Name: Why Walmart’s Growth Strategy Isn’t All About AI
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T17:00:00Z
Duration: 2 min 48 s
Description: Outgoing CEO Doug McMillon explains why a $3 billion investment in people, not just artificial intelligence, fueled Walmart’s growth under his tenure.

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Outgoing CEO Doug McMillon explains why a $3 billion investment in people, not just artificial intelligence, fueled Walmart’s growth under his tenure. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260205/a5294e59-8e23-4c90-b646-9e817104b4ff/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Outgoing CEO Doug McMillon explains why a $3 billion investment in people, not just artificial intelligence, fueled Walmart’s growth under his tenure.

Why Walmart’s Growth Strategy Isn’t All About AI

Two big decisions, two controversial decisions, two expensive decisions that you made early in your time that have really kind of defined that time. And you've already hinted at both of 'em. But the first was to raise associate pay training, a big investment, $3 billion in lifting your associates. The markets hated it. You have pummeled in 2015.

Doug: Yep, that was fun.

Why did you do that in spite of that market sentiment?

Well, that plan that I mentioned was one that I really believed in and, and others did as well. And when we talked to the board about it, we said, here's what we need to do. And the bad news is it's gonna cost us a lot. We're gonna have to take the earnings of the company down, reset the operating income percentage with these wage investments and price investments, and then we'll come back and talk to you about e-commerce. And to the board's credit, all of them, the Walton family members as well as the independent directors said, we agree with that plan, but we want you to be even more aggressive. So instead of investing what you have proposed, take two weeks, we're gonna have a conference call. Tell us what you would do if you were a lot more aggressive than what you said.

So you took it up.

We did. We went up even more, which led to the reaction in 2015 by the investment community.

I mean, my sense of the Walmart strategy and of the Walton approach and through reading books and others, was you would pay the lowest price you could possibly pay for every input and labor was included. It seems like what you did then was a pretty big change.

I think if you go back, that actually wasn't the way we were approaching it. We basically paid at market for the hourly wage and then plused it up with a bonus with access to stock equity plan, profit sharing back in the day. So the, as it relates to associate wages, it was never in our plan to pay the lowest amount we could. We've paid more than that minimum wage, for example, forever. But what had happened in the years leading up to it is we just drifted south when we had pressure, we didn't keep up like we should have. So that, that was the big adjustment that needed.

How important do you, how important was that in the success?

Huge. Yeah, huge. Because our people do make the difference. This is an associate driven company and it was a sign of respect, not only the wage increase, but everything else they asked us to do. We just went and did that and we told them that's what we were doing. And they're the ones that make things happen. So not only quantitatively, but emotionally, it meant a lot because they said they heard us.

And I wanna talk about technology, but it's interesting you put that before the technology move.

Yeah.

You couldn't do the technology stuff if you didn't, if you didn't get the people to the right place, you're not gonna have happy customers if you don't have happy associates.

The WSJ Leadership Institute Presents: Leaders. A new podcast series bringing you revealing conversations with top executives shaping business today. Hosted by Alan Murray, president of the WSJ Leadership Institute, the series goes beyond headlines to explore how leadership really works in times of upheaval, transformation, and uncertainty. Our first episode was released Monday, Sept. 22, at 5:00 a.m. ET, with new episodes every other Monday.