Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Logan Yonavjak on Making Smarter People Decisions, Assessing Leader Readiness With AI, and Why Coachability Beats Pedigree Every Time
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Logan Yonavjak (founderready.io), Co-Founder and CEO of Founder Readiness Institute, joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com) to discuss how AI-powered assessment is giving investors, enterprises, and leaders a new window into leadership capacity. Logan explains the concept of vertical development and why it is the theoretical underpinning of Founder Readiness Institute’s work (00:08:35), addresses concerns about AI bias and shares how it can counter traditional human biases, and discusses what she learned from taking her own assessment (00:29:17). Logan makes the case for coachability as the most essential leadership construct (00:27:08) and explains why human leaders in an AI-augmented world will need to hold increasingly more complexity (00:32:42). Recommended Reading: "$100M Leads" by Alex Hormozi. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Logan Janavjak
00:00:05
Speaker
Hey, everyone, Dan here. Welcome to another episode of Forward Looking Leadership. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Logan Janavjak, who is co-founder and CEO of Founder Readiness Institute.
00:00:15
Speaker
Logan, thanks so much for joining us on Forward Looking Leadership.
00:00:20
Speaker
It's great to be here, Dan. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for taking the time. I'm excited to dig right into it.
Entering Leadership Development
00:00:26
Speaker
So the leadership development space is pretty crowded already, and the leadership assessment space seems to be no exception to that. And there's all of these different assessments out there that everyone knows the names of.
00:00:37
Speaker
What is it that really drew you and your co-founder to the leadership assessment space? Yeah, no, it's ah it's a great question. And we like to think of ourselves as more in the leadership development than assessment space. And I think those words are important or the definitions
Background in Finance and Early-stage Investing
00:00:55
Speaker
are important. We started out as more of an assessment company and have realized that our technology has actually has so many different use cases and applications. So I'm excited to dig into that a little bit more. But in terms of my particular story and how I found my co-founder,
00:01:09
Speaker
Benjamin Whitehurst. I started out in the finance world in but and investing world. I've been really passionate about deploying capital into alternatives and real assets. I've worked in private equity and venture capital, and I've also started another company. So I've been in and around early stage investing for a large part of my career.
00:01:30
Speaker
And for me, it's just been a lot of observation of leadership and teams that led me to want to start this company.
Why Business Ideas Fail
00:01:37
Speaker
I've seen a lot of interesting business ideas or fun strategies stall out because the leaders weren't necessarily ready for the roles that they were undertaking, didn't have all the skills and capacity required to succeed.
00:01:52
Speaker
And I've had a longstanding interest personally in Carl Jung. at the MBTI. And so I've used my MBTI. I'm an INFJ, and I've used that analysis on myself for
Partnership with Benjamin Whitehurst
00:02:05
Speaker
many years. So I'm familiar with leadership assessments. And then my co-founder a psychologist and data scientist. We met probably four or five years ago now.
00:02:14
Speaker
And when he was coming out of his MBA program most recently, I pitched him on this idea of could we use an assessment tool to help venture capitalists make better decisions on who they deploy capital to. um So that's kind of the the long slash short story, but we're coming together with these different skills, me from investing and him more from the the psychology, data science and MBA perspective.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great backstory and a kind of a cool approach to get into the, you know, the development from the perspective of having been in that VC seat and having seen, you know, what it's like to be a founder yourself as well. So yeah, some reality kind of coming into the mix here, I think, in a world that can be really kind of esoteric and academic and all of that. Yes, is. Also being able to bring that in.
00:03:01
Speaker
And that's one of the things i like I like that you said esoteric. I think a lot of people, it takes a bit to understand what's actually being uncovered in terms of the patterns that we're looking at through our tools and and our platform. So it's it's been a bit of an educational journey, I think, for people who are are used to, or maybe they haven't been exposed to leadership assessments at all, or they haven't really gone through coaching or, you know, people come from a wide range of backgrounds. So anyway, we can get into some more of that, but it's been ah an interesting journey in terms of educating the market as well.
Innovative Assessment Tools and AI's Role
00:03:35
Speaker
What is it that distinguishes Founder Readiness Institute and your your various assessments and various other services and and tools like that from what was already out there? Like, why not just say, use the MBTI or something?
00:03:49
Speaker
A couple things. One is that we are not measuring personality traits or communication styles primarily where this is not a self-reported a multiple choice or forced choice answer process, which is typically how assessments are are done. And what we're doing is we're assessing somebody's capacity to lead. And what that means is it's bringing this concept of vertical development, which is based on adult vertical development theory. It's about 30 plus years of academic research. um
00:04:20
Speaker
And it really looks at someone's ability to think, behave and act under complexity over time with kind of increasing levels of complexity and variability and volatility and pressure.
