Darryl Kanouse
Head of Product & AI/ML, Data Science & Engineering @ Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Viability Architect @ The Autogenic Realist | Writer
Redondo Beach, California, United States
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Darryl Kanouse is a senior leader in enterprise-scale data science, AI/ML, and analytics product development, delivering measurable impact at global organizations including AWS, Amazon, Canva, and Activision. Over two decades, he has built and scaled data systems and capabilities that enable large, complex organizations to make better decisions, optimize performance, and operate with precision at scale.
In recent years, Darryl has evolved his work in systems thinking to focus on the structural foundations of organizational success. As a Viability Architect, he identifies and addresses the underlying causes of dysfunction: misaligned feedback loops, boundary ambiguity, and resource allocation failures. His systems-level approach helps executive teams move beyond surface-level fixes to implement durable, high-leverage structural change.
Throughout his career, Darryl has built cross-functional teams that bridge engineering, product, analytics, and business strategy, focusing on structural alignment over strict process. He is a systems thinker with a pragmatic lens, who can translate complex technical concepts into clear business value. His leadership style combines strategic clarity with operational depth, enabling organizations not only to adopt advanced technologies but to align them with scalable, outcome-driven execution.
Area of Expertise
Topics
When AI Can Do Your Job: The Tech Leader's Path from Crisis to Purpose
As AI transforms not just our workforces but the very nature of leadership, tech executives face a profound question: What makes human leadership valuable when AI can outperform us at strategy, analysis, and even creativity?
This interactive session introduces Autogenic Realism: a practical framework that reveals how meaning and purpose emerge from our capacity to navigate constraints, build coherent systems, and experience vitality through real challenges, not from our job titles or traditional functions.
CTOs and tech leaders will discover:
- Why human purpose transcends organizational roles and KPIs
- How to build teams that find meaning through navigating real constraints, not defending functions
- Concrete tools for measuring and fostering organizational vitality beyond performance metrics
- A framework for leading when traditional executive functions become automated
Perfect for tech leaders asking: "How do I lead when AI can do my job?" and "How do we maintain human vitality in increasingly automated organizations?"
Key Themes:
The Executive Identity Crisis
- As AI automates strategic decision-making and pattern recognition, even C-suite roles face existential questions
- Tech leaders are experiencing the same purpose crisis they're implementing for others
- The need to redefine leadership value beyond operational functions
From Performance Metrics to Vitality Metrics
- Moving beyond traditional KPIs to measure organizational health through vitality and adaptability
- How leaders can build resilient teams when traditional performance measures become obsolete
- Concrete tools for assessing systemic coherence and developmental momentum
Leading Through Constraint
- How navigating real limitations creates more meaningful leadership than optimizing for efficiency
- The difference between managing systems and fostering vitality in teams
- Practical frameworks for helping teams find purpose when their traditional functions are automated
Systemic Viability in Tech Organizations
- How to build organizations that maintain coherence as AI transforms every function
- Moving from disruption-focused leadership to viability-focused leadership
- Creating environments where human purpose emerges from navigating constraints rather than job descriptions
The Vitality Signal: How Subjective Experience Guides Architectural Decisions When Analysis Reaches
Every architect faces moments where multiple technically viable solutions promise equal business value. Should we build a monolithic platform optimized for reliability or a microservices architecture optimized for innovation? Should we prioritize developer experience or operational excellence? When financial models, risk assessments, and technical evaluations all show viable paths, how do we choose?
This talk introduces a counterintuitive but practical approach: using your team's subjective experience of energy and coherence as legitimate data for architectural decisions. Drawing from real-world case studies, we'll explore how to recognize when you've hit the limits of analytical decision-making and need a different navigation tool.
You'll learn:
- How to distinguish between problems that need more analysis and choices that require selecting between fundamentally different theories of value
- Why team energy patterns (what genuinely excites vs. depletes your developers) predict sustainable execution better than many metrics
- A practical framework for testing architectural choices through small experiments that measure both traditional KPIs and vitality indicators
- How to bridge from an energizing vision to viable implementation without losing what made the choice compelling
This session is for architects and technical leaders who've noticed that their most successful projects weren't always the most "optimal" on paper—they were the ones that aligned with their team's deepest capabilities. You'll leave with concrete tools for making architectural decisions that generate sustainable business value by aligning technical choices with organizational vitality.
Format: 45-minute presentation with 5-minute Q&A
Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Target Audience: Software architects, technical leads, CTOs, and engineering managers facing strategic architectural decisions
The Metrics Trap: When Measurement Distorts What It Aims to Improve
Organizations invest billions in data infrastructure and analytics, yet measurement systems often distort the very outcomes they aim to improve. This presentation reveals how metrics create structural dysfunction through four predictable patterns: proxy displacement (when indicators replace actual goals), feedback narrowing (when unmeasured dimensions atrophy), temporal compression (when short-term metrics override long-term viability), and strategic adaptation (when systems game metrics rather than improve performance).
Drawing from research across healthcare, education, and corporate sectors, I'll demonstrate how these patterns manifest in data-driven organizations. More importantly, I'll provide three implementable alternatives that maintain measurement's benefits while reducing distortion:
1. Feedback Diversification: Creating multi-channel feedback systems that capture qualitative signals alongside quantitative metrics
2. Adaptive Measurement: Building metrics that evolve in response to observed gaming and displacement
3. Structural Alignment: Separating measurement from immediate resource allocation to reduce optimization pressure
Attendees will learn to recognize early warning signs of metric dysfunction in their organizations and implement specific interventions at team, department, and enterprise levels. I'll share concrete examples from companies like Spotify, Adobe, and Kaiser Permanente that successfully transformed their measurement approaches.
Position measurement as a component within complex adaptive systems rather than the system itself. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for building measurement systems that enhance rather than distort organizational performance.
Key Takeaways
* Diagnostic Framework: Learn to identify the four patterns of metric dysfunction before they degrade system performance
* Implementation Toolkit: Gain specific techniques for feedback diversification, adaptive measurement, and structural alignment
* Transition Strategies: Understand how to overcome institutional dependencies, technical limitations, and cultural resistance when transforming measurement approaches
* Cross-Scale Application: Apply solutions from individual contributor level through enterprise-wide systems
Finding Purpose Beyond Performance: Building Human Vitality in the Age of AI
As AI transforms the workplace, many face an existential question: What makes us meaningful when machines outperform us? This interactive workshop reveals how human purpose transcends job titles and professional functions. Using Autogenic Realism's practical framework, participants will discover that meaning emerges from our capacity to navigate constraints creatively, build coherent systems, and experience vitality—capabilities uniquely human. Join us to develop concrete tools for constructing lasting purpose in an automated world.
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