By Ryan Bauss | Vice President | TalkLPnews

I read an article in this week’s Executive Briefing that gave me pause. You should check it out, the title is, “AI Is Making CEOs Step Down.” Didn’t catch it? Subscribe here. It pointed to something most leaders are starting to feel but not quite ready to admit. These moves aren’t about missing numbers. They’re about whether leadership can keep up with how fast the industry is changing.

That pressure is already showing up at the top. CEO turnover is picking up, and boards are not just looking for steady operators anymore. They want leaders who understand how to run a business where AI shapes decisions, workflows, and margin.

Some leaders are leaning in. Others are slowing it down.

I’ve felt it. You probably have, too. Pilots that never scale. Committees that enter into endless debates. Concerns about labor impact that indefinitely stall progress. The hesitation isn’t hard to understand. AI is already replacing roles. Amazon and others have cut thousands as automation and AI take on more work. That is real.

What is also real is how fast this is moving in retail.

Computer vision is identifying skip scanning and discounting in real time. AI models are flagging suspicious transactions before they become cases. Forecasting tools are adjusting orders and pricing based on demand patterns that humans would miss. Customer behavior is being analyzed in ways that change how stores hire, merchandise, and operate.

This is already here.

Loss prevention sits right in the middle of it. Investigations, exception-based reporting, case building, pattern recognition. These are areas where AI can increase productivity and connect the dots faster than any team could on their own.

The risk is not that AI replaces loss prevention. The risk is that loss prevention gets bypassed.

If LP leaders are not driving how AI is used to identify risk, interpret data, and predict shrink, someone else will. IT will. Finance will. Operations will. Once that happens, LP becomes a recipient of the output instead of the owner of the strategy.

Waiting to see how this plays out is a decision. It just is not a good one.

The leaders who will matter in this next phase are the ones who get ahead of it. Not by talking about AI, but by using it. Testing it in investigations. Applying it to exception data. Learning where it works and where it doesn’t.

There is a window right now to become the person the organization trusts on this. The one who can separate signal from noise. The one who knows how to apply it without losing sight of the objectives. Going with the grain says wait until the direction is clear.

Going against the grain says figure it out before someone else does.

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