for non-teleological thinking as a sense making tool in our complex times.


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Joe Gow has been fired as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse after the Board of Regents learned that he and his wife Carmen Wilson had been publishing pornographic content on OnlyFans and PornHub. In this micro episode of the Sense & Signal leadership and sensemaking podcast, Dan recaps the Joe Gow pornography scandal, discusses other scandals Joe Gow and his wife Carmen Wilson have been involved with, considers the role of a college chancellor in the board of regents decision to fire him, explores issues around freedom of speech especially in regards to matters of public concern, and fumes about how much time this enterprise must have taken Joe Gow to work on. He also provides a brief review of Joe Gow and Carmen Wilson’s cringy cooking with porn stars YouTube show.


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Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is going to jail and his cryptocurrency exchange - the largest in the world - is paying 4 billion dollars in fines to the US Justice Department. I’m this episode of the Sense & Signal leadership and sensemaking podcast, Dan explores what leadership lessons we can learn from Changpeng Zhao’s Icarus like fall. Dan reviews the charges against Changpeng Zhao and Binance, assesses Changpeng Zhao’s personality through a dark quadrad lens, and reviews some of the leadership approaches Changpeng Zhao shared on various Binance blog posts. Some of the Binance founders recommendations include keeping meetings short, publicly criticizing employees, shuffling teams at work, not praising employees, and acting ethically - and the irony of the last one isn’t lost. Dan also reviews some of the criminal activities Changpeng Zhao and other Binance management knew was taking place on the Binance exchange including money laundering for criminal and terrorist organizations, dark web transactions, transferring profits from ransomware attacks, and letting individuals and states under US sanctions transfer money. Ultimately, we find ourselves facing a complicated leader in Changpeng Zhao or CZ. Some of his leadership principles were effective in growing the Binance platform into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. But Changpeng Zhao clearly should have listened to his own leadership advice on ethics.


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What is influence leadership and how can leaders use influence to move their teams forward? Is there something we can learn from leader influencers like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and Sam Bankman-Fried? In this micro episode of the Sense & Signal leadership & Sensemaking podcast, Jodah and Dan delve into the definition of influence, discuss how leaders can develop influence by building relationships and trust, explore why knowing your audience is important when trying to influence people, touch on the importance of influence in this age of artificial intelligence and distributed organizations, and consider the importance of emotions when influencing others. They also discuss Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to distinguish between Machavellian type influence versus Lao Tzu’s more invisible influence leadership approach. Finally, they touch on the emergence of social media influencers / organizational leaders such as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Sam Bankman-Fried.


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Sam Altman has been re-hired at Open AI after a Succession level coup attempt by the nonprofit Open AI board. In this micro podcast of the Sense & Signal leadership and sensemaking podcast, Dan and Jodah discuss the implications of this soap opera unfolding at Open AI. What does it mean for the future of artificial intelligence that Sam Altman was restored as CEO of Open AI? What is the future of the nonprofit Open AI board? Is Sam Altman now unstoppable? And what does it signal that Larry Sommers was appointed to the Open AI board? They ultimately determine the future of AI foundation models like ChatGPT will be unchecked without government regulation which will likely post a risk to many jobs and our future economic stability.


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In this micro episode of the Sense & Signal leadership and sensemaking podcast, Jodah and Dan explore the sudden firing of Sam Altman from Open AI, the organization that brought the world ChatGPT. While Dan cheers this move by Open AI, Jodah wants to dig deeper. They discuss two fundamental tensions that may have led to Sam Altman’s firing from Open AI. The first is the governance structure of Open AI. Is it sustainable for them to try to be a mission driven nonprofit and a for profit tech company at the same time? And how will they reconcile the tension between people who want to accelerate getting artificial intelligence products like ChatGPT to the public versus those like Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati who are on the cautious and safety side of the debate. They also discuss whether Open AI’s board may be spooked by a sudden advancement in artificial intelligence, Open AI’s recent Dev Day event as an inflection point, and a possible deal with the Chinese to develop a new AI chip as possible causal factors for Sam Altman’s firing by the Open AI board.


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