Inside Walmart’s biggest shake-up in years, w/ CEO John Furner

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Learn more at pega.com slash AI. What I find most rewarding is when I go to a store or a distribution center and I meet somebody that perhaps has been in the United States a few years and learned English at Walmart. And became a citizen. And they're now managing a $220 million business. It's extraordinary. I get to come back to my family and tell them, I got to see the American dream in action today. In leadership, you can be frustrated when you get pushback, but it's not pushback. They're doing what we've asked them to do. Providing context, providing understanding, maintaining alignment is just a really critical part of landing change in a big organization. What's helped me is being a part of the company for the last 33 years. I started working in a garden center. In Benville part-time as an average failed musician, I guess you could say, doesn't pay well. This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. In today's episode, Walmart president and CEO John Furner joins me to discuss how the influential retail giant is evolving in the age of AI and what's coming next. This conversation took place live on stage as part of the Masters of Scale 2026 Summit. This is the Masters of Scale 2026 Summit. Let's dive in. John, when I think about a company the size of Walmart, I don't think remarkable speed. I think more aircraft carrier than speedboat. You've been in the job for eight months. Within what felt like days, you had overhauled your C-suite. You had integrated a historically siloed tech stack. You moved with incredible velocity. Why and how? First, thanks for having me. It's great. It's great to be here. The way I think about it, the way we think about it, is the best time to make changes is when you have momentum, when you have strength. A phrase that I think about a lot is the best time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. And we have so many opportunities to look forward into this era. You've talked about it all morning. The era of intelligence, the era of AI, how the world's going to change. And we wanted to go into this period with the right people and the right roles. We have a great team of people, 2.2 million people, people around the world. And the leadership team that we have assembled, they're talented, they're dedicated to the mission of the company, and they're action-oriented. I think about what you said this morning, community, agency, and action. That really resonated with me, and that's what we're trying to do. Our associates around the world, we have more in common than we had differences. I was in China last week. I'm in Mexico in a couple weeks. And I find people working in the same way, trying to accomplish the same things. And what we're trying to do is ensure that the organization is positioned to take action. The world isn't going to wait for us. Retail isn't going to wait for us. The customer's going to move. The customer's going to change. So we're trying to set ourselves up to ensure that over the next few years, we remain in a position of strength and hopefully position the company to be even stronger as the world continues to evolve. I mean, John, that all sounds great. But I've worked in a couple of very big organizations, and they tend to be pretty resistant to fast change. New leadership comes in. There's a lot of people who are like, well, I'll survive the new guy. He thinks he can do all this. And I know you've been at the company a long time and want to get into your journey there. But how did you bring your team along with you on that velocity of change? Well, we say, and a lot of companies say, the best ideas come from our people. That's true. We have great ideas from associates all over. Every week, we have a session on Friday where we invite about 500 of our top leaders. This is in the U.S., by the way. We do it in other markets to give us feedback, give us ideas. We want to be great listeners. We want to be great learners. But change does happen. In many cases, it has to happen from the top down. The bottom can't change everything on the way up. We can listen, but the leadership has to align, and we have to work on the big things together and ensure that the organization is coming along at pace. You mentioned that at times things in big companies, of course, there are bureaucracies that are set up. There are departments. There are silos. Things are built to last a long time. And when you make changes, we made a big change yesterday with our membership programs. It took a lot of coordination, in determining what we were going to do, how we were going to get there. And then in the middle, a lot of management to ensure that we landed what we did yesterday. We brought together our membership proposition at Walmart Plus and Sam's Club Plus together. If you buy one, you get the other. And you can imagine there are a lot of reasons why you would and why you wouldn't. But ultimately, it's about ensuring that our customers, our members, the guests that come in to shop online or in stores, that they have access to the things that we've been able to provide for a long time. And it's a great time. To do that again from a position of strength. What's been the hardest part about going fast? You have to recognize that our people and in every organization, we have a lot of great people that were hired to do a job and they have incentives, they have metrics, they have things that they're accountable