Every conference has them. The investigator who solved the million-dollar ORC case. The AP manager who caught the dishonest employee everyone else missed. The district leader who worked around the clock after a natural disaster to protect stores.
Those stories deserve recognition. They should be celebrated. But I wonder if we’ve become a profession that admires heroes more than we admire systems.
Think about it. Every time we tell one of those stories, we’re usually describing someone who stepped in after something had already gone wrong. The fraud happened. The theft occurred. The investigation became necessary. The hero solved the problem.
But why was the problem there in the first place?
Some of the best Asset Protection leaders I’ve known weren’t famous investigators. They weren’t the people with the biggest cases or the most dramatic stories. They were the ones whose districts rarely had those stories because they quietly built environments where problems happened less often, and that isn’t nearly as exciting.
No one gives a standing ovation to the person who redesigned a receiving process that eliminated an opportunity for internal theft. Nobody writes headlines about an exception report that identified a weakness before it became a loss. Process improvements rarely make conference presentations because success often looks… uneventful.
Ironically, that may be the highest compliment our profession can receive.
We’ve trained ourselves to value outcomes we can see. Arrests. Recoveries. Confessions. Case counts. Those metrics matter. They always will. But prevention has an image problem.
When prevention works, nothing happens. There isn’t a dramatic interview. There isn’t a surveillance video. There isn’t a social media post celebrating the event because there wasn’t an event. Instead, there’s simply one less loss. That’s difficult to measure, and even harder to celebrate.
I sometimes wonder if this affects how we spend our time. Do we invest enough energy making investigations unnecessary? Or have we accepted that investigations are simply the job? Retail has become increasingly sophisticated. Artificial intelligence is identifying patterns humans miss. Analytics can predict risk. Cameras are smarter than ever. Yet technology alone won’t solve our biggest challenges if we’re still designing processes that create opportunity.
The best AP departments aren’t just good at catching dishonest people. They’re good at making dishonesty harder. That’s a different mindset.
One asks, “How do we catch them?” The other asks, “Why is this possible at all?” The second question is usually less glamorous, but it often creates far greater value for the business.
Maybe that’s why operators appreciate great Asset Protection leaders so much. The strongest partnerships aren’t built because AP catches more thieves. They’re built because AP helps stores run better. Less friction. Better controls. Simpler processes. Fewer opportunities for mistakes and misconduct. That isn’t just loss prevention. That’s operational excellence.
Perhaps we’ve unintentionally defined success too narrowly. We recognize the firefighter but overlook the architect who designed a building that was less likely to burn. Both are valuable. One simply prevents the other from needing to exist.
So, here’s what all AP executives should be asking themselves. “If our department became incredibly successful over the next five years, would we have more investigations… or fewer?”
If the answer is “more,” maybe we’re measuring the wrong things.
So… Change My Mind.
If you believe the true measure of an Asset Protection department is the number of cases it works rather than the number of problems it prevents, I’d genuinely like to hear your perspective.
Feel free to send comments supporting or challenging my position. You just might Change My Mind.
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David E. George, CFE, CFI is managing partner of Calibration Group, Inc. Previously, David served as vice president over Asset Protection for Dollar General Stores, a company with more than 20,000 stores in 48 states. While serving Dollar General, David was responsible for the Asset Protection field team, the Asset Protection corporate team, the Shrink Improvement team, and the Shrink Analytics team.
Prior to Dollar General, David held the vice president of Asset Protection position with Harris Teeter Supermarkets, Inc., a regional chain based out of Matthews, NC. He served Harris Teeter for more than 14 years and has had previous loss prevention leadership roles with Kmart Supercenters.
For more information about Calibration Group, visit www.calibrationgroup.com.