00:04:34
Speaker
And so we designed this specifically for high-pressure roles and to see how someone articulates their ability to basically do that over time. So it's got a dimension of momentum. Like this person is we're predicting that this person is at this level and they can improve it, but they're likely going to go here next. like there's sort of an incremental growth trajectory to, and and most assessments don't add that dimension of time. They're not measuring at intervals typically, or leadership development professionals aren't implementing at intervals. So yeah, that's one of kind of two of the main reasons. And AI is just enabling us to We've trained AI to basically look at these patterns in transcript data. And so we can, the the volume at which we can evaluate people has gone up just exponentially.
00:05:28
Speaker
It's really fascinating. Can you walk us through this really tangibly? Like, what does this what does this whole process look like for being implemented and what what do the outputs look like? Yeah. So we have two pathways to getting the information we need. One is you can sit down and take our form. We have formal assessments you can take. You can sit down in front of a camera for 45 minutes or so and answer open-ended and scenario-based questions. We designed it that way because it's more difficult to game when you're talking into a camera and you're speaking about yourself in an unstructured fashion. You have to find the way to answer the questions in two to five minutes. um There's really no right or wrong answer per se. There's no way to know really what we're looking for except for the construct labels.
00:06:16
Speaker
Or we can take transcript data from a podcast. Like all of your podcasts, we could analyze um your leadership capacity from those podcasts. interesting um So we just need transcript data, enough of it to look at the same patterns.
00:06:30
Speaker
You can think about it as in like quantitative linguistics. So we're taking sentence structure and we're looking for these patterns. markers that you are able to process information in in a complex way and and under pressure. And we look at six dimensions right now. We can change what those are, but currently we're looking at coachability, emotional resilience, how you manage teams, how and how you pivot, like how you make decisions quickly, um and strategic complexity. And I'm forgetting the last one at the moment. But yeah, so we have six total. And um basically, we can what we're what we're giving you is an output of all the scores in those six dimensions. And then we can do a coaching report, which basically highlights here are the main like three things you can work on right now that would improve these capacities.
00:07:22
Speaker
That's really, it's it's again, just really interesting and totally different from that forced choice kind of mechanism that that you were mentioning. So it's really cool. And you're saying this is newly possible because to do at scale because of AI, right?
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we really saw the wave coming with AI and, you know, basically went ahead of the curve, I would say. i know others are probably tinkering with this, but in terms of training, we have thousands of pages of scoring manuals that we've, like humans, have developed alongside ai We've digested thousands of research reports looking at the directional predictive capabilities of like these constructs in predicting startup outcomes. And so we've just done a lot of work, analytical work to be able to train AI. Like you I wouldn't recommend anyone go to chat GBT right now and say, what's my, you know, coachability score based on like call transcripts. It's just not able to do the analysis because has I haven't been trained to do that.
00:08:21
Speaker
And why vertical development? So we've had previous guests who've talked about vertical development, so some listeners will probably be somewhat familiar with it. Can you give a ah bit of an explanation of what vertical development is and then why this is underpinning this assessment and all of your work?
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, originally going in, this is my co-founder's deep expertise. like He's been studying vertical development for 25 years, and he he's the one who recommended it as as the kind of the basis of the assessment. He's familiar. He's encyclopedic in his knowledge of all the assessments and who's you know the research underpinning all of them. So if you want to have him on, he'd be a great kind of deep dive on on this front.
00:09:00
Speaker
But It's really this developmental capacity piece that really underpins vertical development in the sense that it shows like a maturity and momentum of a a person's development over time.
00:09:13
Speaker
And by placing someone along a trajectory, you're sort of able to see a roadmap of their ability to grow and evolve their thinking and behaviors. And so it adds this dimensionality that most people Most assessment tools are looking at the skills, like adding more skills, like, you know, how can you be a better listener or how can you communicate in a different, you know, nonviolent communication? Those are all important. And there are clusters of skills associated with different levels of development. And so we're not negating like the need to have both horizontal and vertical. We just felt that the verticality piece was not present in a lot of the assessment tools.
00:09:53
Speaker
How is the momentum playing into this? I know you've usedve i've talked about this a little bit. Is this basically kind of potential and trajectory
Vertical Development and AI Bias
00:10:01
Speaker
coming together? Is this something different? Yeah, it's, i mean, think about it as like, here you are at this level, you're likely going to stay here unless there's some intervening force or you make a decision to change or people tend to grow at like an average pace of, you know, they'll go one level up in about 10 years if they don't do any intervention. So, you know, I think we experienced this anecdotally in our lives. Like we all know people that are sort of stuck in, you
00:10:31
Speaker
that's that's kind of a generic way to put it, but where someone's just sort of, they've been in the same patterns for a long time and it seems like, you know, you've aged about five to 10 years and you're still kind of hanging out here. Well, they're probably...