to. And what's helped me is being a part of the company for the last 33 years. I started working in a garden center in Bentonville part time as an average failed musician, I guess you could say, doesn't pay well. And in college, I needed to make ends meet. And having the opportunity to have been in a number of roles in the United States and Sam's Club, Walmart, US, I lived in China for a few years, I spent some time in Mexico, it does reinforce that there's a need for empathy. And there's a need to understand what people on the front line are going through, what executives are going through, the different things they're trying to work through. It's a big, complex world. And the people we have in the organization, we've asked them to do something. So, you know, providing context, providing understanding, maintaining alignment is just a really critical part of landing change in a big organization. You may have heard something about this big AI thing that's going on in the world. I have. A little bit about that. I don't think we necessarily think about Walmart as a tech forward company, notwithstanding your size and everything that you do from a technological perspective. What have you done eight months in the job to reorient the company for this AI era? Well, what's great about the company is we have a strong purpose that our founder left us with to save people money, help people live better. That's been true for a long time. And for years, Jeff, if you would ask me, can you tell me about what it's like being a part of Walmart? What does Walmart do? I think my response would have been, well, how much time do you have? Because it's big, it's complex. And we had to really tighten down how we describe the company and what we landed on it. I love the way it came out. It's people-led, tech-powered, and omni-channel retail. Omni-channel retail. It's just a representation of, we want to be really flexible to serve customers however they want to be served, at the counter, at the curb, at their home, in their refrigerator. And tech-powered is important. We think of technology as an enabler of making our people be the most successful they can be in the shortest amount of time. And that goes back all the way to the '70s and the '80s, where early adopters of a lot of technology in retail. And it's a part of what we've done for a long time. And AI, for us, it's an enabler. It enables customers to tell us in plain English. We have customers that express their intent, and we try to understand the context of what they're asking in their native language. And we can today, with technology, give back solutions that feel magical in some ways. And it may be as simple as, what is it for dinner tonight? But if you think about the complexity of a customer saying, I need dinner tonight, I want it to be tacos, there are four of us, it needs to be gluten-free, these things that they're telling you, it is complicated. Then when you compare that to a catalog with, say, a billion items in it, and knowing where the inventory is, and the pricing, and having it to them in 25 minutes. If you'd asked me, as a kid growing up in Arkansas, could I push a button on the device and 25 minutes later, I have a fresh room of tomato in my refrigerator, I don't think I would have said yes. Well, we can do those things. And so we're trying to step back and take a very human-led, human-centered approach to this, and build tools at the pace that we need to, that not only understands where the customer's headed, where the world is headed, a lot of times we say loyalty in retail is the absence of something better. And so we have to be the organization that is always thinking about how we get to better and best for them. And this is a time that, you know, I've heard it this morning, it's a great time to be alive. It's a great time to be in business, because we can do things that we've dreamt of for a long time, and it's real now. Probably doesn't hurt to have Sarah Fryer on your board also, helping steer. John, you mentioned at the press of a button, and that's how those of us. for the last 20 years plus, we've been thinking about it. the rise of Muse and Insight and all these other personal agents say nothing what people build for themselves it's not just going to be at the press of a button it's going to be at the initiation of an agent how is Walmart thinking about that yeah it's a great question we're thinking about the connection from the screen to the physical world and I don't want to step past understanding how we listen to the 275 million or so customers we serve every week and understand them the individual level think about what it is they're trying to accomplish and then bringing it to life the second half of that is something that's we feel is a unique opportunity for us we have 2.2 million people around the world who wake up every day they come in they try to serve and if we can remove friction for them if we can give them the information that they need in their palm if we can somehow get to them the best next action that they can take to make their operating unit their team more successful and how that all comes together is pretty unique all the way to aggregating deliveries and trying to do this in a way that respects the fact that we're proud of being an everyday low-cost operator that we're trying to in every enable everyday low prices and we we need to move faster you know that's where we started and and so you know one of the things that we're we're doing over the next few weeks the coming