James “Jim” Lee is the executive editor and cofounder of LP Magazine. Lee has more than 30 years’ experience as a retail security and LP executive. His extensive resume includes senior positions with retailers like Montgomery Ward, Lazarus, The Broadway, and Marshalls. Lee has also cofounded Contact, Inc., a custom publishing company that assists retailers with internal awareness and training programs, and LPJobs, the largest online recruiting platform for loss prevention professionals. In honor of LP Magazine’s 15th anniversary, Lee agreed to forfeit his usual role of interviewer and instead was interviewed himself for a feature article in the September-October 2016 issue.
Managing Editor Jack Trlica goes in-depth with the interview questions, moving beyond the magazine’s history to such far-ranging topics as the importance of loss prevention education, lessons learned from sports, and even problems caused by executive-level arrogance. As Lee states in the article:
“I think being the top LP executive in any retail company is a hard job, and I think clearly it is often an underappreciated job and often misunderstood by the C-suite. It’s primarily misunderstood because most of the C-level folks don’t take time to get to know their LP executive and understand the strategy behind running an LP program. And as a result, sometimes C-level people change their LP executive out of an arrogance or out of a self-serving motivation on their part because maybe the results aren’t as good as they would like. But it clearly is out of a lack of understanding the LP executive. And sometimes they make a change that gets them no further ahead. They were just as well off having the previous regime in power.”
Check out “The Magazine, Certification, Baseball, and C-Suite Arrogance” to read the full interview and learn more about the origins of LP Magazine and Lee’s perspectives on the current state of the industry. You can also visit the Table of Contents for the September-October 2016 issue or register for a free subscription to the magazine.