Name: Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon on Business Strategy, Taking Risks and Leadership
Uploaded: 2026-02-02T17:00:00Z
Duration: 7 min 15 s
Description: Doug McMillon has been CEO of Walmart for 12 years. He sat down with WSJ ahead of his last day.

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Doug McMillon has been CEO of Walmart for 12 years. He sat down with WSJ ahead of his last day. Photo: Daniel Vergara

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260202/bbf9cb06-3651-4083-b4d8-0b108a3adb27/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Doug McMillon has been CEO of Walmart for 12 years. He sat down with WSJ ahead of his last day.

Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon on Business Strategy, Taking Risks and Leadership

My name is Doug McMillon, and I'm a Walmart associate, and I've been around for a long time.

Sarah: For 35 years, Doug McMillon has worked at Walmart, the last 12 as CEO in charge of the country's largest retailer.

My dad told me to make some money to pay my way through school, McDonald's, Kraft, Walmart were the three employers of young people here in Bentonville at the time. The Kraft cheese plant didn't call me back, McDonald's paid 3.35 and Walmart paid 6.50.

He first joined as an hourly worker in a warehouse in the summer of 1984, after his junior year of high school. 35 years, how do you feel?

Emotional, excited? First and foremost, I think the company's in great hands.

When McMillon became CEO, a lot of people didn't like Walmart very much, and sales were weak. To many, it was a poor employer and seller of cheap stuff. McMillon focused on improving stores, raising wages and online growth. Sales went up. On the eve of his last day as CEO, McMillon sat down with "The Wall Street Journal." Think back to 2014. How did you think about that challenge at the time?

I was really interested in e-commerce, as were some of the rest of us, but the first thing that had to be done was to get those supercenter comps growing. And I traveled around the country and asked our associates what needs to happen. And they said, "You need to raise our wages. You need to give us some schedule certainty. You need to get the inventory outta the backroom and get back to everyday low price. We need some department managers back. We need to lower our prices." The team and I brought that plan back to our board in 2014 and said, "The bad news is, it's really expensive." And the board said, "We agree with that plan. In fact, we think you should be more aggressive. We want you to raise wages more." And that was the right thing to do. And once those changes started to take place, we started to get some momentum in the supercenters, which gave us breathing room to get more aggressive in e-commerce.

You know, in those early years, you made some big acquisitions. There was Jet, there was Flipkart. Looking back now, we've sort of ended up where you began, which is Amazon is closing most of its physical stores, and you've grown incredibly on a grocery business, online too.

We thought in the United States we could win food e-commerce. We had great food close to people, and people were saying, "Well, you're not gonna put bananas in a brown box and ship 'em through FedEx, so how would you even do e-commerce food?" But we knew there was a way to do this that would leverage the stores and would involve last-mile delivery.

Back in 2016, Warren Buffet started to sell his Walmart stock, and I think got out of Walmart by 2018, around there. Got a lot of attention at the time, right? Have you talked to him since recently? Have you gloated to him a little bit?

No, no, I would not do that. That's a funny question though. I like him a lot, and have been blessed to spend some time with him. So when he started selling, it hurt my feelings, but I didn't say anything. We just went about our business, and I had confidence that our plan would work. I finally called him and I said, "Warren, I just have to know, is it me? Like what is this statement?" And he basically said, "Retail is changing so much and e-commerce is the future, and I just don't know what to make of brick-and-mortar retail anymore." And I said, "Well, I respect that. There is a lot of change going on, but we're gonna be one of the winners. And I hope to see you soon." And I've seen him a few times since then, but I would never bring that up. But I wish he had stayed in, 'cause he would've done well.

Yeah, the numbers don't lie. You're known for being a pretty calm person and having a calm leadership style. Obviously you're in a very stressful job. How do you manage your own stress, and I think, in modern terms, your own mental health through all of this?

I have a great family. I think faith and family help. And I'm also not alone. Sometimes people will say the CEO job can be lonely, and I can kind of understand that if you let it be, but I haven't felt that way. The things that have been hard have been the things you can't control. Like the shooting in El Paso was the worst day I ever had working at Walmart. And our associates did an amazing job recovering from that. The pandemic was hard. There are things like that that you can't control that you have to lead through.

How do you set that tone that allows people to take risks and be weak sometimes and fail, right, but also keep working hard and doing good work?

Well, you have to do that yourself. So I've made plenty of mistakes. You can't be a buyer at Walmart without making mistakes. So you learn how to say, "Yeah, I messed that up. That price is wrong or that item's wrong, and I'm fixing it." And if my approach is that way, then everyone else can feel safe doing that.

As someone who has faced this dilemma many times in your career, what role do you think CEOs should play in society and in speaking out?

I don't get up every day thinking about politics. I get up every day thinking about how we serve customers better and thinking about our associates. They're people though, and these issues matter to them. And so what happened over a period of years is there were things that occurred where our own associates were like, "We wanna hear something from you on this subject." And a number of things happened in a series that led businesses to commenting more often. In my case, I should be doing everything I can from a practical point of view to make people that work at Walmart feel heard and included. They've gotta be happy or customers won't be happy. That is the primary focus.

Do you think CEOs should be speaking out about what happened in Minneapolis the last few weeks?

Some have, and I think that's appropriate. Most of them are in Minnesota, which makes sense. I think everybody's gonna make their own choice about what they say and how they say it. You know, sometimes a private conversation's more effective than a public statement. Sometimes if it's already been said, there's not a lot of value in adding even more to it. So it's a case-by-case decision.

What are, in your mind, the biggest challenges that you worry about for Walmart in the future?

Walmart's navigation of AI is gonna be really important. I think the foundations that we have here, like people led, tech powered, we have a servant leadership culture, we have this purpose, we should keep those things strong, and remain human. Put people first, associates, customers, that's who we're serving. Secondarily, be great with technology. Technology is gonna enable us to do things for customers we were only able to dream of in the past. And AI is gonna play a big role in that.

So what's next? I can't fully picture you just retiring. You're quite young. What do you want to do next?

Hope so. I don't know. I've been working since I was a child, and I've not had a blank calendar, I haven't had a moment like this. So I'm kind of excited about doing nothing in addition to the Walmart responsibilities for a while. I don't know how long I'll hold off. I'm just gonna take some time and pray about that and be quiet about it, and I think the path will illuminate.

Have you ever considered or are you considered now running for a political office?

No, I am not a politician.

Are you sure?

I'm sure.

This is like wild. I'm like, "What's going on in your head?" Are you okay? Like, how's it going?

I have not had an ugly cry yet. I'm trying to avoid that.