weeks is we'll be launching agent profiles so as a customer whether it's through your agent or our agent you can delegate Authority what the agent can buy or the spending limit what we're trying to do and it's back to what you said within communities we want to create agency not only for industry and everyone in this room but for our customers they want to remain in control our Associates want to remain in control and so if we can help customers have a profile an account that we recognize yes it's Jeff but it's an agent shopping on behalf of Jeff and Jeff has asked that we keep spending limits to a certain amount or times a day it's like having a family member that you've given your credit card to there may be limits for that I know my kids in college they have a card it has a limit that's different than mine um we can't control those things and around the 20th of the month I get a phone call hey dad and you know exactly where it's going yeah but we want to make sure that your agent through the right protocol talking to Walmart can have the same experience that you would have and we would understand what it is you're trying to accomplish what you're trying to buy and then we want to bring together the best of all of our assets to be the most flexible that we can be for whatever it is that's going on in your life so we're excited about that it's early in the journey I think we're all learning it's hard to say where the world will be in a year or two but we're trying to position our teams and our business in a way that wherever the world is going back to what I said before we can get to where the customer wants to go and we can meet them in their community and that's a big announcement and a big step forward for Walmart for your customers and you know I've got two kids in college as well and I can see the benefit for me there and I appreciate it at the same time Rabbi Sharon Brouse will be on our stage later in the summit she wrote a remarkable book a couple years ago called the amen effect the amen effect there's an anecdote in the book about going to a grocery store and starting to head to the self-checkout line and seeing the person standing at the cash register a couple aisles over just waiting to help someone and no one there and she made a choice to go over and engage with the human being and makes a point of making eye contact and engaging and having a meaningful human interaction we have a monster loneliness crisis in this country we talk to each other less and less face to face we know what happens when we engage online or we don't engage at all how do you think about balancing the opportunity and responsibility to create the best possible shopping experience in the range of options for customers with Walmart is such a powerful gathering place for so many Americans it's a great question earlier I heard you say something about big institutions or do you trust big or not what I hear so many times in the markets all over the world when you talk to customers regardless what they think of big institutions or even us what they typically come back to regardless of their opinion is I really like my local store manager I like my pharmacist in many cases the health care professional that customers see most in their lifetime will be their pharmacist and they feel a sense of personal connection a lot of people decide to go into physical shopping locations of all ages by the way it's interesting I'm finding my my daughters in college and their friends they enjoy physical shopping but there are times when they just want you to do that take care of things for them so the flexibility matters but the connection does matter and with our associate group we bring managers in three weeks a month and we want them to know the company but more importantly we want them to know the people they're working with in the organization they're serving and and what it's on behalf of and the personal connection it really matters I'll give you another example and providing people Associates with tools where they can create their own Destiny has been really rewarding in the last years in Canada earlier this year and met a forklift driver named Michael who had basically written a script for himself on a buy platform that we put to work last December and he told me he's saving 15 minutes to 18 minutes per day per shift you're gonna think oh well that's great but if you save 20 minutes a day five days a week every 10 years you pick up a year of work and so he was looking at us a way that he could be more productive to help his team but giving people souls is wonderful or he can take the 15 to 20 minutes a day and we can we can work together we're a very in-person business we're in the office we make decisions quickly you know back to your first question what are the ways that we do try to make sure that we make decisions is we have to know each other we have to trust each other innovation happens at the peak of trust and trust forms at the individual level and then it's extended to the team level and it's hard to trust people to know people if you've only seen them as a box on the screen so things like this getting people together I find really really valuable and in terms of the customer experience I mean do you actively think about Walmart as a third place after home and decreasingly but still work as as one and two and creating an even warmer in-person experience for your customers is that part of how you balance this out we do and it is a balance obviously we're we're trying to provide