00:10:46
Speaker
not They've not received coaching. Maybe they're not seeking outside counsel. Nothing in their lives has really provoked them to have like ah an insight. So you know people can kind of hang out at a certain level for a while. That's why we advocate learning about these patterns and setting the baseline so you can understand, okay, well, if I do want to get to this next level or my job's demanding it, this is how I can actually progress. Most assessments don't show you a roadmap of development like that.
00:11:16
Speaker
So you talk about you know this this tool being able to combat some of these well-known biases of confirmation bias and affinity bias. How do you think about the other side of this, of any sort of bias that this could introduce having you know whatever the AI training data set is, for example? Or you know is this going to be missing somebody who might not fit into this kind of mold of leadership? I can see this being some concerns somebody might have about either this being you know used with them or bring this into their organization. How do you think about that kind of flip side of bias on this?
00:11:52
Speaker
Well, there's so many different dimensions I'd love to speak about here. I mean, one is that the best alternative leadership decision-making process right now is humans. And everyone comes with their own bias, some of which you may or may not understand. So when you're applying for a job or...
00:12:11
Speaker
going up for a promotion or going up for a venture capital investment, you don't really know what the person across the table from you is thinking or their bias. um And they do exist, right? Some people are a lot more objective than others, but we all have bias seep in. And things like confirmation bias, verbal acuity, charisma, these things all influence us. So that's one thing I always say to people out of the gate, like your best alternative is you're being judged and you don't know how.
00:12:39
Speaker
What the AI at least is at the very least is introducing as at least you know what its biases are. Like you can ask it to state its biases or you can look at a negative space analysis and say, OK, well, you ran this analysis. What is missing in your analysis that you might not be aware of? Like there's ways you can actually talk to AI about its own bias in an objective way, which is really powerful.
00:13:05
Speaker
And what we're saying with these tools is we always need to see it as a blended solution. Like we wouldn't recommend and you just have an AI make a decision. it would need to be an augmented layer of information that you're you're threading together so that it's like you're using the AI as another perspective.
00:13:24
Speaker
And another layer of the AI that's really exciting is you can ask it to play different roles, as in you can ask it to be trained as a different kind of personality type, if you will, or have a different approach to evaluating a person. So you can have like five different AIs looking at the same data. So that's another way you can kind of cross train and prevent some layers of bias of just one perspective of AI. So I think there's just some really exciting ways to train AI. And I don't know that we can ever get away from any bias at all. But I do think by looking at transcript data and not necessarily even knowing the person's name, age, ah race, ethnicity, you know, neurodiversity factors, like, you can really do a lot to scrub the process from as much bias as you can. No, it's a really interesting perspective of, you know, what is the alternative, right? And it's it's currently extremely biased people, right? And it's like it's another another factor to bring into this and hardens to hear that it's not just like, okay, replace all of your decision making with something like We would never advocate
Strategy for Systemic Change
00:14:32
Speaker
that. mean,
00:14:33
Speaker
So I think that it's this really interesting augmented layer of insight. Like I'm just happy to have its perspective, but I ultimately need to rely on, you know, myself and the cues that I'm getting as well. I mean, there's a reason that, you know, people are in positions of of leadership and they have decades often of experience and pattern recognition. We don't want to discount the human experience.
00:14:59
Speaker
element. It's just that if you just take the venture capital deployment factor, I know this gets thrown around a lot, but the fact that two to 3% of investment are going towards minorities or women-led companies, there's a lot of reasons for that, right? that Women and minorities might not be applying for a lot of funding. There might be all sorts of like factors there, but it's still a very small amount. And I do think that the venture capital industry is largely is largely led by you know older, typically male, white males. And so they come with their own bias of of what's going to be a successful leader. And so just it's it's an area where we can disrupt thinking and at least offer a more diverse perspective. And that that makes me excited.
00:15:46
Speaker
Can you walk us through these different use case pillars? I'm not sure how you would internally refer to them, but there's the the VC one, the more like enterprise one and any other kind of use cases that you have for those. Yeah, well, I'm a i'm a very a systems oriented thinker and so is my so is my business partner. so we think a lot about like where can we influence systems change? And I started out in the venture capital. My hypothesis was that it would be a better way to make decisions in venture capital because ultimately the way innovation is funded is primarily through venture capital. And because we're seeing these low rates of minorities, women, and people of color, et cetera, I think there's just that that alone is one bias. And it could be preventing all sorts of interesting innovation outcomes, not to mention that nine out of 10 companies are what fail you know that are invested in from a venture capital perspective. There's just all these layers of of distortion in a sense. And can we use better people analytics to improve
00:16:47
Speaker
company outcomes and therefore improve innovation outcomes. And so that's why I started there. We ended up moving towards you know LPs because they have they can write bigger checks and they have more influence over VCs. And so that was a system kind of systems lever decision. So we have a fund manager evaluation tool as well, hoping that that would be you know will be a a better way to actually influence the venture capital industry. And family offices, et cetera, are a good ah source for that.
