Leadership Capacity Under Pressure: Logan Yanovac on Culture, Process & Founder Readiness

What happens when leadership capacity becomes the limiting factor in growth?

In this episode of Leadership Levers, Logan Yanovac, CEO and co-founder of the Founder Readiness Institute, shares how gaps in leadership development — not strategy — are often the root cause of underperformance in both startups and middle-market companies. 

Drawing from a career in private equity, venture capital, and impact investing, Logan explains why most organizations fail to measure what matters most: a leader’s ability to manage complexity, pressure, and decision-making over time.

As she built her own company, Logan encountered this challenge firsthand — realizing that even with strong networks and a clear vision, missing process and infrastructure can slow growth quickly.

Logan walks through:

• Why leadership capacity — not strategy — often determines business outcomes
• How early process gaps, especially in sales and lead generation, create growth constraints
• The importance of building systems before relying on networks
• Why founders must recognize and act quickly on operational gaps
• How stress and pressure test whether culture is real or theoretical
• The overlooked need for manager coaching — and why it’s a systemic issue across organizations. 

For leaders building and scaling organizations, this conversation is a reminder: performance challenges rarely start in the numbers — they start in leadership capacity, process discipline, and the ability to operate under pressure.

Seeking to align your culture, boost performance & impact your bottom line? Let’s chat—no sales, just real talk about your challenges. Not ready? Join our PL3 Community for free insights & connections. 

Transcript

Welcome And Mission

William Gladhart 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance, and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Today, our guest is Logan Yanovac, CEO and co-founder of the Founder Readiness Institute. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. It's great to be here, Will. Excellent. Well, let's begin by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background, and your organization.

Why Culture Drives Business Outcomes

Logan Yonavjak 0:42

Absolutely. So I've spent the majority of my career, the last 20 years, in impact investing and finance. And most of the focus of what I've been working on is driving more, primarily private capital, into investments that matter for people, planet, and profit. And the kind of early phases of my career were more focused on natural capital, on ecosystems, on nature. And then I've done a lot of work more recently on the people side because I've seen how important it is for people. Um, I know that sounds trite, but to be on board and engaged with and culturally engaged and have good leaders and such. So I'll explain a little bit more about what I mean as we go. But essentially spent 20 years in finance, and all along the way, I've I've worked in early stage investing, I've worked in private equity, I've worked for university endowments. So really had a lot a myriad of professional experiences. And all along the way, I've noticed that there are two things. We could see better results if teams and leaders were more functional. And we're seeing bad results because teams and leaders are not functional. And so as all these observations started to come together, being a little later in my career, I just thought, is there something I could do to help solve the problem of improving leadership and improving leadership outcomes? And so that's why I'm excited to have launched the Founder Readiness Institute. We focus on early stage investors, but we also focus on middle market companies. And what we're doing is really measuring leadership capacity. We are what we call, we're assessing people's vertical development in their ability to manage complexity and pressure over time. And that's something that most people aren't measuring out there in the market. And so we're really creating a baseline and a better understanding and uh vocabulary for why leadership capacity is just so important in uh seeing better outcomes in business.

William Gladhart 2:44

No, I love that. Uh and I love that you've shared that you had a background in finance and venture and all those other pieces because uh uh those areas are historically not known for uh capitalizing on culture or building around culture versus building around finance and outcomes and those pieces. So I think you really start to draw the disconnect of why some of the work you do matters, but also why the founder Readiness Institute started to develop and grow. So we'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to our conversation. Would you share while you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Logan Yonavjak 3:20

I think we all can agree at a high level that culture eats strategy for breakfast. I love that. I love that quote. And I also look at like to look at the numbers. And so if we look at startups, 65% of early stage companies, according to Harvard Business Review, are failing due to some internal problem, a leadership problem, a culture problem, team dynamics. And in middle market companies, we're seeing 40% of promotional hires struggling within the first 18 months. This is costing like 1.5x of the base salary to companies. And this typically is identified with within the first 18 months. And then another kind of component of this is that most people leave companies because of their manager, and because managers aren't aligning how they are leading their employees with what the employees are looking for. And so I think all of those things speak to different angles of culture. But by and large, I would say most, and we look at engagement rates of employees. I don't have a good number top of mind for that. But if you look at just by and large, I think 21% of employees self-profess as engaged at work. And this is in corporate America writ large. But that's just these are kind of abysmal figures when you think about it. And I think we're not, there's one point that I really want to drive home in this conversation where where I speak is that I think it has to come down to a lot of leadership capacity. We're not equipping leaders with a proper understanding of themselves as leaders and understanding how they're likely to think and behave and act under pressure as things get more intense and complex, especially in our market with AI, for instance. We're just seeing a lot more divisions in culture and a lack of cohesiveness and all these kind of numeric outcomes.

