Vice President Operations Strategy & Transformation

The Vice President, Operations Strategy and Transformation, is a key leadership role responsible for supporting the execution of the organization's strategic vision over a 5-year horizon. This role entails leading critical planning processes for merchandising, stores, and marketing, as well as overseeing cross-functional initiatives to enhance store performance. The VP will play a pivotal role in driving analytics strategy, managing the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) strategy in partnership with the procurement team, and providing leadership for project management. The VP will be a strategic thinker, adept at leading diverse teams, and instrumental in steering the organization towards sustained growth and success. This role will report to the Chief Stores Officer, and is based in Phoenix, AZ.

• Store Strategy Support – Lead cross-functional, strategic initiatives such as:
  • Labor Model and Transformation/Optimization 
  • Business Acumen Program
  • Store Dashboarding, Data, and Devices 
  • New Store- Merchandise/Store Strategy to improve ROI/EBIT
• Develop Analytics Strategy and Capability for Stores that support Merchandising and Marketing.
• Develop cost reduction strategies to support long term financial goals.
• New Business creation – Develop initiatives that create sales and moves forward our service culture.
• Foster a culture of development within store operations.
• Model, live, and lead our values.
• Identify process improvement operations aligned to Sprouts strategic initiatives to enable store growth.
• Lead team to identify and implement improvements to support attainment of strategic initiatives using structured methodologies and project governance, liaising with key stakeholders across the business.
• Manage large scale projects with cross-functional internal and external projects.
• Provide process improvement methodology expertise and coach/develop teams to form a process improvement center of excellence, as well as, facilitating skills development as part of creating a continuous improvement culture across the department.
• Facilitate the identification of process improvement opportunities across the enterprise and manage the associated change implementation to deliver to quality and cost targets.
• Manage to strong governance principles and implement an appropriate framework to lead project planning, scheduling, controlling and reporting activities, as needed.
• Lead communication and alignment between merchandising and stores for new initiatives and changes related to business process improvements and rollouts.
• Ensure comprehensive project, quality, and risk plans are prepared and maintained and issues are actively managed through to their successful resolution.
• Deliver effective communication to all interested parties including stakeholders, sponsors and Senior Executives to support effective decision-making and manage the smooth and integrated delivery of projects; Ensure that key stakeholders are engaged in business improvement activities, including implementation and adoption.
• Manage project related third party and IT relationships ensuring that dependencies are identified and managed and deliverables are achieved, as defined in the project plan and without incurring unnecessary cost or delay to the project.
• Identify and manage risks and issues to ensure that critical problems are escalated at the earliest opportunity and mitigating actions are implemented, in line with change control processes.
• Identify, secure and manage project resources to achieve project and organizational objectives in line with the project plan, approved funding and within expected quality and timescales.

• MBA and/or management consulting expertise.
• Proven experience in multi-unit retail and retail operations, demonstrating a deep understanding of industry dynamics.
• Expertise in transformation and change management, with a track record of driving successful organizational change.
• Demonstrated ability to design and deliver large cross-functional programs with buy in and input from the cross-functional team(s).
• High proficiency in the use of retail analytics and technology to inform strategic decision-making.
• Strong leadership skills and experience in leading diverse teams.

Leadership Competencies:

• Customer Focus
• Communication
• Driving for Results
• Building Successful Teams
• Leading Change
• Strategic Planning and Execution