people more tools so that they can be more productive I remember when I started some of the things we would consider very basic took weeks to learn and obviously we want to try to put them in a position where they can get to proficiency quickly but they need to know each other they're on a team and they're in it together and things happen in the world and society and some of our teams that go through things together that frankly I never went through as a store manager when I was managing stores and it was in North Carolina I had a few things to do which is a big store it's a lot to in person but these managers and teams they're managing an e-commerce business they are managing a delivery station they're managing a picking and stocking operation they're managing a super center they're doing all of it at once and the world's different you know people have different ways to talk to them express opinions or provide feedback we always say feedback is a gift but they they're receiving so many things incoming in different ways they really have to know each other trust each other and rely on each other and know that our job in the home office is to support them and I was in the Sam's Club office yesterday when we made the membership announcement and and if you walk up to the building it's called Club support it's not the home office it's designed to support the clubs in the membership clubs where the members interact with our associates and our team so we provide a big support role for all of our people when you've built substantial wealth through your business it's often tied up in a single equity position the upside is real but so is the risk and knowing when to act isn't always obvious creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated Equity when to diversify how to manage tax risk and how to protect what you've spent years building creative planning where wealth works together learn more at creativeplanning.com/masters of scale we all know the disappointment that comes when a grand gesture falls flat something that seemed impressive in the moment but didn't deliver the results you expected marketing budgets too often fall into that trap aiming for big impressions big reach but without the revenue to back it LinkedIn has a name for it bullspend LinkedIn ads generate the highest row as of all major ad networks they target by company industry job title and more spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one just go to linkedin.com/scale that's linkedin.com/scale terms and conditions apply when you are ready to incorporate your business stripe is ready for what's next with stripe Atlas start your company with incorporation founder Equity setup and startup legal documents all in one guided process and once your company is formed which for most people happens in just one day you're ready to begin accepting payments on day one more than one in four new Delaware corporations is formed with stripe Atlas learn more at stripe.com Atlas you referenced starting at Walmart as an hourly wage worker trying to pay some bills when the guitar playing wasn't quite cutting it from the income perspective I have to imagine especially as a leader who talks about leading with empathy which let's be candid is a rare thing these days and I'm grateful that you do you must have a special understanding of you've got 1.6 million employees in the U.S 92-ish percent of whom are hourly wage right you must have a special understanding of what they're struggling with with right now. The tension between continuing to provide low-cost goods to Americans, affordable goods to Americans, as we face an affordability crisis, with also making sure that your people have the opportunity to live meaningful lives and earn a living wage, it seems like it's kind of at the core of what you're doing. How do you think about that? We do think, and we know over the last 10 or so years from early investments, early being 2015, that we made big investments in wages that you can provide opportunity, you can invest in the customer experience and return to shareholders all at the same time. And I'm really proud of the role that the leadership teams and the company has played, not only deciding that, but demonstrating that it's possible. So for our associates, what I find most rewarding is when I go to a store or a distribution center and I meet somebody that perhaps has been in the United States a few years and learned English at Walmart and became a citizen, and they're now managing a $220 million business. It's extraordinary. Those associates, you know, so many of them, about 80,000 have taken certifications in AI. Our first to complete the certification is a 40-year associate named Darlene, who signed up early, took it, and she was the first to get the certificate. Being in a position where you can decide to go to college at Walmart and Walmart pays for your entire degree is fantastic. I was with a store manager named Josh in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. We've known each other five or six years, and he wanted to show me the photo of graduating from Purdue as a Live Better University student while managing the store in Phoenix. And those are the kind of opportunities that are real. They make a difference. And, you know, whether you start your career at Walmart and move on, you take the middle of your career, the end of your career, or it's like me, your entire career, we want you to have a great experience. And we're going to see you there. So thank you so much. I think