Process Breakdowns In Early Growth

William Gladhart 5:11

Yeah, I think that's a a really valid point that you speak to because we, even at the Culture Think Tank, have seen the challenges and the disconnect between leadership and management. And from my own experience, uh, I often describe it, I was given a big blank whiteboard of how to actually be a leader or how to actually lead people, and then kind of had to figure it out on the way and some good experiences, some not so good experiences, and had to learn from those kind of rough knocks. So we'll begin with question one. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas, which you've identified a couple already: people, process, and profit. In your role as not only CEO, but as working with other leaders and founders, could you identify which one of these three areas has been a culture challenge, or as you grew or as you helped others grow?

Logan Yonavjak 6:01

Well, I think in our case, those who have been working with us, including my co-founder, are very aware of leadership capacity and culture as kind of core tenants to a company. We very much found each other and self-selected based on that. We've actually all taken our assessment to eat our eat our vegetables. And so I would say for us, we're about a year in so far. The culture's been great. Our main thing right now is just getting to market and getting the resources we need to continue growing. So I would say process has probably been the issue that's most top of mind for me as the CEO. I noticed right away, I'll I'll dive in hyper dive in on one dimension. So my early sales strategy was to go out to direct contacts of mine in the venture capital industry and in the financial services sector. And I have a myriad of contacts. I've spent a lot of time networking in my career. So I sort of reached the end of that group of people in the fall. And what I should have done in terms of a process is a sales op strategy where I was going after building a repository of cold leads that I could then sequence in warm in like these outreach emails and such. So that's an example of a process that I think even having I'm this is my second company, even being a process-oriented person, I just you always under underestimate how long things take, how long sales cycles are, and then how much it can be helpful to have these processes like a CRM with automated sequences going out. It just wasn't an area that I prioritize enough early on. I don't know if that helps uh illuminate, but it is really it has been a visceral um less.

William Gladhart 7:44

No, I I think you're pointing out what many founders and owners are challenged with is things are going to be faster, things are going to develop quicker. I'll use my network, but I forgot to create a sales funnel and a legion funnel. And or how do you foster that network that you already have to create additional leads? You know, but I think that speaks back to with your company currently getting off the ground, getting things really moving. But at the same time, uh that process probably tails over into some cultural elements, stressors, those type of pieces of when's the next hire, when's the next right person to join the team, that type of challenge. So you've kind of described a little bit of that challenge. And has that negatively impacted the organization, or has that been an opportunity for you to kind of observe, learn, and then pivot a little bit and make that change to further impact and grow?

Fixing Lead Gen With Existing Talent

Logan Yonavjak 8:37

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little of both. I think there was definitely I credit myself for like a quick recognition. I think sometimes it's just recognizing you need to do something and acting quickly. I do credit myself for having that skill. If I identify a problem, I act pretty quickly on it. I think it's negatively impacted us in the way that I had to sort of scramble to find the people to actually help us with lead gen, like every individual that you have to interview, or you have to find the right fit for everything. So like I needed an expert who could help me to come in quickly. So luckily, there was a guy who was on our dev team who could also set this up for us. So I was kind of lucky. I think sometimes luck kind of, you know.

William Gladhart 9:19

Yes.

Logan Yonavjak 9:20

In a deeper level, of what I I think I uncovered, which is really exciting, but I think is often overlooked, is talking to the people that are already on your team about what other skills they have. Because sometimes you think you brand someone as like, oh, this is like the sales girl or this is a sales guy, but they might have other background experiences or like experiences in corporate that could help you. And so this is an instance where I just brought this up to the team member and he was like, Oh, I've done this before. So it sort of worked out. I don't think betting on that is good, but like you should have a clear pipeline of people.

William Gladhart 9:54

But right, but but I think that speaks to not only the leader, but also the culture that you're working to build and develop within the organization of finding those cross-functional skill sets, finding those individuals to fill the gaps, at least till you can find that next right person. And you know, I think that's that's a good lesson learned. And I'm kind of guessing some of that comes from all the work that you do in the Founder Readiness Institute and with other founders of where you're seeing these same gaps because you're experiencing them yourself.

