By Doug Stephens
In 2015, I was invited to Bentonville, Arkansas to deliver a presentation to Walmart’s U.S. and global executive groups. The invitation came shortly after the release of my first book, The Retail Revival—a book that positioned Walmart and its founder, Sam Walton, as the fortunate beneficiaries of the post-war surge in middle-class prosperity, but also as a company that had, for the previous 30 years, been squandering that gift by suppressing wages, gutting its suppliers, and harming the communities in which it operated. All this while continuing to double down on its supercenter concept and ignoring the reality of the emerging digital consumer.
It always struck me as perplexing that a company I had been so publicly critical of would invite me to speak to its leadership. But there I was.
The Other Doug
Shortly before my visit, Walmart had appointed a new CEO named Doug McMillon. McMillon began his career with Walmart as a teenager, picking orders and loading trucks while attending school in Bentonville. Over the decades, he worked his way into Walmart’s management training program and eventually into leadership roles of escalating responsibility. In 2014, it was announced that McMillon would replace then-CEO Mike Duke.
By the time McMillon took the job in 2015, Walmart was regularly in the headlines for lawsuits and allegations ranging from unfair labor practices and union busting to connections with overseas factory fires and other worker abuses. Its aggressive vendor demands and offshoring had destroyed once-great companies like Rubbermaid, and studies showed that Walmart’s downward pressure on wages was driving pay scales across the entire retail industry lower. Wherever Walmart opened a store, local retail wages tended to drop. The company built to serve the middle class had become the company actively eroding it.
For all these reasons, I believed McMillon was the wrong candidate to lead Walmart forward. As a lifelong insider, I expected him to stay the course on a strategic path that, in my view, would eventually lead to the brand’s self-destruction.
I was dead wrong.
The McMillon Era
Within weeks of taking office, McMillon began raising Walmart’s entry-level wages to $9 per hour, with a commitment to quickly move to $10 and beyond—sparking a chain reaction of wage increases across competitors like Target, Kohl’s, and others. The company introduced new career paths and educational opportunities for workers. Walmart also began working earnestly to return product supply to domestic and local manufacturers. Under McMillon, Walmart was suddenly working to rebuild the middle class it had spent decades pummeling.
These were not easy moves. Initial reactions from analysts and shareholders were largely negative. How, they wondered, could the company that defined operational efficiency put someone in charge who was dismantling that very advantage?
What’s more, by the end of 2015, Walmart—under McMillon’s direction—had broken from its decades-long supercenter strategy and launched massive investments in its online business, first acquiring Jet.com and then a series of digital startups. The goal was to rapidly absorb digital best practices and thrust the company into the 21st century.
Over the decade with McMillon at the helm, Walmart has transformed itself. While work remains, the shift since 2015 has been nothing short of remarkable. It may be premature to call the company a friend of the working class, but it has at least stopped being the monster consuming it. Whether shaped by his time on the loading docks or as an assistant store manager, something put McMillon deeply in touch with the needs of the company—and the workers, suppliers, and communities it depends on for its survival.
In that same period, Walmart not only became an online player but an exemplar of how modern retail is executed. No retailer in America—except Amazon—has built an online marketplace as formidable as Walmart’s.
To this day, I’m unsure who, exactly, brought me to Bentonville in 2015, but I know I wouldn’t have been invited if Doug McMillon hadn’t approved my message. What I never could have anticipated was the degree to which that message would be received in good faith and translated into a decade of bold, positive action.
Doug McMillon will soon be succeeded by John Furner, Walmart’s current U.S. President and CEO. He’ll be stepping into some big shoes. I, for one, hope he leads with the same courage Doug McMillon has exemplified. Just as Walmart played a leading role in much of the harm done to society, it can also be an important hero in its salvation. I hope John Furner sees the competitive opportunity such a role represents.
Doug Stephens is one of the world’s foremost retail industry futurists. His intellectual work and thinking have influenced many of the world’s best-known retailers, agencies and brands including Walmart, Google, Home Depot, LVMH, BMW, Coca Cola and Microsoft. As a global influencer Doug has been called “the futurist that futurists follow”.
He is the author of three internationally bestselling books and is regularly featured in many of the world’s leading publications and media outlets including The New York Times, The BBC, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company.