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