LEADERSHIP

Leadership



Leadership

Introduction

Meg Whitman was born in 1957 and she grew up in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York. When Whitman entered Princeton University, she planned a career in medicine, but she became an economics major after a summer job selling advertising for a campus publication. She graduated with an economics degree in 1977 and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School two years later. Whitman joined Procter & Gamble, later worked for the consulting firms of: Bain & Co., Walt Disney, Stride Rite Shoes, Florists' Transworld Delivery (FTD), and Hasbro. At Hasbro, she was responsible for marketing Playskool and Mr. Potato Head brands. Whitman, now 49, joined eBay in1998 as president and CEO, has helped turn it into a major Internet presence, visited by some seven million people daily. As ruler of the world's biggest online auction site, Whitman, has successfully beaten back stiff competition from Amazon.com and Yahoo. To do that, she has swiftly fixed any problems, has faithfully tried to weed out the fakes on her site and has posted a consistent flow of profits, making eBay the world's most valuable Internet brand. On paper at least, Whitman who is married to Griffith R. Harsh IV, a neurosurgeon, is a multi-billionaire and one of the richest woman CEOs in the world.

Leadership and Motivation:

Personal traits:

•Flexible and Adaptable

The business world is continuously evolving and the demands for new ideas are uprising. In such situation, Whitman is comfortable going with the flow, rather than being rigid. In order to maximize output and to cope with today's diverse workforce, Meg Whitman thinks both in terms of flexibility and adaptability. What started out as a pure consumer-to-consumer auction marketplace, is now inviting large and small businesses to sell to consumers and other businesses. For example, Whitman decided to buy Billpoint, an online system that allowed payments by e-mail, offering another enticement for prospective eBay buyers and sellers. Also to help eBay move into other markets, Whitman negotiated the purchase of Kruse International, a collectible car house, and Alando de AG, the largest online-auction house in Europe. As a result by the end of the third quarter of 1999, eBay reported sales of more than $741 million, up from just $195 million the year before. The company had also virtually cornered the online-auction business, accounting for 90 percent of all on-line-auction sales. Therefore, eBay's economy is expanding exponentially and it is earning record profits for eBay's stockholders.

•Confidence

"The biggest mistake many Internet companies make is waste a lot of money on television advertisement," said Anthony Noto, an analyst. But Meg realized that she had critical mass and that the company needed to tell its story. Thus the company's first multi-million-dollar television ad campaign capped the company's most successful quarter and opened up the company to a broader group of consumers.

Meg Whitman believes that people are basically good and so they should be trusted. She has huge confidence in both her employees and her customers. With the expansion of eBay, Meg is confident that her ...