By Amber Bradley, Editor-in-Chief, TalkLPnews
Eight years into hosting this podcast, one of the questions I get the most from regional and director-level LP folks is, “What’s the best path to get promoted to VP?” It’s a good question – I mean, why else are we doing all this every day other than to excel and provide a better life for our families? And look, let’s be clear – one of the reasons I stepped out of the corporate grind 15 years ago was to be in control of my own ‘promotions.’ It’s not an easy road to the top. Especially in loss prevention.
So one of my goals in speaking with the industry’s top brass is to ask them if they have a roadmap, a playbook, a step-by-step guide to the top. Tim Bartlett, the VP of Asset Protection at Dollar General, would tell them they’re asking the wrong question.
Tim has been in retail for 22 years. The first 11 were at Target, where he started in store operations, moved into HR, and then into loss prevention. He joined Dollar General in 2016 and repeated almost the exact same arc. Operations first. Then an HR director role. Then asset protection. He’s been in the VP of AP seat at Dollar General for about two years. He’ll tell you that 10 years at Dollar General feels closer to 70 because the pace is that intense.
I asked Tim what leadership lessons he’d give to people who are trying to get to where he is. His first answer was a sentence that I think every aspiring AP leader needs to read twice. Career growth and promotion are not the same thing.
Tim’s argument is that career growth comes from development, and development is a deliberate mindset of seeking out chances to learn and stretch yourself in the role you’re already in. Promotion is a side effect, not the goal (that’s a tweetable…or an X-able?). He believes the bulk of someone’s development happens in their daily work. The shortage meeting nobody wants to go to. The cross-functional project nobody volunteered for. The store visit that exposes you to a problem you’ve never had to solve. The people who treat those moments as developmental are the ones who get noticed. The people who treat their job as a holding pattern between promotions are the ones who don’t.
That framing changes how you should approach the job you have right now. If your mindset is what can I learn here, what can I stretch into, what can I build that didn’t exist before I got here, you’re going to look very different to the people above you than the regional manager who runs the same plays for five straight years and waits for someone to notice.
Tim’s other point is one I’ve heard from other executives – but he puts it plainly. He thinks the operations and HR experience he carries into the AP role is what makes him effective, and he doesn’t think AP people give that experience enough weight. AP at most retailers is a support function. You’re leading without authority. You’re influencing without authority. The job is making value connections with people who don’t report to you. If you’ve never run a store, you don’t know what motivates a store leader. If you’ve never sat in HR, you don’t know how to build a business case that stands up to legal scrutiny. Tim has done both. So when he walks into a meeting with operations or HR leaders at Dollar General, he’s speaking their language because he used to be them.
He pushed back on a stereotype I hear a lot. AP and HR get cast as natural enemies. AP wants to fire someone for theft, HR wants to retain headcount. Tim’s view is that most of that friction is built on assumption. HR doesn’t want bad people in the stores either. HR has a responsibility to make sure the firing process is fair, consistent, and legally defensible, which is not the same thing as wanting to protect the bad actor – although it can feel that way sometimes. AP people who walk into HR with that assumption already loaded poison the conversation before it starts. AP people who understand HR’s actual responsibilities can build a case the HR partner will help them carry.
If you feel stuck in your current role – maybe it’s you. I’m interpreting Tim’s last point that hits to the core of who we are as people and why we come to work every day. He believes you can find motivation and meaning regardless of where you are in your career, as long as you have a real sense of personal mission. He’s seen people stall out chasing the next title and stop being good at the job they have. That’s a hard cycle to recover from because the executives above them can see it. Tim’s view is that being great at where you are is what opens the next door. Being checked-out in pursuit of the next door is what closes them.
The full conversation covers his transition from Target to Dollar General, why he thinks the operations background was the single most valuable part of his career, and how he thinks about loyalty to a single organization in an industry where most people job-hop. Worth a listen for anyone trying to think clearly about the next decade of their career.