Three Ways to Lead Through AI Disruption. One Way to Fail.

Uphoff on Media Podcast · Apr 20, 2026 · 19m

When Doug McMillon announced he was stepping down as CEO of Walmart after more than a decade at the helm, he didn’t blame the board. He didn’t cite personal reasons. He said something that should stop every senior executive in their tracks:

“With what’s happening with AI, I could start this next big set of transformations with AI, but I couldn’t finish.”

Read that again. The CEO of the largest company in the world; a leader who guided Walmart through the internet era, through supply chain collapse, through a pandemic, looked at what was coming and made a clear-eyed decision: the…