Realizing leaders’ full potential at lululemon

The Black Lives Matter movement was a powerful catalyst, inspiring lululemon’s “IDEA” to create real and lasting change.

lululemon has a passion for driving transformation.

lululemon’s athletic apparel for yoga, running, training, and most other sweaty pursuits doesn’t just create healthy behaviors — it also creates transformational experiences that enable people to live a life they love.

How do you become an advocate for change in a world that’s always changing?

2020 was a powerful year of change, and through it all, lululemon adopted inclusion as one of its core values. lululemon’s goal had always been to realize the potential in everyone, but the company put an even stronger focus on expanding representation and using its voice to advocate for change.

lululemon’s CEO needed a way to help carry out his “IDEA,” a commitment to real change through Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Action, but wasn’t quite sure how to infuse it across the entire organization.

“We outlined five commitments to stand up and fund Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Action (IDEA) within lululemon to ensure we stay engaged and act in allyship in our commitment to anti-racism, including increasing funding and dialogues, expanding training and diverse representation, and using our voice to advocate for change. This is just the beginning and this is the journey we are on, and we are grateful to our collective and the many diverse perspectives that continue to contribute to this work.”

ExecOnline is one important piece of IDEA thanks to Fostering Inclusion and Diversity, a three-week experience co-created with the Yale School of Management.

Immediately, lululemon’s participants discovered that not only was the content interesting, but it was also something they could immediately put to use in their daily work. Best of all, it was broken up into digestible chunks that allowed for time to learn, consider, and integrate.