Meg Whitman - Ebay CEO

My Dear fellow Stemians, everyone have their own idol including me. Here’s my idol for motivation in life.
Meg Whitman’s distinguished career has been defined by learning along the way and brilliantly putting these lessons into practice. When she stepped into leadership at eBay in 1998, the online auction house had twenty employees. Ten years later, she left a publicly traded global powerhouse boasting $8 billion in revenue.

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For Whitman, excellence in learning and leading comes from knowing you can’t know everything. She’s been called a consensus CEO. She listens to vested interests and makes decisions accordingly. “What will kill a growth company is someone who can’t make decisions. But you have to listen very hard, recognise which constituencies are speaking and then make a decision for the greater good," she says.

Whitman candidly acknowledges mistakes. In the early days eBay may have made decisions too quickly, and made miscalculation in pricing, user interface, and strategy. But the company ultimately triumphed over these problems with smart and rapid solutions based on lessons learned and input form critical parties.

One hurdle was eBay Motors. The initiative was successful at first, but eBay then made user interface changes independently of the community’s knowledge. These changes compromised its success and disrupted users. As measure of the uproar, Whitman received about 5,000 emails the day changes were made.

Of the famous eBay site outage in June, 1999, she said it was a learning experience and growth opportunity. She led by being on-site during this critical time, essentially moving into the site operations center. The facility was stocked with cots, sleeping bags, pillows, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and other personal items for the people who worked through the summer. “It was a crash course in technology which has served me in good stead since,” she reflects.

Whitman also learned from users and partners. She directed eBay to go to its channel partners and asked how the auction website could enhance their businesses. Her success comes from a constant study of the conditions of battle and through understanding of allies.