Episode 13: Lululemon’s New CEO Started With Yoga. Her First Move Says Everything

Lululemon has a new CEO, and on her first day, she didn't announce layoffs. She didn't unveil some massive restructuring plan. She didn't walk into a boardroom and started telling everybody what needed to change. She did yoga. Yeah, yoga. Now, before you laugh and say, "Bob, that's just a publicity stunt," well, maybe, and we're gonna talk about that, but I think there's a much bigger leadership lesson hiding inside what actually happened because Lululemon isn't bringing in a new CEO while everything is going great.

They're bringing in a new CEO at a time when the company is under some serious pressure, and what she chose to do first tells us something about leadership that I think a lot of executives get completely wrong. The pressure on a new leader is to prove yourself quickly. The discipline is knowing when to listen before you actually act, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Every result has a price. Every goal requires a choice. Comfort keeps you where you are. Discipline takes you where you want to go.

Welcome to Discipline Over Comfort with Bob Terrio, real world conversations on leadership, business, marketing, and execution. Welcome to episode 13 of the Discipline Over Comfort podcast. I'm Bob Terrio, and let's get right into it. Lululemon's new CEO is Heidi O'Neill. She officially took over on September 8th, and instead of beginning her first day inside some executive conference room, she started with a community yoga class in Vancouver alongside the Lululemon employees, which is pretty interesting when you understand how Lululemon started.

Yoga isn't just something connected to the brand. It's part of the DNA of the company. But here's why this story caught my attention. Heidi O'Neill isn't taking over a company that's firing on all cylinders. Lululemon has been struggling. In its second quarter of 2026, revenue declined about 4% to roughly $2.4 billion. Revenue in the Americas fell 8%. Comparable sales were down 9% overall, and comparable sales in Am- in the Americas were down 12%. There have also been reports of weakness in one of the company's most important categories, leggings.

So this isn't, "Congratulations. Here's an incredible opportunity. Don't screw it up." This is, "Welcome aboard. We have some problems." And that creates enormous pressure for a new CEO because when you're brought into a company that's struggling, everybody is watching. Employees are watching. Investors are watching. Customers are watching. The board is watching. The media is watching. And everybody wants to know the same thing. What are you gonna do? That's where new leaders get themselves into some trouble because there's an enormous temptation to prove that you're worth the title.

You want people to see action, new strategy, a new org chart, new priorities, new people, new initiatives, new everything. But movement and progress are not the same thing, and sometimes the smartest thing a new leader can do is just shut up and listen. Now, O'Neill certainly isn't coming into this job without experience. She spent more than 25 years at Nike and has more than three decades of experience in the industry. She most recently served as Nike's president of consumer product and brand. She led major global operations.

She worked across apparel, merchandising, design, innovation, digital, and direct-to-consumer. So she isn't walking into Lululemon trying to figure out how the apparel business works. She knows the business. But knowing an industry isn't the same as knowing a company, and that's an important distinction because one of the biggest mistakes I've seen new leaders make is walking into an organization believing, "I know how this should work." Maybe you do, but you don't know why everything inside that particular organization works the way that it does.

You don't know the history yet. You don't know the personalities. You don't know the customer relationships. You don't know which processes look stupid but actually solve a problem nobody's explained to you yet. And you don't know which sacred cows everybody knows should have been killed five years ago. That's why listening matters. In her message to the employees, O'Neill essentially said, "I've got ideas, but first, I wanna listen and learn." She talked about spending time with teams, partners, guests, and communities.

She wants to understand the product, the brand, the culture, what's working, what's getting in the way, what needs to be protected, and what needs to change. The last part is incredibly important, what needs to be protected, because leadership isn't always about changing things. Sometimes leadership means recognizing what's already working and having enough humility not to screw it up. Every company has what I call load-bearing walls. You walk into a house and think, "I don't like that wall. Let's knock it down."

Well, you better figure out what's holding it up first. Companies are exactly the same way. There are traditions, people, products, customer experiences, cultural habits, things that may look insignificant from the executive suite but mean everything to the people who actually buy from you or work there. A leader figures out which walls are cosmetic and which ones are actually holding up the building. And this brings me back to yoga. Was starting her first day with yoga symbolic? Of course it was.

Was there communication strategy behind it? Probably. And you know what? That's okay. Good leadership and good communication aren't mutually exclusive. If you're the CEO of a major global consumer brand, almost everything you do publicly communicates something. So what does this communicate? It said, "Before I tell you where we're going, I want to understand where we came from." That's a pretty powerful day on day one. But here's where I want to push back a little bit because I don't want to subscribe to the idea that a new leader should walk into a company and spend 90 days doing nothing but listening.

Sometimes things are obviously broken. Sometimes everybody in the organization already knows what's broken. Sometimes a customer has been screaming what's broken, and sometimes, "I'm still listening" becomes an excuse for avoiding difficult decisions. That's not leadership either. So the principle isn't listen forever It's listen first, learn fast, then act. I've been in leadership roles for a long time, and I've watched people come into organizations wanting to immediately establish who's in charge.

New title, new authority, new rules, new expectation. Everybody needs to know there's a new sheriff in town. Here's something that I've learned. Stop trying to prove you're the boss. People already know your title. You don't have to keep reminding them. Authority comes with the position. Leadership doesn't. Leadership has to be earned. And one of the fastest ways to lose people is to walk into an organization and start changing things before you've even taken the time to understand the people doing the work.