today we have about 85, 86 CEOs in the U.S. that were Walmart associates at one point, over 100 over time. So we provide, I think, what we could describe as our great opportunities to start with a good job and have a great career. And, you know, back to music, my dad was with Walmart. So, of course, I was never going to do what my dad did. And I was a creative. And I went there for the summer and fell in love with it. So turns out dad was right. Hard to admit sometimes. And you still play guitar. Still play guitar. John, I spent the first decade of my career in public service. And I came into the private sector. I had to ask all the dumb questions and read all the books. And, you know, with the rise of YouTube, get to watch and learn. And one of the things that I was struck by is 50-something years ago, this guy Milton Friedman wrote this thing. And all of a sudden, shareholder supremacy. And we don't think about our stakeholders on the same levels. Our shareholders, 30 years on a gold watch, feels like it's dead. You are an example not of that, not that we're putting you out with a gold watch anytime soon. What I'm hearing you say is we can win and win. Win for our shareholders and win for our stakeholders. Is that how you think about it? And if so, how do we get other CEOs to think more that way? Well, I think it starts with having a long-term perspective. Our company is 64 years old. I'm the sixth person to be in this position. And I won't be in it forever. And there's a time where I can make a contribution. And when I'm gone, what would I hope for is that the company's better positioned when I'm gone than the day I got it. It was positioned well when I started in this role. But important to remember, it's about opportunity. 75% of our managers started as hourly associates, just like I did, my predecessor did. And anything is possible at Walmart. We have physicians, we have attorneys, we have pilots, we have management associates, logistics associates. If you can think of it or dream of it, you can do it in our environment. And we're trying to create an environment where every associate feels empowered to help us build the future. We have the tools today where everyone can be a builder. I believe that that's true. And we've democratized technologies in ways that we may not have even thought possible before 2022. But those things are real. And we start from the idea that we operate in the U.S. in 5,600 communities, over 12,000 communities around the world. But the footprint is much larger than the retail markets we operate in. We have to think about suppliers, entrepreneurs who have opportunities to make and manufacture. How do they want to market place sellers somewhere in the world to groups of customers that could be inspired to buy their product and build with us? We have a long history of building businesses with other businesses. And I think there is absolutely a path for us all to work together and do things we didn't think were possible and create real opportunities for real people all over the world. And I'm so grateful you think that way. You go to Allen & Company, you go to the other gatherings where the grand poobahs are who, you know, run other massive companies. I'm not confident that they're thinking that way. I'm not confident that they're thinking the same way. What can we say to them? What can you do? What can other CEOs do? What can the folks in this room do to help them think that same way about their businesses? Well, something I said earlier, people-led, tech-powered. I love the phrase. I love the order. And I love our mission. I also love our core values. And my role is to ensure that our core values, we adhere to those, we build to those, and those don't change over time. Now, what we do, how we deliver, that can all change, and it should change. But respecting individuals, ensuring that we're striving to be excellent, operating with integrity, those are things that, and service to others, those are the four. Those should not change. And my job every day is to wake up and serve over a quarter billion customers around the world, suppliers around the world, and ensure that our people are in the very best position that they can be to learn, to grow, and adapt. We're a learning organization. And I think I've heard it all morning, really like where you started, community, provide agency. And ensure that that's real on our behalf as a business and our people. And then take action. This is ours to change, and it's ours to shape. And again, where we started, organizations, they do what they do. And it takes leadership teams to decide to make meaningful changes for the long term. Well, let's go make meaningful change. John Furner, thank you. Thank you. Thanks again to John Furner for joining us at the 2026 Masters of Scale Summit. This conversation was recorded by John Furner. This conversation was recorded live on stage in San Francisco at the iconic Presidio Theater. I'm Jeff Berman. Thanks for listening. Every business hits the same wall the moment your business outgrows the systems that got you here. Spreadsheets everywhere, five different logins, data scattered across entities that don't even talk to each other. If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, that's when you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI-native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven, built for businesses scaling fast without the complexity that usually comes with it. 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