Day Three - Becoming a Loss Prevention Director, Your First 90 Days on the Job
One of the first forums on day three of the conference offered some career advice. Christopher McDonald, Babies “R” Us, and Mark Stinde, Circuit City Stores, Inc. presented on becoming a loss prevention director, and the first 90 days.
Â
Chris led off with a brief recap of how this session came to be. In 2007 Chris assumed control of LP and after his first thirty days he began to panic a little bit, what was he supposed to achieve in the first 90 days? Despite years of preparation in the organization, what was he to do under his own guidance? That’s the purpose of this session, it’s about educating those new to leadership on what’s expected in this industry.
Mark jumped in a provided an overview of the topics, one of the main issues was highlighting two pyramid heads in their first 90 days. The discussion will focus on succeeding in new roles and avoiding common pitfalls.
Chris works for Babies R’ Us, they has sales of $2.6B in sales, 265 stores with an LP team of 20 members. Of course Babies R’ Us is a sister division of Toys R’ Us.
For Mark, Circuit City has sales of $11.7B, 680 stores including Circuit City and ‘The City’. They have an AP team of 68.
While Chris and Mark have similar roles, their career paths were different. Chris has been with the company for 12 years and slowly worked his way up the LP ladder. Mark, however, has only been with Circuit City for 9 months, but has plenty of experience with other retailers.
The new view at the top:
- Conversations get shorter (the world of bullet points, memo’s/analysis/ROI)
- Being tactically direct - sound bites and snippets
- Business intuition becomes critical (experience, reaching out to experts, SMEs)
- Self-awareness of your position
- Leaving your old role behind
- Personal and professional balance (take time for perspective, benefits of stepping away)
What’s critical is that you need to let go, you don’t need to know everything, build a team that can work together and help you.
The first 90 days…
1. Promote Yourself
2. Accelerate Your Learning
3. Match Strategy to Situation
4. Securing Early Wins
5. Negotiating Success
6. Achieve Alignment
7. Build Your Team
8. Create Coalitions
9. Keep Your Balance
10. Expedite Everyone
Promote Yourself
It’s not about self-promotion, it’s allowing yourself to move on to the next level. It’s moving from the tactical to the strategic. It’s about letting go of previous roles. There is often a new peer group with a different time focus. It’s all part of growing your credibility.
Accelerate Your Learning
Learn about the organizational culture. What is the current business state? What are the companies priorities? Who are the key stakeholders and who are the key members of your AP team? What exactly is your new role? Do you understand it? For larger organizations how do you interact with sister divisions like .com and international?
Match Strategy to Situation
Begin to fine-tune a successful program, that may include killing off some sacred cows. A key issue is to avoid internal complacency and raising the bar. Understanding the organizational capabilities is key, this helps establish consistent expectations. If you’re coming from another retailer you need to realize that a strategy that may have worked their, might not work at your new position.
Securing Early Wins
Developing a short term and long term strategy will help prioritize things for those initial wins. Sometimes this involves securing additional staff/budget/resources for the team. Sometimes it may involve staying the course with successful strategies and taking credit for the continuity. Always remember your boss though, what are they looking for?
Negotiating Success
What is your relationship with your boss? Who else do you need to work with: buyers, planners, allocation, internal audit group, IT. Do you need to adjust your supervisor’s expectations, current year/fiscal year? There are also transformational challenges, sometimes senior management changes, this sometimes resets the clock. You need to tell your story over again.
Achieve Alignment
First and foremost get buy-in around new strategies. This can involve internal and external team members. For example your new LP strategy may not be in line with your merchant’s expectations. Identify gaps within alignment and fix. Training can assist with team alignment, follow this up with auditing to make sure the training is working.
Build Your Team
An obvious starting point is internal promotion, but cross-pollination can also work. Cross-pollination brings in team members from other divisions with different perspectives. It also expands LPs footprint as people move laterally within the organization. Sometimes you need to make tough decisions, like letting people go.
First you need to understand your team’s current capabilities. Next is to gain the trust of your team and setting the right expectations.
Create Coalitions
Understanding all of the stakeholders is crucial in creating coalitions. As you move up to a director level you work more with other groups, rather than your core group. This can include: Merchandising, Inventory Control, Internal Audit, Finance, etc. Each of these groups has their own culture and expectations.
Keep Your Balance
Sometimes in a new leadership position you ride off in too many directions. Prioritizing and delegating helps with this. You will often find yourself working in and out of your comfort zone, it’s a challenge, but you need to get over it. While your role is often strategic, you do need to stay grounded in the tactical. It’s also about knowing when to be flexible and when to dig your heels in.
Expedite Everyone
Can your team educate others within the organization on the importance of LP? Always look for teachable moments and career development opportunities for your staff. Don’t forget yourself, look for advisors to help you improve your skills.