00:17:16
Speaker
And then the enterprise space, obviously corporations, especially middle market companies already have ah HR systems in place. They might be familiar with assessment tools. So we are targeting them from ah a business go to market strategy. It just makes a lot more sense for us to grow.
00:17:33
Speaker
Does the underlying tools, assessments, all of this kind of stuff change based on the use case or are you seeing that leadership is largely fundamentally the same across these different spaces?
00:17:45
Speaker
That's such a great question. I mean, i think we have hypotheses about that. We we are you know building our data sets all the time, and that's an important factor of this. We want to be able to be like the go-to group that can dial into these different leadership capacities. And we also use other assessment tools, by the way. We have a partnership with a group called Millimatch, and they've been around for over a decade. um And they look at behavioral characteristics. So we're we're not opposed to like like layering in other other information. But I think that it's dependent on the circumstance insofar as some some roles require more pressure than others and some require more systems thinking. And so what we're targeting initially is
00:18:30
Speaker
more executive promotion hires or executive hiring because of this complexity piece. So we're making the assumption that if you're going to continue to get promoted as a professional, especially with AI in the mix now, you need to really be able to manage a lot of complexity and deal with a lot of pressures. Someone who's working at you know And this isn't to diminish any particular role, but if someone's working in you know the plumbing industry or so ah more of a ah blue collar services role, they might not need to juggle massive amounts of complexity or high pressure situations. We probably wouldn't evaluate them in the same way or need them to be as high in their development there. So it definitely depends on the roles, but how we're developing our tools is for specific use cases around more executive hires and promotions.
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah, that makes total sense and the situational kind of approach to it. And you can definitely see how, you know, a startup founder under, you know, getting getting VC funding and under tremendous pressure to make the next kind of unicorn company would be different than somebody who's running a more local services business. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, yeah and we don't need, this is sort of, it's an ecosystem approach. We need all sorts of kinds of people to to work in the world and to make decisions. And to we need people who are earlier in their careers. We need more seasoned professionals. We need people in high pressure situations. So we're kind of targeting the high pressure.
00:19:57
Speaker
and But we can measure all sorts of factors because at the core is our technology, which is analyzing transcript data. And telling telling AI how to do that under different circumstances now that we have the tools is is a lot easier. So that's what that's one of the another differentiating factors I wanted to share about what we can do is we're not just locked into these six constructs. We can measure all sorts of things um now that we have the capacity for AI to analyze these transcripts and see patterns.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah. On this transcript data, could you just again walk us through like what what gets fed into this? Like what what what constitutes a transcript and how does that how does that work? We need enough of a person speaking in telling and talking about themselves to be able to run a material analysis. And the AI will tell you if it has enough information. But in terms of like tactically, we have just a drop. It's sort of like a, you know, when you drag and drop on your computer, you can just drag and drop.
00:20:58
Speaker
As long as the transcripts are say your name or like isolate who's talking, we can run that analysis essentially. So it's, we want to make it as seamless as possible in that you can just drag the transcripts on your computer and then it goes into our process. Obviously there's data privacy issues. We are very careful about that, who hosts the data, what we do with it, how we anonymize it. But then, you know, almost immediately we can get you that first pass. And then usually a human reviews it if we're going to do a readout for someone. And yeah, that's basically, it's pretty simple.
00:21:34
Speaker
no How do you think about the utility of 360 feedback? So I know some assessments that some assessment tools that I've used in the past of, you know, you'll have supervisors, you'll have peers, you'll have subordinates kind of all reporting into something. Do you find that useful, not useful, something worth considering?
00:21:53
Speaker
We're actually working with a group right now to basically run their 360 analysis for that reason that we can, I mean, if we know who's speaking, we can basically flag that as commentary about the person and that will also get analyzed in terms of Creating a more holistic perspective of like, here's what the person says about themselves. Here's what we would rate them along the constructs. And then here's what other people would say about how it real and the the AI will connect the way the person talks about the individual as related to one of the constructs. And so, yeah, that's absolutely something we can do. And I'm very excited about because private equity, for instance, uses a lot of 360s and but it's very onerous to get the information. So and in theory, you can just get that from you can get a lot of that from calls and you can also interview
00:22:46
Speaker
people and ask specific questions in a different way so the AI can see the patterns. One thing we see with 360s is people are nervous about providing like really genuine feedback. So that's why augmenting it with conversations or like team meeting notes, if people are comfortable, that can also kind of mitigate against some of that.
00:23:08
Speaker
it's ah It's a really good point on the, you know, our 360 is actually giving you honest information and can approach like this, do this in a a better way that that gets beyond some of that. Because it's you're right, like some people are not going to be willing to say something negative about somebody who might have positions of power in the organization. Yeah, absolutely. They might be a nice person and don't want to don't want to hurt somebody else in that way, but it's not helpful for their own development too.
