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There've been times when leaders have to make decisions, and if you had read my 360 when I first started as a CEO, it would've repetitively said, "You take too long to make decisions, you're participative and that's good, but you need to move faster, be decisive." And as the years went, that stopped being on my 360 because I think I got more confident and more self-aware that sometimes decisions just needed to be made.

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One of my predecessors is said to have observed that in making his decisions he had to operate like a football quarterback - he could not very well call the next play until he saw how the last play turned out. Well, that may be a good way to run a football team, but in these days it is no way to run a government.

You have a meeting, you hear about the strategy and then you think, "Yeah, we've got to do this." And then you go home that night, you're about to go to sleep, and you think, "I can't do that." And then you get up the next morning and go back through it, and we just iterate to a point where you finally have to make a decision and go for it.

We would find ourselves in those moments saying, "I don't know the answer either, but you own the decision and tomorrow tell us what you decided." And so that quality decision making, moving fast was so different.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

I have always believed in evolving a consensus before taking any major decision.

Our world is increasingly transparent and we're out to earn trust. When people shine a light on Walmart and see our decisions - the jobs we create, the activities in our supply chain - we want them to like what they see.