Ex-CEO, HP, Current Board Member - P&G, General Motors
About The Leader
About The Leader
Meg Whitman was a political and business leader who is passionate and focused, and believes in thinking big to achieve outstanding results
Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is an American business executive and former political candidate. She is a board member of Procter & Gamble and General Motors.
Whitman was previously president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
She was also the CEO of Quibi before its closure in October 2020.
Whitman was a senior member of Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in both 2008 and 2012 and ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010. Later, she supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election and Joe Biden in the 2020 general election.
Whitman was an executive in The Walt Disney Company, where she was vice president of Strategic Planning throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, she was an executive for DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, and Hasbro. Whitman was president and CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008. During Whitman's 10 years with the company, she oversaw its expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue.
Her Purpose
Whitmen believed that it was important for business leaders to do what's right, especially when there are no predefined rules and law which define the boundaries of interactions and decisions.
In 1998, Whitman became eBay’s president and CEO and began her work there by preparing the IPO for the company. One of her major moves was to clean up eBay's public-facing business by putting items like firearms and pornography behind a firewall. A very upbeat and positive leader, she was one of the few bright spots on the tech landscape at the end of the 1990s. While the headlines were full of stories of internet failures, Whitman grew the business tremendously from millions to billions of dollars of revenue. She retired from eBay in 2008 when the company had 15,000 employees.
Whitman later joined Hewlett Packard’s board of directors in 2011 and then became its CEO. Later, she managed the split of HP into two separate companies in 2015.
Case for Change
Case for Change
"When I joined eBay the first problem which we had was which products to allow on our website.... Our policy said that we would allow anything that our business operations allowed..."
Growth Gap
Growth Gap
The problem arose when Nazi memorabilia which is banned in the US.. began selling on the website
Investment Portfolio
Investment Portfolio
That day we made a decision. To invest in and stand by things which would make us proud and what we believe in. Till date many of the eBay items which do not fit the ethical framework are banned
Her Leadership Qualities
Her Leadership Qualities
Meg Whitman is a business leader who believes that social responsibility, integrity, and reputation are the key attributes of a successful leader.
Integrity & Reputation
Integrity & Reputation
Whitman believes that the top three priorities of any leader should be family comes first, have perspective on your situations, and maintain integrity and reputation.
Key Actions
Key Actions
Above all, Whitmen valued a leader's integrity and compassion as being of utmost importance for themselves and the companies they lead
To measure her own integrity, she always put herself to "the newspaper test": imagining her actions being analyzed and diagnosed by The New York Times in a way that would make her parents and children proud.
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership Behaviors
Integrity
Reputation
Honesty
Lesson Learned
Lesson Learned
Whitmen understood the consequences of being unethical.
She understood the importance of leaders to be honest and ethical: driven by purpose rather than selfish motives.
Shared Values
Shared Values
Whitmen believes that its extremely important for leaders to have stron values, mission, and vision and to communicate them to the rest of the company. At HP, they have built their values with a "customer first" approach.
Key Actions
Key Actions
Once when Whitmen was scheduled to travel from India to the UK, she received a news of a major problem and complaint from a customer in Australia. She immediately canceled her UK flight and flew to Australia, thus living up to the "customer first" ethos she wanted to instill in the entire company.
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership Behaviors
Shared Vision
Shared Values
Customer Focused
Lesson Learned
Lesson Learned
Whitmen believed that a if a leader's vision truly aligns that with company goals, the results could be impressive.
Leading by example, leaders can really demostrate how their values translate to actions and behaviors.
Open & Honest Communication
Open & Honest Communication
Just before the first analyst meeting following Whitmen's ascension as CEO of eBay, she was asked what would be her plan to communicate to the shareholders. She quickly responded by strongly asserting that she would consistently offer clear and transparent communication to the shareholders.
Key Actions
Key Actions
When Whitmen had to interact with the investors, she very fluently articulated her approach to interacting with them. She mentioned that she would be including a clear and transparent message of what HP was, their business lines, future plans and how they would achieve their goals with precise action steps.
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership Behaviors
Transparency
Open communication
Action-oriented
Lesson Learned
Lesson Learned
Whitmen believed that it was extremely important for the leaders to communicate transparently have a clear vision, goal, and execution plan to achieve the growth.
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