00:23:31
Speaker
And often, like the if if people don't have a baseline of understanding of their own leadership capacity, feedback, sometimes they don't know what to do with it you know Just to play devil's advocate, like I think I've received... you know Early in my career, when I knew myself, I didn't know myself as well.
00:23:48
Speaker
I would receive constructive feedback and it's like really helpful, but where do I place it in my own development? Like I don't, nobody ever really gave me a roadmap for like what to do with the information necessarily, unless it was skills-based. So it can be kind of a deep thing for people to get a bunch of feedback from their colleagues and they don't really know how it, how it fits in the mix of what them as a person, their own development. So.
00:24:14
Speaker
And I have a colleague who talks a lot about kind of strategic ignorance on some of this stuff where you'll get you'll get feedback from particular people that will be on a very kind of parochial area that they really care a lot about. But it's probably not what you need to level up to this next stage of development. Right. And it's like, OK, this person just cares a whole heck of a lot about this. This one kind of an area or they have some other alternative motives in providing this. And it's like not all feedback is created equally.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. That's a really, yeah, we will sometimes go off on, on tangents about things that they care about, but that's not necessarily the most constructive for the individual. So yeah, no, this is all, this is all I think leveling up understanding of leadership. You know, I think this is all like creating more.
00:24:59
Speaker
One of the things I love about our reports is it talks about what's missing. Yeah. So like it talks about what the person doesn't mention. Like it says, oh, this person said this and this and this, and this relates to their development here. But it also says, you know, of note, they didn't mention any of this. They didn't talk about how they felt around their colleagues. They didn't talk about any somatic awareness. They didn't talk about other people's perspectives, you know. And so those negative space analyses are really powerful in knowing what someone isn't doing.
00:25:29
Speaker
It's fascinating again of like what's not even on your radar and yeah and how does that factor into things? Yeah. And I guess with some of the more traditional ones, it would prompt you to talk about those, but this one wouldn't, right? So you would you actually be able to see like what is what is completely missing from what they're thinking.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, because it's open-ended and it's it's sort of like it's showing the internal map of where someone's headspace goes when they're under a little bit of pressure and they have to answer a question. It's like there are grooves in our mind. you know like We've literally built these habitual patterns of how we think and and behave about or think about ourselves and tell stories. And so when you're kind of a little bit under the gun like, oh, I have to answer this question, you kind of revert back to like where you typically sit.
00:26:12
Speaker
And again, there might be aspirational days where you're at a a level above where you typically are. And we account for that where we say, this is you on a bad day. This is you on a great day. Here's your growth edge. Because we know like you're not always going to be your best in, you know, when you're on these calls or when you're doing the assessment. But I think it's it's it sort of gets at the general state of play How do you think about this whole debate around strengths-based leadership versus this kind of like gap analysis?
Focus on Strengths vs Well-rounded Approach
00:26:42
Speaker
There's this whole idea of, you know, do we want to develop well-rounded leaders, so to speak, or is the spiky leader also something worth considering? i know a lot of people think about this with
00:26:53
Speaker
you know, is the right feedback to someone like, let's say a Steve Jobs or something that you need to be improving all these different areas of leadership? Or is it enough that you can do this one or two things exceptionally well, and that's going to carry the day?
00:27:08
Speaker
I've heard so many different perspectives on this. I have my own now at this point. I feel I wanted to say two things about this because this is the question I really, i think, has the most ah diverse perspective. Like I've heard some people, some coaches or mentors in my life be like, oh, you need to work on things that are difficult for you and and get well-rounded. And other people are like, no, just focus on the things you're really good at. And my intuition has always been build a team, focus on what you're good at.
00:27:35
Speaker
and augment with the team like to make sure that you can optimize where you can spend your time. That being said, i do think that coachability is one of the most important constructs that a person can bring to the table because if you're not coachable, then you're really so you have a fixed mindset and you're not able to your identity is not very flexible in so far as like sometimes when you do have to push yourself a little bit in a direction you're not comfortable with or you need to realize you're not good at something and bring someone else on. That is such a foundational so ability to like be coachable and be flexible. And that I think if that's not present, that's really challenging.
00:28:18
Speaker
Do you think that's something that can be taught, that can be grown over time? Or is that kind of inherent and in who you are by the time you're in professional life? You know, I've I've run into some people who are very have a very fixed mentality. I think there's always somebody who can reach them, you know, like.
00:28:35
Speaker
Or if something really material happens, like a big health scare or they lose ah a family member or a friend, you know, something really jarring can often shake people from that. But if someone's really fixed in their perspective, I have found it's pretty challenging to like move them just in, you know, conversations and things like that. So I really do look for coachability as one of the most important factors in whether I want to work for with someone or If I were to deploy capital, that's what one of the main things I'd want to know. Have you used your own product on on yourselves as co-founders? And how have you changed as leaders as a result of that?
