Michael Fiddelke is working like a man with something to prove.
Target’s newest CEO has been in the job for two weeks now, and he’s wasted no time getting down to business on some of the retailer’s most difficult problems.
“He’s got off to a running start,” Global Data retail analyst Neil Saunders told Business Insider. “He wants change, but I think he’s also keen to be seen that he wants change at Target.”
Fiddelke’s CEO appointment was met with skepticism by many, including Saunders, who questioned whether the longtime Bullseye employee would be willing to make meaningful changes to get the company back on track.
Critics also pointed to the board’s decision to keep outgoing CEO Brian Cornell on as executive chairman. Such a move has tied the hands of new CEOs at other companies that have tried it, several leadership experts told Business Insider.
Fiddelke’s early moves indicate he is determined to make his own mark
In his first companywide meeting, Fiddelke said Target “didn’t do enough” to maintain trust with its customers in recent years and that he’s moving to reconnect those communities, Bloomberg reported. Fiddelke said in that meeting that Target was committing an additional $1 million to its Bullseye Builds community program and that company employees had logged more than a million hours of volunteer service in 2025.
Target has found itself in the national spotlight in recent weeks as federal immigration agents crack down on its hometown of Minneapolis and the company previously faced criticism over its decision to roll back diversity efforts in 2025.
“If yesterday was a true glimpse of Fiddelke stepping up, honestly, it’s a good start,” one employee who listened to the meeting told Business Insider the following day.
“He seems to be very much on point with trying to restore guests’ faith in us as a company,” the person also said.
Fiddelke also dove right into the field, visiting stores and distribution centers in Dallas and near his hometown of Manchester, Iowa, fulfilling a commitment he made in the days leading up to his start date.
The new boss has had to make tough choices, too.
On Monday, the company laid off 500 workers across its district offices and supply chain, a move it said would translate into beefed-up labor hours in stores across the US. The resource shift reflects Fiddelke’s focus on improving the shopping experience to get Target back to growth.
“Adding labor to the stores is a good move,” former Target board member Gerald Storch told Business Insider. “The stores had gotten too messy, the lines had gotten too long upon checkout, and there were too many items out of stock.”
The day following that announcement, Target revealed two C-suite appointments that underscore the Fiddelke strategy, with a new chief merchant and chief operating officer taking over for outgoing execs Jill Sando and Rick Gomez. The moves also simplify the top of Target’s org chart.
Fiddelke’s start has set a distinct tone for how he intends to run Target, and now the task is to sustain that effort in the months and years ahead.
He’s now responsible for fixing three years of flat or declining sales, a rocky relationship with customers and employees, and a race with competitors who have been charging forward without those same headwinds.
Storch said Target has a lot of fundamental issues. “That’s not going to be solved in two weeks,” he said.
Still, Saunders said there’s something to be said for coming out of the gate with gusto.
“It takes a long time to fix these things, and it takes even longer to push them through into customer perception and behaviors,” he said. “The next best thing is being able to say, ‘Look, we know there are problems, and we’re getting on with remedying them.”
