How Walmart CEO Uses His Father’s Lessons to Lead $1 Trillion Giant

When John Furner took over as CEO of Walmart in February, he inherited a 63-year-old retail empire valued at $1 trillion and the No. 2 spot on the Fortune 500. But his connection to the company began long before he reached the C-suite: His father spent 25 years working at Walmart, and he says the early lessons learned on the store floor helped shape his own approach to leadership.

“I heard about respecting the individual, serving customers and striving for excellence when I was four years old,” Furner said in a 2020 Walmart interview. “Of course I had no idea what that meant, but over time I came to fully understand the power of it.”

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Now at the helm of one of the largest companies in the United States, Furner, 51, is guiding Walmart through one of the most significant transformations in its history: evolving from a traditional retail giant to a technology-driven powerhouse rivaling Amazon.

“I’m excited about our future,” Furner told analysts during an earnings call in November. “I am grateful and honored for this opportunity.”

The 32-year Walmart veteran started in 1993 as an hourly employee at a garden center in the company’s headquarters city of Bentonville, Arkansas. He held a series of positions at Sam’s Club and Walmart, eventually leading Walmart USA. before being chosen to succeed former CEO Doug McMillon.

McMillon has led the retail giant for nearly 12 years and has similar backgrounds to Furner, also having started as an hourly employee in 1984. In a video released by Walmart, he backed Furner as “the right person” to take the company forward.

Walmart has topped the Fortune 500 for 13 consecutive years, but recently fell to No. 2 behind Amazon after the e-commerce giant reported record revenue gains in February.

The retailer’s revenue has grown consistently over the past 20 years — with shares at an all-time high — but was slightly below Amazon’s $716.9 billion in revenue in 2025.

Now, all eyes are on Furner to keep Walmart on the right track. Its online business grew 27% last quarter, and the retailer announced in September plans to expand its video streaming presence.

In February, Walmart also became the first non-tech company to reach a $1 trillion valuation, driven by efforts to broaden its customer base, with shares rising more than 25% since its last quarterly report.

And last year, Walmart reported that its hourly employee retention rate had improved by more than 10% since 2015.

As he continues to serve as CEO, Furner continues to reflect on the moments that shaped him — including advice from his father.

First leadership lessons

When Furner’s father, Steve, joined Walmart’s operations team in 1977, the retailer had just under 100 stores — a far cry from its nearly 11,000 locations today. His son, just four years old at the time, was too young to start bagging groceries, but old enough to remember the lessons imparted by his father.

While working at Walmart, Steve adopted the personal motto “people helping people,” according to a company historian. It was more than just giving back; it was about a core principle of showing kindness and supporting those around you to ensure everyone can succeed, according to a Walmart spokesperson.

And when Furner’s mother fell ill in 1987, “people helping people” became part of his own leadership philosophy. Store managers from different regions came together to raise money for his family — an initiative they neither asked for nor expected.

This gesture, along with other support for her parents, cemented her belief in the power of community and what it can achieve through empathy and support.

John Furner’s leadership strategy at Walmart

During his time as CEO of Walmart USA, Furner oversaw a major overhaul of how the retailer compensates its store managers. In 2025, Walmart offered top-performing managers compensation packages between $420,000 and $620,000 per year. The average base salary rose from $130,000 to $160,000, and the rest came from annual bonuses and stock grants.

“What we did last year was make managers feel like they had ownership,” Furner said at a retail and consumer industry conference in 2025. “That includes equity ownership, which has positively impacted how they view the company’s profits and losses.”

Furner has also been vocal about providing opportunities for other Walmart employees to succeed at the company. In an interview with Fox Business in 2024, he said that about 75% of managers started out as hourly employees, and that the company even offers bonus programs to encourage employees to stay.

“This is an environment where good performance actually creates opportunities, and people can grow in their careers,” Furner said.

Walmart’s strategy in today’s AI-driven era

Furner believes AI can help employees, and Walmart is partnering with Google to upskill, offering 1.6 million employees access to an eight-hour course on AI fundamentals through Google’s new AI professional certification.

Walmart’s chief people officer, Donna Morris, previously told Fortune that companies must prepare their workers “for an AI-powered, automated or digitized world.”

Furner doesn’t hide his enthusiasm for AI. During the 2025 Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah, he said he talks to AI “every morning” and encourages Walmart employees to use the technology to improve their workflows.

“We’re just trying to help people get ahead of the curve and get to the highest impact areas quickly,” Furner told Fortune.

But, along with the advancement of AI, there is also a discussion about anxiety at work and the fear that technology will eliminate functions.

A Deutsche Bank Research survey of 10,000 people shows that nearly one in five Gen Z workers fear AI will leave them without a job in the next two years.

But it’s not just Gen Z who is worried about job security in the face of the rapid development of AI: almost a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 are worried about job security because of artificial intelligence, according to another survey from Deutsche Bank.

But that’s not a concern for Walmart, Furner said.

“We should have about the same number of people as we do today,” he predicted at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in September. “What we’re trying to do — and what we’re very confident in — is redirect people’s time to higher value-added tasks and issues.”

Furner said AI should be used for repetitive tasks so that workers “can be even more productive and we can serve more customers effectively.”

Furner is not the only executive at a major company to argue that AI improves jobs, rather than replaces them.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told investors at a company event in February that governments need to start preparing now for the potential job displacement caused by AI. Dimon said the company already has “relocation” plans underway.

“We’ve already replaced people because of AI,” Dimon said, “and given them other jobs. They’re generally well-trained, very talented, and very good at what they do.”

Still, for some workers, the worst-case scenario has already become reality. Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block laid off 4,000 employees, explicitly linking the cuts to efficiency gains from AI adoption in a post on the X network.

Dorsey called the decision “one of the most difficult” in the company’s history, but told shareholders he believes “most companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.”