00:29:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, i am so grateful I've taken this. I want to take it again, actually, now that I know more about about it. when When we first started the company, it's it's interesting how you can have an intellectual understanding of something and then go through it. And and so I, you know, it's interesting. I, I scored fairly high on all of the constructs, but not as high as I thought, honestly, especially with a I'm ah a big systems thinker and I always pride myself in being able to hold a lot of complexity and do that objectively. One of the things that came out from my
00:29:52
Speaker
report is that I don't reference the systems or the frameworks that I'm referring to enough in my conversation. So sometimes people can feel my teammates can feel lost in my decision making and like how I arrived at a decision and what what perspectives I'm holding. And so I've tried to then take that and just be more explicit about how I arrived at a decision and like what pathway I took and what frameworks I'm referencing and being more almost quantitative in my in my speaking about like what's affecting the business, for instance. So I don't know if that makes sense, but I making sure that I'm referencing all the different patterns I'm seeing explicitly.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, making that implicit explicit, kind of if you're referring to a a framework that's really important for you. i'm I'm thinking about this a lot myself now of when I'm working with new people on my team or even different coaching clients of like, I have all of these different frameworks that I've kind of like blended and like developed and furthered over time. And it's it's the tough ask to ask somebody else to imagine what those things Could be. So i'm really glad you said that of like, okay, here's here's what I'm actually basing this off of. And here's the kind of like foundational framework I'm using.
00:31:11
Speaker
Well, there's a ah dimension of like, I think I have a ah need for speed. I know that sounds silly to say, but our culture is moving at an ever, it feels like an ever increasing pace. And when someone news brought on or when you're in sales or when you're even having these conversations, you have to remember that like,
00:31:30
Speaker
level set where your perspectives are to be able to really have a meaningful conversation. And so there's education involved and you have to slow down to speed up sometimes. And i think just having the patience to really like be in a space with someone and realize where they're coming from and have to maybe repeat yourself a hundred times and to get a point across. It's just, I think those are nuances that have really emerged from ah Not only just being out front in sales and partnership development, but also the feedback I got from the assessment.
00:32:05
Speaker
Like, just don't try not to like have speed be the main objective of speed and efficiency, because it's often not as efficient as you think to try to like move fast.
00:32:16
Speaker
youre You have a company that's on the cutting edge in a lot of ways of AI in the workplace. And it seems to me that you're still betting on people being the most important factor here for organizational success.
00:32:31
Speaker
Can you walk me through your latest thing? I know nobody knows the answer to this, but what what do you think is going to happen as a i further develops and further enters into the workforce? Yeah. Well, that's partly why we're focusing on you know the executives piece, because just from a pragmatic perspective, I think like any major new technological advancement, I think the answer will lie somewhere in the middle. you know like We're seeing this, yeah, there's extreme predictions of, oh there's going to be like... you know
00:33:02
Speaker
10x efficiency factors in you know coding and things like that we won't even need most coders anymore you know other on the other side people are like well humans are still relevant for the next 10 years and xyz i i think it's just we don't know and it's going to shake out but it's probably going to be somewhere where we're hybridizing between the humans and the ai decision makers um And I don't feel like I know enough about how the pace of advancement with a lot of the AI tools to really be predictive in terms of like timelines, which I know isn't that useful. But I feel like what we're what we're trying to solve for as a company is the people who do remain in positions of leadership who are working with AI, they need to be at a high level of ability to hold complexity and pressure. So that leadership capacity and readiness is kind of more important than ever. If people are, if companies are putting limited resources into hiring and promoting people and using AI for a lot more, those that are going to be managing AI need to be, we need to assess them for their abilities there. So that's where we're positioning ourselves as a company from like a pragmatic perspective.
00:34:12
Speaker
That makes a ton of sense. And it's all of these factors that have been part of executive leadership are just going to get magnified as as all of this capacity increases for yeah organizations. Yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
That's a great question. I mean, what what do you think? You know, i have I have no idea where this is going to go. I mean, there's you're you're you know articulating these points both, right? It's like, you know, is is everyone going to lose their jobs basically and it's going to be an entire world and companies run by AI or is it going to be kind of nothing and this is all overhyped? And I personally think about the same thing as you, that it's going to be ah a big efficiency boost and a big capacity boost, but that it's still going to be kind of the the leaders are still going to be what what matters in organizations and being able to get above that average level of, you know, everything will be able to be done kind of in a mediocre way. And it's, can you do things that are exceptional, that drive exceptional value? And if you can't, then I think
00:35:11
Speaker
you know, I'm really worried for all of these companies and people who are kind of middling and doing like average work. And I think it's either going to be kind of the most efficient or the best. And there's going be very little in between.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and it's also there's this dimension of like in in the past, you know, we when different efficiency technologies have come online, whether it's the smartphone or just a variety of other tools, it's people often find new new work to focus on. Like it's not like people, you know, there's this predictive, like almost sci-fi perspective where like,
00:35:47
Speaker
everything's going to be so automated that nobody has to do any work. But I find that people just fill the gaps with doing more, more kinds of work or adding in new tools or trying out new, new things. So yeah, I don't know. i think that what we've seen in the past, at least, is that it just makes more space to do even more stuff.
