Spend a day with almost any LP team and you’ll see it right away.
Calendars packed. Calls stacked back-to-back. Emails coming in faster than anyone can clear them. Cases open, reports due, stores needing support, leaders asking for updates. Everyone’s moving.
But I keep wondering, “moving toward what?” It seems being busy has quietly become the job.
The badge of exhaustion
There’s a strange pride in how overwhelmed we are. You hear it in conversations all the time. “I’ve got 200 emails.” “I haven’t had a break all day.” “I’m on calls from 7 to 6.” It sounds like commitment. It feels like importance.
I’ve said those same things myself. But at some point, you have to ask whether all that motion is actually changing anything, or if it’s just… motion.
Activity is easy to measure
Busy work sticks around for a reason. It’s visible. You can count cases. You can track audits. You can show how many stores you touched, how many incidents you reviewed, how many reports you submitted. It fills a dashboard nicely. But what’s harder to show is what didn’t happen. The theft that never occurred because of a strategy you and your team implemented. The issue that never escalated because someone fixed the root cause you trained them to identify. The problem that disappeared quietly instead of turning into a case because your team executed a flawless LP Awareness campaign.
That kind of work doesn’t make you look busy. Instead, it makes you look unnecessary and, by default, uncomfortable.
We’ve built a system that feeds itself
Here’s the part that bothers me. A lot of what keeps LP teams busy comes from the systems we’ve created. More reporting creates more follow-up. More alerts create more review. More controls create more exceptions. Each one makes sense on its own. Together, they build a loop that keeps everyone occupied.
I’ve watched teams spend entire weeks managing outputs from tools instead of changing what the tools are telling them. At that point, the system isn’t helping us. We’re just feeding it.
Busy doesn’t just burn people out. It changes how they think. When your day is packed, you stop asking bigger questions. You don’t have the space. You focus on clearing the next email. Closing the next case. Getting through the next call.
You become reactive by default and over time, that becomes your reputation. Not the team that solves problems. The team that manages them.
What we avoid
I think part of this is avoidance, even if we don’t say it out loud. It’s easier to stay busy than to step back and ask, “Why are we doing all of this?” If the answer is “we don’t need half of it,” then what? What happens to the reports, the meetings, the processes we’ve built careers around?
That’s a harder conversation than just adding one more task to the list. The most valuable LP work I’ve seen usually looks different. It’s someone sitting with an operator and fixing a process that’s been broken for years. It’s redesigning how a store handles high-risk product, so it stops creating opportunity in the first place. It’s simplifying something that’s gotten too complex for anyone to follow.
None of that shows up as “busy.” In fact, it often reduces work. Fewer incidents. Fewer exceptions. Fewer things to chase. All of this is great for the business but can feel strange in a culture that equates activity with value.
Here’s something I’ve started asking myself, and it’s not a comfortable question:
If my calendar cleared up tomorrow, would I know what to focus on? Or would I start filling it back up just to feel productive again?
I don’t love my own answer to that.
So… Change My Mind
If you believe the sheer volume of activity in LP is a sign we’re doing the right work, I’d like to hear that perspective. Maybe all of this is necessary.
But I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve built a version of the job where being busy looks like success, even when the underlying problems don’t change. And if that’s true, then we’re not just overloaded.
We’re distracted.
David E. George, CFE, CFI, is the Managing Partner of Calibration Group, Inc., and of its subsidiary, TalkLPnews. Previously, David served as Vice President of 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 in Charlotte, 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.