One Super-Designer Outweighs Twenty

“Do you have any new manifesto sayings for the side of the lululemon shoppers? • Brains are designed for human survival. For the most part, the brain isn’t concerned with living a phenomenal life. The human being must consciously choose to override a life of mediocrity. • The brain is not necessarily correct about 80 percent of what we think and sense. We give the brain a bit of an idea, and it fills in the blanks. The brain is often not right. The brain connects immediate perception with all past experiences. • If I wasn’t concerned for my survival, with what would I be concerned and dedicate my life? • I know what is going to happen because I start in the future and work backwards. • Integrity is not right or wrong. It just gives workability and performance • The game of life is not looking good for others; the game is making life work. • The individual is a drop of water, and the family is the whole ocean. • Everyone learns differently, and I must find out what is important to other people. It is the key to having people want to work with me. 19. What was so different about lululemon’s design strategy? Lululemon was never about “enhancement” of women’s bodies. We never wanted to fool anyone. We were not a Spanx-like product that could to remould bodies, and we didn’t pad bras to create an illusion. Lululemon was all about being real a human being. We were comfortable with all bodies. This core belief came from a life of competitive swimming, Olympic clothing, and triathlon, where functional tight stretch apparel is a necessity for competition. The mission statement of “providing people with the components to live a longer, healthier, more fun life” dictated that lululemon was in the longevity business. The mission statement provided designers with a guiding light towards: • Athletic performance • Function before fashion (or more to the point, function is the fashion) As lululemon grew exponentially through the second half of the 2000s, finding the right designers became an interesting process. Big businesses and other large organizations – say, sports franchises – seem to always have three people on top who produce more than the five thousand people below them. This equation is a weird version of Pareto’s Principle where, instead of 20 percent delivering 80 percent, it’s more like 3 percent delivering 97 percent. With designers, I found there was usually one designer who could create consistently more than twenty others. To me, that one super-talented designer brought more value to lululemon than a CFO or head of HR. With financial, administrative, and managerial people, systems are in place where specific roles are quantifiable. It’s the opposite for designers, even those who’ve gone to design schools. Taking it a step further, designers must re-create four to eight times a year and the best can do it effortlessly. We would find the best designers by setting up labs. In these labs, the idea was to observe multiple designers and see who could…”