Name: Most Powerful Women: Judith McKenna
Uploaded: 2019-09-20
Duration: 4 min 2 s
Description: She's President and CEO of Walmart International, Walmart.

The first thing that I ever got paid to do was working in a dress shop in my local village right by the duck pond. It was a great experience. I was 16 at the time and very small business but learned about how she ran her business, learned some customer service skills, Along the way, and let the responsibilities that go with actually being in charge in those days of a store completely on your own. Sometimes I'm not sure you could do that these days, but it is. That was my very first job. [ MUSIC ] So rather than being a straight line career, I've had the opportunity to practice a number of different skills along the way and each one's taught me something different that's perhaps helped me move on to the next role. The thing that connects my entire career is people. So the most important thing for me is people and teams. And that's really the skill that I've learned along the way. And it's been the reason why I've been able to switch over careers a couple of times along the way. I actually have a law degree, I'm a qualified Chartered Accountant in the UK working for KPMG. After some time at KPMG, I joined a public company on the finance side, working both in brewing and in pub retailer and after a number of years there and sort of honing some of my people skills there, as well as my finance skills. I took a decision and moved over to Asda, which is now Walmart subsidiary in the UK. Running a small finance team there. And that was 23 years ago. 20 years ago ASDA was taken over by Walmart. So I started off there in financial accounts but worked my way through the organization to become CFO. Ten years later I decided to make a career change. I'm a retailer at heart. And I moved over to become the COO of Auster running about 600 stores for them. After a couple of years of doing learning all about stores, about how to motivate people really a different set of skills but building on the ones I've got and I moved over to the US business. I ran strategy. For the international side of the business, before later moving into the US business. I have the privilege of doing a job that, which is to run all of the US stores, so 4, 500 stores and 1. 4 million people that you are responsible for. It is an incredible job to have the opportunity to do. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] Some of the most difficult things about getting to where I am today has been just some of the big decisions that you've got to make along the way. Sometimes to buy companies, sometimes to sell companies, about leadership, about people around you. I think the most important thing that I've learned along the way is how to build teams and I don't always get it right and I haven't always got it right. And perhaps the most difficult thing that you have to do is sometimes admit that you got things wrong. And then work out how you're going to fix those things and move on from them and if you dwell in the past That really doesn't help. So there's no very big specifics that stick in my mind that but it's the series of learning about how you face challenges and you overcome them. One of the most important things I think for modern leaders today is to have resilience. And resilience is, a combination of, still having energy, even if things don't look like they're going your way, or the team's way. Resilience is about always keeping your head up, and pointing away forward to people, rather than looking backwards, and complaining about the past. So, where it comes from deep inside. I'm not sure but I'm glad that over the years I've developed it. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women: Judith McKenna

Leadership

She's President and CEO of Walmart International, Walmart.