Values Tested Under Stress

Logan Yonavjak 10:25

Yeah, absolutely. And I think just to play off of that, I do find that there is a chronic pattern of expecting things to go faster, sales take longer than you think, and then not realizing that you need some of this infrastructure to really be successful in this day and age. Like you have to have, and Alex Hermozzi has a great resource in terms of lead gen, by the way, for every everybody who's listening, I highly recommend his free training. But basically, just how do you craft? And this is one of the biggest insights I think I've learned so far about sales is you need to add value to people before they're gonna buy something from you. And so, how do you create value add content that really is gonna show that you're uh solving a pain point that they care about and that they trust that you're gonna do that well? Something else that kind of adds to the timeline of sales that I've really viscerally understood is just that we need to create like lead magnets and ways to engage people consistently so that it's it's a relationship that you're building. It's not just a one-way sales.

William Gladhart 11:28

Yes. And I and I think that's, I mean, again, that kind of ties back to culture and communication because that's the that's the feature of the organization, the feature of the solution or product that you're selling. There is some, you know, there's people behind it, there's process, but there's also something that can be created and is valuable because we all get tons of things on LinkedIn or other places where it's just throwing information at us and they know nothing about us. And and I find that a waste of time and money. But being very proactive, intentive, and also acknowledging that your customer wants to be created or communicated with in a very specific way speaks to developing uh that relationship. So, you know, it sounds like you kind of identified the cross-functional teams, identifying people's talent, you know, as part of that. So, how did making some of those moves impact your culture? And how did that impact your culture positively?

Logan Yonavjak 12:23

That's such a great question. So I think that for me, you know, we start it's funny because you start with more theoretical, this is what we who we want to be as a team. And so we have our values listed on our website, for instance. I thought that was very important from the get-go to have our core values as a company listed. However, as you go, you're tested under stress and pressure. And so I think for me, it tested my ability to uh hold a lot of complexity at once. And then in the case of the sales ops, like figure out a creative solution with limited resources that I could act on quickly. But it kind of ended up that I lived into the culture that I'm trying to build, staying nimble, transparent, communicating, all the things that I value. I was able to hold that in the process. But there were some, there were definitely some stress points. And I think that's where a good I'm a big proponent of having a co-founder when you start a company. My co-founder, it really becomes like one of your primary relationships. And I think there's a way in which you can be more authentic and vulnerable with that individual versus like the rest of your team. Like when there's a a bit of a stressor, like it was nice to be able to go to him and and share openly like what was going on and problem solved together. And then, of course, like be transparent with the team, but in a way that was more strategic instead of venting. So I think you kind of figure out like we all have stressful experiences, but like how do you how do you off-gas that in strategic ways and like meaningful ways that can actually build towards something greater instead of just imploding or having a meltdown or whatever it is that stress-induced um reaction?

The Coaching Gap For Managers

William Gladhart 14:06

Well, I I joke that uh we collectively as entrepreneurs, it should be categorized as a mental health disease because we all do we do all the bad things to ourselves from stress to overwork to not building the right relationships sometimes or not exiting the wrong relationships quickly enough. So as we wrap up today, is there anything you'd like to share with fellow leaders?

Logan Yonavjak 14:28

Well, you you brought something up earlier in the conversation about how you, as a manager, were sort of given this white space of like, here's how to be a manager. And I just went through a process recently where a gentleman who's a coach mentioned to me that less than 1% of managers receive some sort of coaching themselves on how to be a manager.

William Gladhart 14:47

That's not surprising.

Logan Yonavjak 14:49

And I think that's really an epidemic. I think that is really stalling innovation. I think it's a systematic problem that we all should be aware of. And if there's a lot of things that interventions that companies can do to improve culture, but I think one of them is to get managers some sort of leadership assessment and coaching. I think that could really be a great intervention for many companies.

William Gladhart 15:13

Yeah, I think that's a that's a great parting thought. Uh, we consistently for the last number of years, especially since 2020, have heard the same, I guess the same complaint or the same challenge over and over again about managers are have been left to their own devices, don't have enough information, don't understand about leadership, don't understand how they fit into the collective of the company, and then how can they communicate that down to the rest of the workforce if they don't understand what it's coming from from the top down from the leader or from the mission or vision of the organization? Logan, I've really appreciated uh your thoughts and insights today on our Leadership Lovers podcast. Thank you again for your time.

Logan Yonavjak 15:52

Thank you so much for having me.

William Gladhart 15:56

Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www.theculture think tank.com or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance one action at a time.