(FOUR)Ward Thinking: Leading Walmart’s Future with previous President CEO Doug McMillon

Well, most of the lived experience I have is oriented around Sam Walton's book, so I would refer everybody to that. It's such a great place to focus on timeless leadership tactics and beliefs, more importantly. So things like servant leadership come to mind. And as you know at Walmart, we're just trying to live those all the time. It's a high bar. And behaviorally we're trying to cause a large number of people to live in a way that's consistent with what's described in that book, because it works. Right. The other thing that comes to mind is change. When I moved into this role, there were a lot of questions about what needed to change, what's the strategy, what are we going to do. And what we concluded as a team was that the list of things that needed to change was really long and we should focus on the things that won't change, which gave people some clarity and some comfort. And we called out our purpose that Sam articulated. We called out our values and talked about why those four values are timeless. Reminded everybody that culture equals behaviors and we're trying to live those values and then said, 'Everything else is open. Like we're going to find a way to serve customers the way they want to be served in the future.' And that led us down this path that we've been following now for more than 10 years.

Our people and opportunity. And thank you for being here. Donna, it's been wonderful to work with you since 2020. You got here just in time and late. We needed you earlier. But I'm so thankful that you came and joined this, and you know as well as I do what's happened with our associates over these years and the responsibility, the opportunity that we have to serve them and try and create a situation that's better for them. Whether that's the investments that we make in wages or other benefits including health care or what we've done with education.

That's an example of us trying to create a situation where people want to be here long-term and they want to grow with the company. That's what we're designing for. And isn't it so fun to go celebrate long-term associates like we do.

Yeah, well, sure. You know, we were at the time running negative same-store sales in the Supercenters and so that needed to be changed, of course, and the place to go get those answers is from our associates. And so we were out visiting stores in the months leading up to leadership change and after. And the associates told us exactly what needed to happen. You know, our wages need to be increased, our scheduling's not far enough out and consistent enough. And we need some department managers back, our inventory levels are too high, we've gotten away from everyday low price. They basically wrote the prescription to drive growth and heal that business. And so we came back to our board and said, we know what to do. This formula works and we really believe it will work. The bad news is it's really expensive. It's going to be billions of dollars in investments in associates and it'll be billions of dollars simultaneously in investments and lower prices. And to our board's credit, they said, we agree with that plan and in fact we want you to invest more. And take a couple of weeks, come back and have a call with us and tell us what more aggressive looks like. And that was very exciting and also concerning because we also knew that we had to tell Wall Street at some point what that was going to look like, which we ultimately quantified for them of course. But the day that we got to announce the wage investment is the best day that I've had working at Walmart.

I think when we at Walmart think of artificial intelligence, the first thing we should think of is growth. Yes, there will be productivity improvements, there'll be other things that happen, but we want to serve people better. So what I get most excited about is how AI can help us serve customers and members better. We can save them more time. We can create a more personalized experience that's more contextual and understands what they're trying to do in the moment, whether they're trying to replenish the things they buy all the time or browse for fun or whatever they're trying to do. We can use AI to show them merchandise in the appropriate way in that moment and have it be more fun, more enjoyable. Like everything you love about shopping, we want to give you more of that. And all the things you don't like, we want to get rid of that or diminish that. And AI is going to help us do that. And the team's well on the way. Like we're making things happen, things are being built and I'm very excited about what's in front of us just in this next year.

Looking back on now what's been a lot of years, I think one of the things I've learned is don't get focused on the next job until you take care of the job you got. Like do really well with what you've got today and figure out how to change it to get growth. And by the way, to get growth, you take on some risk. So make it better. Make what you've got in front of you right now better than it would have otherwise been if you hadn't been there. And then secondly, help other people. Like I grew up playing sports and I like team sports. You give me a team and a scoreboard and a competitor and I'm happy. And that's what this has been. It's been like the ultimate team sport. But what you learn is that all of us are leading through influence. We're not really leaning on org structure or some other thing to help us drive change. It's about kind of a shared vision of the future and working hard together to make that happen. So the second thing is teamwork. Do it together. And lastly, I would say volunteer for something extra. I didn't know it in the beginning when I first moved into the home office. I'd worked in a couple of warehouses and our DCs and a store. But when I got to the home office, it was so fun. We were buying and selling merchandise and I loved that. And there were times when my leader would be out of town and there was some meeting that needed to be covered. And he would ask who wants to cover and nobody was raising their hand. I go, 'I'll go.' And what I didn't realize is that by doing that, I was learning so much more and getting exposure and people were learning that they could trust me to say I don't know when I don't know and get something done afterwards. And that exposure got me even more interested in the business, more curious about it and I think it started me off on a really good path once I got to the home office.

Service. Family. Love. Faith.

Hey, thanks for the invitation. Thank you. I appreciate you.