00:36:06
Speaker
I think that's so right. And i mean, i I think about this a lot where we already have spaces where automation can do things equally as well, if not better. And, you know, everyone, everyone can get a multi-thousand dollar coffee machine that does every single thing that the local coffee shop can do. But there's still something nice about human interaction. And I think and there's that, yeah us right? Like you can, you can already get a cocktail making machine, but people are still going out to bars and like, that's not changing.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There is this element of like, just enjoying being with people. And, you know, I find that with some of these podcast interviews I've done, it's like, I, you know, at home, I'm, I'm at my home office a lot and I'm, I am using AI and I'm getting a lot of the outputs and it's, it's really exciting to see the, the way that it's able to process information so quickly for me. But then I crave talking to my co-founder or getting on a podcast or going to a conference because I want to hear what people have to say and just hear. Yeah, it's it's it's so important to maintain both. That's why it's a both and. it's i'm excited about
00:37:13
Speaker
I'm excited about that part. So you've done a lot of this in your own life and you have a fascinating career background. um I work with a lot of people in social impact and I think of social impact pretty broadly of not just nonprofits or charities or CSR or things like that. Great, because I'm glad, yes, i can talk about that for a long time. Yes.
00:37:33
Speaker
what What would you say to people who are socially impact-minded and are approaching their career decision-making of, you know, as we look at the kind of state of play of this, where where would you suggest they focus? What kind of frameworks do you use in your own head to think about, like, how can I have ah a life and a career that is impactful?
00:37:55
Speaker
but So first and foremost, I would say understanding yourself is one of the most important foundational pieces. I am not just saying that because I'm of the company I'm running now. I think I've seen a lot of people stall out or have a burnout or...
00:38:11
Speaker
lose directionality because they didn't really know themselves in the beginning and they didn't know what brought them joy. and it's hard to make a lot of great decisions about your career if you don't know yourself very well. So tools like this can really help uncover leadership patterns and maybe areas of weakness and areas of strength that can inform what you do. And i always like to think about Ikigai as like that Japanese term of, you know, what's the world going to pay for? What are you good at? And like, what brings you joy?
00:38:41
Speaker
and And what does the world need? And so that Venn diagram, starting with yourself, you can at least know what your strengths and weaknesses are. And then you can get a sense from the markets and read patterns and talk to people in areas that have interest to you. Like where are careers going in this space? Like if you take, if you did want to do early stage investing, go talk to a bunch of venture capitalists, go look at their bios, go look at what they read and see, like put yourself in that perspective. Do I want to be that person?
00:39:10
Speaker
Do I like what they have to do every day as a as a job? Like really get into the weeds, like become a method actor and pretend that you're a venture capitalist and like put that, you know, wear that hat for a while. And then what is the true like financial viability of of a career? Like,
00:39:29
Speaker
Really, we have more access to data than ever. You can really understand like what the comps are. If you're going to go into an environmental think tank, you're probably if you look at 25 years of income, i didn't understand all this when I started my career, but you're not getting you're getting a bonus and a base salary, but you're not getting equity. You're not getting all these other like incentive structures. for you. So where where are you financially as a person and what do you need to feel robust? Because it's really hard to make an impact if you don't have your financial life in order. And I've seen a lot of people go gung-ho into nonprofit sectors or other social impact opportunities without really having a good financial base. And then they feel they get midway in their career and they're
00:40:16
Speaker
they're they're flailing. There's just all these decisions. I'm being very pragmatic because I don't think people are pragmatic enough about um these decisions. And having an impact in the external world, it comes, in my opinion, second to making sure your own base is covered.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, starting from that position of strength and prosperity and being able to then be generous with your career and and do things in a creative way rather than Like your cup overflowing fast versus trying to lead from an empty cup is just it's a ah I've seen it over and over and it it really doesn't lead to good outcomes. So we need people who are who know themselves, who are who are financially stable and who are resilient emotionally to have an impact in the world, you know.
00:41:03
Speaker
Now, I've very much come to a a similar conclusion of, you know, being doing things that are good for the world starts with having a really sustainable, robust place to to start from. And yeah, there's there's all of these different, you know, you should be kind of martyring yourself for working in in the social impact space. And it's actually kind of the opposite because you can stay in it longer term and you can do bigger and better things. Yeah. Starting from this place have been making financial sense, too.
00:41:29
Speaker
And also, I think when someone's, I use this word conscientious, when someone is in integrity and they do what they say they're going to do and they show up and they're consistent, there's a lot you can do in the world with that. Like people really appreciate when someone's conscientious and you're you're likely going to find a job if you're conscientious. Um, and your reputation is built and people are like, you know, that person said they would do this. They did it. They did it a good quality.
