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.

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.

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.