CEO of the Year - Who Led Best in 2025? | Fast Five Shorts

Retail CEO of the Year.

Chad, let's have it.

Who did you pick for Retail CEO of the Year?

No, I'm going to surprise you incredibly.

Oh, yeah, Well, I didn't get it.

Out in the earlier one.

I suppose you did get to give two awards technically, but.

Okay, okay, I did.

I did kind of feel like I gave a CEO award for accomplishments already in a way, but I'm actually going to give a retail CEO for a.

How to describe this?

A personal choice or a personal move in terms of its signal.

So go with me on this.

Okay.

All right.

So I don't remember what month it was.

I guess it was about mid year or so.

Fiji Sumo moved from the CEO of Instacart to the CEO of Applications at OpenAI.

Right.

And I just thought that that was such a smart move for someone individually.

But it's also a microcosm for retail commerce more broadly.

Right.

And we've kind of talked around this already a couple times.

E commerce used to matter.

AI will matter tomorrow.

Right.

So you know, Fiji's background, like she ran the Facebook app at Meta until 2021 and Instacart through the time when grocery delivery acceleration mattered.

Now moving to AI when that matters, she's basically thought of as a guru for productizing, scaling, monetizing consumer apps.

Like that's the job.

But it was also a big statement for OpenAI itself.

Right.

That they were ready to turn this just amazing research and innovation lab into actual large scale AI deployment to create and monetize products and services, certainly not the least of which is commerce, advertising platforms, et cetera.

So again, not giving the award based on as much what she's done in roll.

She's new at it.

Right.

And actually we'll probably spend a lot of time in the future debating.

I mean, ChatGPT's on such a path, like what is managerial ingenuity and effectiveness from just the technological magnificence.

Fine.

So not a big, bold strategic move for a company, but a big, bold, risky strategic move for a person who's betting on the direction of the industry and the role that she can play to shape it.

So kudos.

Maybe I'll be back in a year giving the award for what she's actually done.

But I thought that was a big signal headline and, you know, good for you on the move.

Yeah, there's a lot of interchangeability there between your headlines of the year and retail CEO of the year, Chad, both with VG Semo and with Doug McMillan.

So well done in how you just very Nicely served that up to give both of them, technically both of them, one award.

But Chris, let's go to you next.

I know your answer.

I think I got to just chat a little bit.

So like, so the Retail CEO of the year is effectively the person that had the best CEO or the best job move of the year.

The best job.

That's really right.

Yeah, you got it.

Yeah.

That's really the award we're giving out to you.

The shrewdest job change of the year is the winner of the.

Does it allow me to make a different point?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You talked yourself around it really well.

Bad.

But, but hey, I think, I think the point, like Ed said, the point is you think that space is really going to heat up like that.

That's what you're saying here and that that is the big nugget takeaway from this podcast thus far.

So like, when we say, like what nugget won the show like that you're, I think you're in the lead on that one.

So.

All right.

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's Doug.

I mean, the joke on this show every year is that I always pick Doug, but this year I'm legitimately picking Doug.

I mean, Doug's gonna go back down as the second best CEO in the history of Walmart.

I've said it before.

And when the founder is Sam Walton, that's really saying something.

And to me, the biggest thing when I look at what he's done is the Houdini like feat of getting higher income shoppers to shop at Walmart.

That is something that no one saw coming and he deserves a ton of credit for that.

Yeah, I agree.

I also picked Doug for all the reasons that we've talked about, for all the reasons that he, that Walmart won retailer of the year.

But I think it's also really important again.

And we talked about this when this headline came out, Chris.

But I, I also think it's really important to talk about the culture that Doug instilled in Walmart, that he changed the culture there to be appealing to a new market.

He gave people autonomy to make decisions.

He changed how, you know, operations were going to be handled.

He made it, he removed some of the politics, I think that were weighing down decisions being made quickly to allow Walmart to really kind of go down the path that we're all warning and lauding Walmart for right now.

So I think, think it's not just, it's not just Doug, but it's also the culture and the team that built he built around him and the way that he operated that retailer, too, so that they would be able to.

To do all the things that they accomplished in this year.

Yeah.

Success always requires three things, people.

Technology and great process.

Right.