00:41:56
Speaker
You know, they showed up there a person of their word. You'd be surprised like how many flaky, you know, just like all over the place, people I've worked with myself. And it's just like, yeah, you say you're about social impact, but you're not thinking deeply about the impact you're having on me as a professional working with you or like, Yeah, it's not just about these abstract communities or ecosystem impacts far away. It's like impact is where the relational day to day stuff too.
00:42:23
Speaker
So, yeah, it's amazing how in short supply that could be too. it's I know. I'm just really passionate about this subject. I am glad you brought it up because it's, I used to say, you know, this and this and this skill and now it's like, well, start with yourself.
00:42:38
Speaker
So, yeah. Yeah, I'm glad the kind of skills only movement is is seeming to to be be recognized as like, OK, this is pretty limiting. And, you know, there's only so far that you can try to map out every single potential skill that a ah job is going to need. And then that be the some of the parts. There's like an underlying character to it that's needed. You mentioned integrity. And I think it's so right of who you are as a leader is more important than even the skills because these can be learned and relearned.
00:43:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, i've had I've had people give me opportunities that arguably like from a skills perspective, I didn't necessarily have them yet, but I showed up with what I felt at least at the time was a lot of these capacities of leadership. And I think that those for the mature people that interviewed me that shine through and they saw something in my capacity. Yeah. And I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know to label it that. But I think that's what was being evaluated by some of those people. And I thank them profusely when I see them or I send them thanks right now. But it's like they saw something in me that I didn't even know I was presenting. But at the end of the day, that's what got me the job rather than, you know, was I an amazing Excel analyst? And now we don't even really need Excel anymore. So just goes to show you. Depends on the timing, but...
00:43:57
Speaker
That's all right. That's all right. So how do you how do you keep current? Kind of what what what books, what resources of any kind doesn't necessarily have to be books? do you find yourself referencing, going back to learning from, any of that kind of thing?
00:44:11
Speaker
Well, I've been steeped in a variety of different things for my company these days. So I i guess I'll throw out like Alex Harmozy. Harmozy has been an interesting resource for like developing lead magnets and sales strategies and cold outreach, things like that. So that's kind of a practical book. I listen to Scott Galloway a lot on podcasts. He just has a really...
00:44:32
Speaker
interesting perspective on reading the markets and political dynamics that I find really helpful in just like following what's going on and keeping current in the world. But he also has a lot of personal recommendations on how he invests and things like that.
00:44:47
Speaker
I love This Jungian Life, which is a podcast about Jungian analysis, because as I mentioned, I'm ah i a huge Jungian fan. So sometimes I listen to that from a storytelling and like archetypal wisdom perspective. So yeah, those are kind of three that i'm i'm I go back to regularly in terms of resources. of The Alex Hermosi is a little more more recent, but I think it's good to, at least from a foundational, like how I ingest information, i like to read a little bit of the news. i so actually keep up with a lot of colleagues on LinkedIn and I just listen to what they have to say related to my work in terms of
00:45:25
Speaker
like following certain people on LinkedIn. And then sometimes, yeah, the podcasts, I'll just kind of hone in on one or two to get something different, different perspective. Yeah. All great recs. And we'll definitely link to those in the show notes so people can check them out. What is it about Jungian psychology that keeps drawing you back in?
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah, i I feel like Jung had a really, he was able to distill patterns in how people take in information and how they make decisions that I find really profound in the sense that he articulated that there's sensing types and intuitive types. So people tend to take in information based on more detailed information and what has been and like more concrete information about things.
00:46:13
Speaker
you know how things are and how they have been in tradition versus the intuitive types, which are a lot more big picture patterns and possibilities and and future state.
00:46:25
Speaker
And those are profound differences that I've noticed between people in terms of how you take in information then how people make decisions tends to be more logical, rational, objective versus relational and human and feeling and emotional or emotion oriented. And so that does seem to be a consistent theme among people that I've noticed as well. And so he just illuminated those patterns for me in a way that nobody else did. And I think he's He was ahead of his time and just a great mystic in many ways. He has so much more than just, you know, the m b what people know as the MBTI. he
00:47:02
Speaker
He sat in his, I don't know what room in his house, but he he had this room that he would go to and he perceived all of these mystical archetypal patterns that he put down in this thing called the Red Book. And it's a bunch of paintings of just his unconscious mind sending him patterns. And he just, he was open enough to kind of delve into that. And I think he had a lot of courage to go places in the mind that most people aren't willing to go.
00:47:28
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that. Logan, how can people follow along with you, follow along with Founder Readiness Institute and get in touch if they'd like? Yeah, absolutely. So we're at founderready.io. That's www.founderready.io. And then anyone can send me an email, logan at founderrl.com.
00:47:47
Speaker
Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom and learning from your career and from building this company and would encourage people to follow along and and reach out if they'd like.
00:47:58
Speaker
Thank you so much, Dan. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much, Logan.