Howard Yu: Why Great Companies Perform and Transform

FranklinCovey On Leadership

FranklinCovey

Business, Management

4.6 • 215 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sustained success requires more than optimizing today’s business—it demands building what’s next before it’s urgent. Howard Yu, LEGO Professor of Management at IMD, explains why the most resilient organizations “perform and transform” simultaneously, scaling new capabilities while strengthening their core. He unpacks the costly knowing–doing gap that derails companies, why innovation often becomes theater instead of discipline, and how future-ready leaders measure progress across both current performance and emerging growth. Yu also explores real-world examples—from Google to BYD—showing how incremental experimentation, not big bets, drives long-term advantage. For leaders navigating disruption, the takeaway is clear: consistency, focus, and capability-building—not vision alone—separate companies that adapt from those that fall behind. Listen to learn how to build a future-ready organization. FranklinCovey’s world-class learning solutions—delivered Live-Online, On Demand, or Live In-Person—are designed to build exceptional leadership skills and enrich your culture at every level of your organization. To learn more, email us at info@franklincovey.com, visit franklincovey.com, or call us at: 1-888-868-1776

Transcript

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0:00.0	And so the idea for me is how can organization sustain that brand differentiation
0:07.0	or a company can unleash new wave of growth.
0:10.0	And if you ask me fundamentally what makes an organization can prosper in that changing world
0:17.0	and still relevant in 2026, is scaling up new capabilities.
0:24.7	You have to polish what you're great at, because that's money now,
0:29.4	but you also have to stack up the new capability while you have time.
0:32.8	So it's perform and transform at the same time.
0:34.0	It's not either or.
0:40.4	Versus average company I've seen or the mediocre organization they end up going through crisis after crisis is that when time is good they all think about moonshot new venture the next
0:48.2	magic bullet the moment that recession hit revenue hit a snack then they just go back to the core and forget about
0:56.6	everything else. And that lack of disciplined is never getting an organization becoming healthy. Because
1:04.1	to master new skill, to scale up new capabilities, require habit quarter after quarter year after year.
1:15.7	Hello and welcome to the rank group of young leadership. I'm your host, Will Haudeling.
1:20.8	Today's guest is Dr. Howard Yu. Dr. U is the Lego Professor of Management and the Director of
1:27.1	the Center for Future Readiness at IMD Business School. U is the Lego Professor of Management and the Director of the Center for Future Readiness
1:29.3	at IMD Business School.
1:31.2	He's the author of the best-selling book, Leap,
1:33.6	How to Thrive in a World where Everything Can Be Copied,
1:36.9	which was named a Best Strategy book of 2018.
1:40.2	He was named by Poets and Quants
1:42.0	as one of the top 40 business school professors under the age of 40,
1:46.0	and his writing is featured regularly in the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Forbes, and more.
	...

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