How Retailers Can Pivot at the Speed of Employee, Customer, and Market Needs

In retail, speed is no longer optional. Customer expectations shift fast, and technology evolves even faster. Strategic priorities can flip overnight in response to market volatility, operational challenges, or competitive pressure. The question isn’t whether to adapt — it’s whether your teams can do it fast enough.

For many retailers, the answer is no. Strategies are often locked in too early, disconnected from delivery, and out of date by the time they hit the ground. That’s not a failure of vision; it’s a failure of structure. If your operating model can’t flex, even the smartest plans stall.

Retailers need to rethink how strategy, operations and talent work together. Here’s how.

Define Visionary Big Bets

Retailers have traditionally operated on annual and seasonal planning cycles, but those rhythms can’t keep pace with today’s landscape. Forward-looking teams are placing multiyear “big bets” that give direction without dictating every step.

These bets might focus on things like artificial intelligence-powered inventory planning, digital experience, recommerce, or supply chain visibility and resilience. What matters is that they’re linked to customer outcomes — and that everyone understands what’s most important.

Put it into action: Clearly articulate your big bets and vision, align the vision across departmental executives, and create guiding principles to inform how the organization will handle adjustments to the strategy. You also need to decide how risky you want to be. There is a balance between speed to innovation and governance, and you can’t overachieve in both categories simultaneously.

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Align the Operating Model

It’s one thing to develop a pretty strategy deck, it’s another to operationalize it. Whether a retail brand can pivot — or fall behind — comes down to how teams work together. Retailers are increasingly investing in the product model, which pairs business and technology teams in cross-functional, dotted-line groups with shared outcomes to break silos and accelerate delivery

At the enterprise level, leaders need alignment around what matters. At the team level, they need room to move quickly and collaborate. The operating model should support both, driving alignment between the leaders who prioritize and the teams that build. At the end of the day, a healthy product operating model comes down to shared priorities, accountability, and clear decision-making structures across business and tech teams. Building transparency is key to investing towards value and cutting your losses quickly.

Put it into action: Consider how your guiding principles are realized in behaviors and structures, and evaluate where silos exist across business and technology teams and how leaders can break those silos. Reconsider the frequency of planning cycles and how business and technology teams can prioritize together.

Right-Size Capabilities and Talent

The final piece is resourcing. Do your teams have the right skills, and are they focused on the right work?

Retailers are taking a hard look at how they integrate business acumen and technical skills across their teams. Many are also rethinking where critical capabilities like AI or data science sit. It matters less where they “live” and more how they’re embedded into your organization to solve business problems.

Teams also need headspace to support emerging priorities, not just what’s already on the road map. Capacity planning plays a key role. When teams are fully booked with business-as-usual work, they can’t make space for innovation.

Put it into action: Think about where critical skills are deployed and resources are planned at the highest level. Don’t get bogged down in the weeds, but go deep enough to test assumptions across thinker/doer roles and how teams are allocated across strategic initiatives.

Closing the Gap Between Strategy and Reality

Annual plans are comforting, but they’re built on assumptions that rarely hold. Every retailer needs a method to adapt in real time and keep pace.

To stay competitive, leaders must build an operating model that lets teams pivot quickly. This requires embedding agility into how priorities are set, decisions are made, and resources are deployed. When strategy, structure and talent are in sync, retailers can keep pace with whatever the market throws their way.

Hunter Kafcsak is a director at Propeller, a people-focused management consulting firm, with over a decade of experience in retail and digital transformation.