ThelululemonChangeCase.docVIP

 The lululemon Change Case Prepared by Change Consulting Group Ellena, Gilbreath, Haack, Hardy, IrishUniversity of Southern California CMGT 508  Executive Summary Lululemon is facing many challenges due to changes made by the previous executives of the organization. These challenges include culture changes (decentralized manufacturing, aloof executive team), decreased revenue (large drops in store sales), increased competition (larger scale, lower cost), pressure to please stockholders (misaligned growth initiatives), a lack of trust between employees (executive mismanagement), and infrastructure problems (slow manufacturing, high shipping fees, costly store leases) that all require swift and strategic action in order to combat decreased revenue, failing infrastructure, increased competition, and lack of interorganizational trust and communication (Tushman, 2010). To do so, lululemon will need to realign store and corporate growth strategies with earlier practices. These actions include halting U.S. growth until local community relations can be improved, holding sponsored events such as marathons, creating video and social media outreach programs, giving stock to employees, requiring executive management training about culture, strategy, and goals, maintaining the established pricing strategy, continuing growth once revenue stabilizes, diversifying the customer base, and making founder Chip Wilson Chief Culture Officer. Through these strategic recommendations, we intend to solve lululemon’s cultural, strategic, financial, and infrastructure problems that arose from the prior leadership, which led to the problems now facing lululemon. Business Environment With new CEO Christine Day taking strategic control of the organization, there are many positive and negative factors that are currently surrounding lululemon. From an overview perspective, the organization is experiencing large-scale geographic growth as well as communication, cultural, and re