Ask questions. Listen. Observe. Find out who actually knows what's going on. And here's another lesson executives sometimes learn the hard way. The person with the biggest title isn't always the person with the most valuable information. Sometimes you need to go three levels down in the organization. Talk to the salesperson. Talk to the person answering the phone. Talk to the employee working with the customer every day. Talk to the person shipping the product. Talk to the person dealing with the complaints.

Those people will tell you things that never make it into the PowerPoint presentation. If I were walking into a new leadership position tomorrow, here's what I wanna understand during my first thirty days. First, who are the people? Who are the real producers? Who does everybody trust? Who solves problems when nobody is looking? Who has the institutional knowledge, and who has a big title but isn't actually moving the organization forward? Every organization has both. Don't assume the organizational chart tells you where the influence is.

It doesn't. Second, who is the customer? And I don't mean reading the customer's persona somebody created three years ago. Talk to actual customers. Why do you choose us? Why do you stay? Why do you leave? What do you love? What frustrates you? What would make you buy more? What would make you recommend us? Because companies have a funny habit of sitting around conference tables trying to guess what customers want when they could just ask them. Third, what must be protected? This is the question I think gets overlooked.

What makes this company special? What do the customers love that the competitors can't easily duplicate? What part of the culture makes great employees stay? What products define the brand? What should never be sacrificed just because the new leader wants to put their fingerprints on something? That's where Lululemon becomes interesting because the new CEO doesn't just need to figure out what to change. She has to figure out what not to change, what absolutely, what absolutely must change. Because listening doesn't mean accepting everything.

Every company has sacred cows. "We've always done it this way," that's one of the most dangerous sentences in business. Maybe the strategy is outdated. Maybe bureaucracy has taken over. Maybe accountability disappeared. Maybe the customer changed. Maybe the product isn't exciting anymore. Maybe the competition got better. Maybe standards slipped. Whatever it is, eventually leadership requires making a decision. That's the job. And fifth, how are we gonna measure success? What should be different in thirty days, ninety days, one year from now?

What numbers tell us whether we're getting better? Because vision without accountability, that's just a speech, and I've sat through enough speeches. Show me the numbers. And that brings us to Lululemon's real challenge. The question isn't whether Heidi O'Neill can do yoga. The question is whether she can restore growth. Can she make the brand more relevant? Can she create product excitement? Can she strengthen the company's position in the Americas? Can she understand what made people fall in love with Lululemon in the first place while figuring out what needs to evolve?

That's leadership. Protect the things that made the company great. Change the things preventing it from becoming great again and knowing the difference. It's incredibly difficult. There's also a marketing lesson here. Brands rarely wake up one morning and suddenly become irrelevant. It happens slowly. Customers start looking somewhere else. Competitors become more interesting. Products become more predictable. The brand starts talking to itself instead of listening to the customer. Executives keep looking at historical success while the customer is quietly moving on.

And the customer doesn't usually schedule a meeting to explain what's happening. They just stop buying. They vote with their wallet. That's why customer listening isn't some soft leadership exercise. It's a revenue strategy. Now, let me address the obvious criticism. "Bob, come on. The yoga thing was PR." Well, maybe it was. I'm a marketing guy. I know this works. I'm sure somebody understood exactly what that image would communicate, but I don't think that automatically makes it meaningless. Something could be smart leadership and smart marketing.

The test isn't what happens on day one. The test is what happens on day one hundred and day three sixty-five. And a year from now, Lululemon is growing again. Customers are excited about the product. Employees understand the direction, and the brand has regained momentum. Then maybe that yoga class will look like the beginning of something. If nothing changes, then it's just a photo opportunity. Time will tell. And by the way, this isn't sponsored. Lululemon isn't paying me. Although, Lululemon, if you're listening, I'm not difficult to work with.

Here's what all this has to do with discipline over comfort. We normally think discipline means action. Work harder, move faster, make the decision, do the difficult thing, and sometimes it does. But sometimes discipline is restraint. Sometimes discipline is having enough confidence to walk into a room as the most powerful person there and ask questions instead of giving the answers. Sometimes action is usually the comfortable choice, especially for an insecure leader, because action makes you feel important.

Meetings, announcements, reorganizations, new strategies, people moving around. Look at how much we're doing. Listening is harder. Listening requires humility. Listening means accepting the possibility that somebody with a smaller title might understand something better than you. But listening can't become hiding. Eventually, you have to lead. That's why I keep coming back to this. Listen first. Learn fast, then act. So here's today's discipline test. If you walked into a new company tomorrow as the new CEO, could you spend your first week asking questions without trying to prove that you're the smartest person in the room?

Could you sit with the employees three levels below you and actually listen? Could you resist changing something simply because it wasn't your idea? Could you identify what's working and protect it? And after you've listened, would you have the courage to change the things everybody else has been afraid to touch? Because you actually need both. Humility without action isn't leadership. Action without understanding isn't leadership either. The best leaders know when to do each. So what's my verdict on Lululemon's new CEO starting with yoga?

Ask me again in a year. Right now it's a signal, and I think it's a smart one. She's telling the organization, "Before I decide where we're going, I wanna understand who we are." Now comes the hard part. Turning listening into decisions, turning decisions into execution, and turning execution into results. Because ultimately, that's what leadership is measured by, not the first day photo, the results that follow. If you're new here, this is the Discipline Over Comfort podcast. We talk about leadership, business, marketing, AI, and the decisions that separate people who talk about doing things from the people who actually execute.

If that sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe to the channel. We're building something here, and I'd love to have you be part of it, and I want your opinion on this one. And if you were taking over a struggling company tomorrow, what's the first thing you would do? Drop it in comments. I'm Bob Terrio, and remember, discipline over comfort every time. Until next time, bye-bye.

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