Reflecting on Walmart's multi-year transformation, CEO Doug McMillan identifies the most common leadership pitfall: delaying actions you instinctively know are right. He advises leaders to trust their gut and move quickly, as organizations are often more capable of handling rapid change than perceived.
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When your business no longer feels aligned, trust your instincts to make a change. The required pivot may be disruptive and risky, especially if the current model is commercially successful, but your internal wisdom is the most reliable guide for long-term fulfillment and integrity.
The best leaders act on incomplete information, understanding that 100% certainty is a myth that only exists in hindsight. The inability to decide amid ambiguity—choosing inaction—is a greater failure than making the wrong call.
The most common failure mode for a founder-CEO isn't a lack of competence, but a crisis of confidence. This leads to hesitation on critical decisions, especially firing an underperforming executive. The excuses for delaying are merely symptoms of this confidence gap.
The pandemic's urgency forced Walmart's leadership to accelerate its meeting cadence from a weekly/monthly rhythm to a daily one. This faster pace necessitated greater delegation, revealing the high quality and speed of decisions made by empowered associates throughout the organization.
When driving major organizational change, a data-driven approach from the start is crucial for overcoming emotional resistance to established ways of working. Building a strong business case based on financial and market metrics can depersonalize the discussion and align stakeholders more quickly than relying on vision alone.
To manage an overwhelming list of necessary business changes, Walmart's leadership began by clearly articulating what would remain constant: its core values. This provided a stable foundation, making the subsequent, widespread transformation feel more manageable and less threatening for employees.
Agency leaders often delay decisions for fear of being wrong, creating significant opportunity costs and mental distraction. This paralysis is more damaging than the risk of an incorrect choice. Any decision is better than indecision because it provides momentum and learning, a lesson especially critical for small or solo-led agencies.
A founder's retrospective analysis often reveals that delayed decisions were the correct ones, and the only regret is not acting sooner. Recognizing this pattern—that you rarely regret moving too fast—can serve as a powerful heuristic to trust your gut and accelerate decision-making, as inaction is often the biggest risk.
Intuition is not a mystical gut feeling but rapid pattern recognition based on experience. Since leaders cannot "watch game tape," they must build this mental library by systematically discussing failures and setbacks. This process of embedding learnings sharpens their ability to recognize patterns in future situations.
The number one reason founders fail is not a lack of competence but a crisis of confidence that leads to hesitation. They see what needs to be done but delay, bogged down by excuses. In a fast-moving environment, a smart decision made too late is no longer a smart decision.
