Thread Advisory Group

06/03/2026

Today we're celebrating our Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Anna Kenney🎉
Anna has spent her career helping some of the world's most recognized brands grow, evolve, and move faster. From helping build one of retail's most successful retail speed-models to leading merchandising, strategy, and transformation initiatives, she's always had a knack for turning big strategies into solutions.

Anna is a driving force behind everything we do at Thread. We're grateful for her leadership and the energy she brings to every conversation, project, and opportunity.

Please join us in wishing Anna a very Happy (Milestone) Birthday and an incredible year ahead! ❤️

05/31/2026

We recently brought ThreadTypes™ to a national sales meeting for a growing retail brand. Leaders from stores and field teams across the country spent a full session discovering their styles, mapping their teams, and practicing what it looks like to flex in real conversations.

What stayed with us wasn’t the ‘aha’ moments. It was watching leaders immediately identify where a style gap had been costing them with a specific person on their team.

The ThreadTypes™ assessment begins with self-awareness — understanding your own leadership style before coaching others.

Leaders discover their ThreadType™ 👉🏼 Map their team’s styles 👉🏼 Practice flexing in real conversations

ThreadTypes™ is available as a standalone workshop for leadership teams, field organizations, and national sales meetings. It’s the session we’ve seen create more immediate behavior change than almost anything else we bring to leaders.

Let's Bring ThreadTypes™ to Your Team
✨4-hour working session
✨Practical tools
✨Immediate application

Let's Talk: https://threadadvisorygroup.com/contact/

05/30/2026

A new system launches. A new process rolls out. Then everyone goes back to old habits. Sound familiar?

In this edition of Threadlines™, we dive into the leadership side of change and what it takes to sustain adoption.

Most organizations don’t fail at change because the strategy was wrong. They fail because leadership behavior never changed.

05/27/2026

Macy’s closing stores isn’t just a department store story.
It’s a consumer behavior story.

Macy’s announced plans to close 150 underperforming stores by the end of 2026 as part of its “Bold New Chapter” strategy.

Department stores aren’t disappearing overnight.
But the era of being the default place Americans shop is.

Over the last two years, we’ve watched major department store chains continue shrinking footprints:
🛍️ Macy’s announced plans to close 150 stores by the end of 2026
🛍️ Kohl’s closed 27 underperforming locations in 2025
🛍️ JCPenney continues selective closures after shutting hundreds of stores following bankruptcy
🛍️ Saks Global recently announced additional Saks and Neiman Marcus closures as part of restructuring efforts

But customers didn’t stop shopping.
They shifted.

They’re spending more at:
✨ Off-price retailers like TJ Maxx and Ross
✨ Value retailers like Walmart and Target
✨ Specialty and experiential brands
✨ Smaller, more curated concepts

Consumers today want:
• Convenience
• Value
• Discovery
• A reason to make the trip

The retailers winning right now aren’t trying to be everything to everyone.
They’re creating clearer, more differentiated experiences.

That’s the real story behind department store closures.

At Thread Advisory Group, we’re helping retailers rethink operations, leadership, learning, and store experience for this next era of retail.

05/17/2026

Still reflecting on the opportunity to speak at the Opterus Client Summit in Toronto this week.

There’s nothing better than being in a room full of retail leaders having real conversations about change, leadership, and what it actually takes to drive adoption in the field.

Loved sharing ThreadTypes™ and Thread Advisory Group’s approach to building change leaders — not just managing change.

Grateful for the opportunity, the conversations, and the partnership ahead with Opterus. 🇨🇦

05/10/2026

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms who lead businesses, coach teams, run meetings, build brands, solve problems, answer texts at stoplights, remember everyone’s schedules, sign permission slips, order the birthday gift, refill the fridge, make the doctor appointments, carry the emotional load, and somehow still ask everyone else if they need anything. 💕

To the moms presenting in boardrooms after a sleepless night.
The moms leading teams while coordinating carpools.
The moms building companies between soccer games and school drop-offs.
The moms managing spreadsheets, group chats, grocery lists, deadlines, sports schedules, and everyone’s emotions, all before noon.
And to the moms who can shift from executive mode… to therapist… to chef… to Uber driver… in under five minutes flat.

We celebrate you today and every day!! 👏

Happy Mother’s Day from two moms at Thread Advisory Group 💛

04/14/2026

If nothing changes between store visits, nothing changes.

Six weeks later, same store. Same issues. Same conversation. Sound familiar?
Every district manager has a version of this story.

You visit a store. You see the same issues you saw last quarter — ex*****on gaps, inconsistent standards, a team that seems unsure of expectations. You give feedback. You follow up. You come back six weeks later and not much has changed.

So you visit more stores. More often. With more urgency.
And still — the needle doesn't move.

But store visits alone don't drive change. They document it.

The Visit Isn't the Strategy
There's a version of field leadership that confuses activity with impact. High visit frequency feels like accountability. It can even feel like culture. But if your visits aren't connected to a clear system — consistent coaching frameworks, follow-through mechanisms, and leader capability development — they're just audits with airplane miles attached.

The stores that improve aren't the ones that get visited the most. They're the ones where something happens between the visits.

What High-Performance Field Leaders Do Differently
The best district and regional leaders we've worked with treat the store visit as one moment in a longer arc. They:
🛍️Set clear expectations before they arrive — so the visit is a conversation, not a surprise inspection
🛍️Coach to behavior, not just outcome — "your conversion is down" is an observation; "let's talk about how you're greeting customers in the first 30 seconds" is coaching
🛍️Create accountability that outlasts the visit — action items, timelines, and a follow-up touchpoint that doesn't require them to be physically present
🛍️Develop the manager, not just the store — because a capable manager drives change on the days you're not there.

04/13/2026

If you're a retail leader navigating an AI rollout right now, you're probably managing two things at once:
✨The pressure to move fast. And a team that has a lot of questions you don't have full answers to yet.
✨That tension is real — and it's where most transformations quietly start to unravel.
✨Not at the technology level. At the human level.

Change management research is consistent on this: the #1 reason large-scale implementations underperform isn't the platform. It's readiness.

Communication. Leadership alignment. The degree to which your people understand what's changing, why it matters, and what's expected of them on the other side.

AI is no different. It's actually higher stakes — because the fear is louder and the questions are bigger.

The retailers who will come out ahead aren't the ones who moved fastest. They're the ones who brought their organizations with them.

At Thread Advisory Group, our Organizational Transformation practice exists for exactly this moment — helping retail leaders build the change infrastructure that makes technology investments actually pay off.

Because the best AI in the world only works if your people trust it enough to use it.

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04/03/2026

Wishing you a safe and happy Easter weekend.

Take a moment to slow down, spend time with the people who matter, and enjoy a little renewal. 🌿🐣

03/31/2026

We’ve been growing our Threadlines™ community lately, and it’s been really fun to see more retail leaders join the conversation.

Threadlines™ is where we share what we’re seeing across the industry, what’s working, and where teams are getting stuck in merchandising, store operations, learning, and transformation.

We’d be honored to have yousubscribe.

It's easy, just click the link here: https://lnkd.in/ggwNrJKd

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