Walmart CEO reveals the formula for success at the world’s biggest company

Walmart's CEO Doug McMillon spoke to students at Duke and revealed the formula for success at the world’s biggest company.

Transcript

00:00My first time with Walmart was just to make a little money during the summertime to help pay

00:04my way through school, and I didn't mean to be there very long at all. I think the two things

00:08looking back that kept me there were challenge and culture. The values of Walmart aligned to

00:13my personal values, and I haven't been bored one single day. This is really a challenging

00:19industry, and I like that a lot. What was it that allowed you to progress so quickly into

00:26leadership roles in your career? It wasn't part of the plan, but I think looking back what

00:32happened is that I really liked what I was doing, and I volunteered a lot for extra stuff. I walked

00:39into Walmart, and they handed me a responsibility for almost a billion dollars worth of purchasing

00:45the first morning. So I was in charge of fishing tackle for Walmart when I walked into the office

00:50the first day, and without a lot of training, no training really, and so I had responsibility,

00:56I had accountability, and I liked what I had and tried to make it better, and I kept volunteering.

01:03So when there was a project or my boss was out of town and somebody needed to go to a meeting,

01:09I would say, I'll go, and I would find myself in these situations where sometimes I didn't

01:15always know the answer, and I got comfortable as we're encouraged to at Walmart in saying,

01:20I don't know, but I'll find out, and I'll get back to you quickly. It's a good formula for

01:25success inside our company, and so people saw me handling a responsibility one level up,

01:31which made it easy for them to promote me.