Julie Averill is a technology and transformation executive with nearly three decades of experience scaling global businesses. As Global CIO and EVP at Lululemon, she led an eight-year transformation that helped grow the company from $2 billion to over $10 billion in revenue and built its award-winning India Technology Hub. She previously served as CIO at REI and held senior technology leadership roles at Nordstrom, where she helped pioneer early omnichannel retail. Today she runs Gold Thread LLC, advising boards, CEOs and CIOs on leadership, culture and decision-making in moments of change. She is the author of Chief Impact Officer: Real Transformation Comes from Human — Not Just Artificial — Intelligence.

Imagine starting a new job as global CIO and discovering, on your very first call, that every page of the company website returns nothing but an error — with no monitoring, no alerting, and no one who can even tell you who's responsible for fixing it. That was Julie's welcome to Lululemon, and she argues it turned out to be the making of her career. In an age where every company claims to be "doing AI," Julie makes the case that the winners won't be the ones with the flashiest technology — they'll be the ones with the strongest culture behind it.

In this episode, we dive into why every transformation she's led actually started with a crisis, why she calls culture competitive infrastructure rather than a soft skill, and how to tell real AI progress apart from euphoric hype.

In this episode we cover:

- Why every transformation began with a crisis — and how to turn a "burning platform" into a mandate for change
- Why culture is competitive infrastructure, not a soft skill
- What a major-league catcher taught her about reading people and seeing the whole system
- How to separate real AI progress from "euphoric confusion" and headline-driven hype
- Why the best leaders never have to choose between technology and people


Additional resources:

Chief Impact Officer: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Chief-Impact-Officer/Julie-Averill/9798993755380
Julie Averill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieaverill/
Gold Thread LLC: https://goldthreadllc.com/

Thank you to our guest, Julie Averill.

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast

New on the Outthinkers Podcast, supported by LHH, host Kaihan Krippendorff speaks with Vijay Govindarajan — VG — about why the next breakthrough American innovation may be discovered in a village in India before it ever reaches Silicon Valley. Fifteen years after introducing the world to reverse innovation, VG returns with a new book co-written with MIT mechanical engineer Amos Winter, Global by Design, and a sharper argument: the strategy is only half the story. Someone still has to engineer the $400 ECG machine that replaces the $20,000 one.

VG walks through what he calls problem merit — the discipline of finding a problem worth solving before anyone is allowed to propose a solution — and why most innovation teams fail at exactly this step. He explains why you should never define a problem in terms of its solution, why "raid the parts bin" beats reinventing from scratch, and why the affordability crisis now dominating American politics may already have its answer sitting in a market that had no choice but to solve it cheaply first.

The conversation covers:

• Why innovation never actually fails — and what does: design requirements nobody took the time to define
• What six months of watching people shave in the dark gave Gillette — a two-cent blade, after the $7 Mach3 reached only 1% of Indiae
• How Uber, the iPhone and the $400 ECG were built largely from technology that already existed, and why you innovate only for the part nobody has solved yet
• Where the answer to America's affordability crisis may already be sitting — and why it isn't about importing the product, but bringing back the core value and making it here

Additional Resources:
Global by Design: How to Create Innovations That Scale, Travel, and Transform (Amos Winter & Vijay Govindarajan)
VG at Tuck: https://tuck.dartmouth.edu/faculty/faculty-directory/vijay-govindarajan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vg-govindarajan/

Thank you again to our sponsor, LHH.

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast

New on the Outthinkers Podcast, supported by LHH, host Kaihan Krippendorff speaks with Philipp Muelbert about the three loops every company falls into when their talent needs shift — and why the cheapest-looking option on paper is usually the most expensive one in practice. During the conversation they unpack why AI has become a convenient excuse for restructuring decisions that were coming anyway, and why almost no organisation has a head of redeployment or a budget for one.

Philipp Muelbert reflects on the hidden cultural costs of the "churn loop" — the survivor syndrome that hits the employees left behind, the institutional knowledge that walks out the door, and why new-hire retention is often harder than companies expect. He makes the financial case for redeployment over rehiring, and explains why building an alumni network of well-treated former employees can become a genuine strategic asset.

The conversation covers:

• The three loops companies fall into when talent needs change: churn, exit well, or redeploy
• 75% look for a like-for-like role after layoff, but 60% end up in a full career pivot
• Redeployment saves $140,000 per person, yet no single function owns the process

Additional Resources:
LHH: lhh.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippmuelbert

Thank you again to our sponsor, LHH.

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast