Over the past year, my team and I listened on search kickoffs, close-out calls, and advisory sessions with founders, CEOs, investment firms, and brand team leaders. We also “listened” to the data in our State of the Consumer Brands Industry Report, our 2026 Salary and Market Trends studies, and our AI Trend Brief.
A pattern emerged. The discipline many brands brought to the past few years is now giving them room to make more deliberate decisions about leadership, structure, and where teams go next. For the next 12 to 24 months, people strategy can do more than keep up. It can set the pace.
From what we saw in 2025, five shifts will matter most.
Only 13 percent of organizations reported succession plans for their top three strategic roles. Six in ten C suite executives said they are open to or planning a move within a year, often without a backfill identified (one-third intend to act on those plans). Roughly half of leaders told us they reassigned or exited a long tenured team member this year, and four in ten said unresolved gaps delayed a key milestone.
Leadership movement is already underway. If your bench is not evolving or you are not prepared for key contributor departures, that risk manifests in delayed decisions, slower execution, and lost opportunities.
Compensation has moved from background process to front-of-mind signal. In our salary research, employees who feel fairly paid are far less likely to be looking for a new role. Yet raises remained modest in 2025, and not everyone saw an increase. A growing share of employees said they expected a raise and did not receive one.
Many read that outcome first as a comment on company performance or priorities, not on their own contribution. That influences how long they stay and how they talk about the business. Each raise, bonus, and equity decision is now part of the story people tell themselves about their future with your company.
More leadership teams are recognizing the strategic value of stepping back from daily tasks to conduct a structured review of their executive bench and team organization. Only a small share of VP and SVP leaders told us they feel very confident that their company’s current structure supports growth. Six in ten leaders admitted they have delayed a hiring or structural decision because they were not sure what the future would require.
The cost of waiting is clear. Over a third of those who delayed a team transition said it directly hindered a major milestone. In contrast, we have observed in our work alongside leaders that brands choosing to recalibrate are effectively identifying strengths, areas for improvement, and evolving role expectations before making hires or promotions. This approach makes their next people strategy moves more deliberate and less reactive
4. Using flexible capacity without losing control
Hybrid teams are becoming the plan, not the exception. Across our client collaborations (and external benchmarks), a meaningful share of work is now handled by specialized freelancers, and companies expect that share to grow. The number of fractional executive leaders has also increased, especially in marketing, finance, and operations roles.
For high-growth brands, flexible capacity is helping move launches forward, open new channels, and stabilize transitions when full-time headcount is tight. The most disciplined teams use this layer to test what roles they truly need in the permanent structure and to tie investment to proven value.
5. Making AI part of people decisions, not side experiments
AI shows up in nearly every leadership conversation. It is far less visible in role design and org planning. Only a minority of leaders say AI has changed how they define roles or structures, even though most expect it will. Founders are somewhat more likely to report AI-driven role changes. CEOs and C-suite leaders as a group are more cautious.
That creates a gap between daily tool use and actual people decisions. The leaders who benefit most will not be the ones who rush to replace people. They will be the ones who ask where AI should reshape work, which roles should evolve, and how that should influence hiring, rescoping, and succession.
The brands we work with are responding to these shifts in a few consistent ways, and we have expanded our team and services to support them at each stage.
Each stage of growth demands more from brand leadership. Our clients are rethinking who should step into the consequential roles that will guide their brand to the next milestone. Our expanding Executive Search team helps them clarify what that requires and identify leaders who can support both current plans and future options, ensuring transitions build momentum.
Brands are using flexible capacity to keep critical work moving when resources and headcount are limited. Because the universal truth for our clients is that growth can’t wait. Through our new Freelance and Fractional practice, clients access proven specialists and fractional executives, then expand permanent teams where the value is greatest.
Increasingly, brands are giving themselves space to understand their teams before acting. This year, we established a Talent Advisory practice to help founders, CEOs, and investors assess their current bench, surface gaps, and build a people strategy aligned with their growth plans.
And many brands have started integrating AI into those explorations. Our AI advisory work tackles straightforward yet challenging questions. When should AI support existing roles? How should expectations shift for future hires? How can decisions made now remain valid as capabilities develop?
Looking Ahead to 2026:
For consumer brands, the next 12 to 24 months will reward leaders who treat people strategy as a primary lever for growth.
Stronger benches, strategic attraction and retention choices, adaptable capacity, and a more deliberate approach to AI will better prepare brands as the market and their categories evolve.
If it is helpful to walk through what these themes mean for your organization, my team and I are always open to that conversation. We are happy to look at where your teams stand today and what the coming months may ask of the people leading your next stage of growth.
Learn how our expanded services can better support your people strategy.