Marketing Management: Meg Whitman CEO E-Bay, Research Paper Example

Meg Whitman was the President and Chief Executive of E-Bay from 1998 to 2008. A charismatic leader who built up a small company of 30 people to a multi billion dollar enterprise with business operations that spanned the globe.  This paper discusses the originality of Whitman’s leadership style and how she influenced a major business transformation from that of an online auction house to a global online shopping Company.

Introduction

At a young age of 47 Meg Whitman is a leadership success story. Whitman  crafted the online auctioning house of EBay from a small 30 employee firm to a multi-billion $ enterprise.   She legitimately discovered and completely different way of doing business.  During her tenure she transformed the business and made a number of shrewd acquisitions that helped to consolidate the core business.  Amongst these being the acquisition of PAYPAL  Whitman essentially looked upon the business community of eBay as a collection of real people that had stories to tell.  Part of Whitman’s charismatic personality being that she thrived  on the stories of how eBay had changed peoples lives.

Meg was quick to realise that the strength of the EBay concept resided in the user community as opposed to a strict regimented internal management control structure.  Meg had a vision of where she wanted to go, she focused upon this and set aside any distractions. Where other young internet ventures collapsed her dedicated leadership made EBay prosper.  A particular coup being to fend off an aggressive takeover bid from AOL. As opposed to being crushed she crafted a mutual relationship agreement that enabled EBay to fend off other hostile opponents.  (Sexton)

Lacked those star qualities, such as those of Hewlett Packards CEO Carly Fiorina. Nevertheless the fact was that eBay was the only Company to have registered a continuous growth record since the Company was formed in 1995. It was her leadership style that witnessed the growth in revenues from $1 billion to $4 billion by late 2002.  In addition many other new starters in the online and internet business market fell by the wayside.  So although Meg might have been criticised for lack star qualities, nevertheless she silenced her critics by bottom line performance.  It also became somewhat overlooked that Meg had achieved an MBA from Harvard University Business School and that would somewhat contradict the “star qualities” critics.  (Meyers, 2005)

Transaction Leadership

Meg can best be described a leader that influences people as opposed to a coercive approach. She has the ability to persuade people to see her point of view by well crafted and presented arguments. In addition  she was an  astute visionary leader that not only sees the big picture but is extremely focused on the detail in order to achieve those objectives.  Meg is very much a conversationalist seeking out others points of view, making the cogs of the machine run smoothly without the over complication of management interventions or control. A management style of facilitation and getting the best qualities out of individuals by persuasion and influence in stewardship. What was somewhat unique about Meg was her ability to both inspire and coach others and thereby empower others towards the goals and objectives of the business. Whilst others aspire to the qualities Meg had them in abundance and equally is a strong character and astute decision maker.

Whitman was said to have introduced a new type of leadership style whereby she kept a steady hand on the tiller as opposed to wielding the Corporate power of her office.  It was described as the difference of working in a cubicle as opposed to the big Executive corner office.  She built consensus and trust in her dealing with people by a sense of integrity, trust and transparency in her business dealings.  Whitman characterised herself as someone that was prepared to try different things and experiment, a question of thinking outside of the box. Equally, Whitman was prepared to take risk and make bold decisions when these were deemed to be necessary.  “It’s usually: What does the center want to do? It’s command and control. At eBay, it’s a collaborative network,” she adds. “You are truly in partnership with the community of users. The key is connecting employees and customers in two-way communication. We call it – The Power of All of Us.”  (Meyers, 2005)

Authentic Leadership

Three aspects of authenticity about Meg can be related to the following leadership styles:

1. Customer Focus and Stakeholder Relationships;
2. Strategic and Visionary focus;
3. Exceptional organisational skills

Customer Focus and Stakeholder Relations

She realized at the outset that the customer was the No 1 priority for EBay  Our organization builds the market place but ultimately it is our users  which build our Company   It is our  EBay concept of bringing the product to the site and the user actually marketing it to the point of sale.  Hence the business transformations were based upon operational improvements to empower the consumers.

Strategic Vision and Focus

Meg  has extremely good visionary and strategic skills. Defined  by a solid understanding of where the company wanted to go and how to get there.  Despite her desire to empower and coach others she realised that as CEO she was the ultimate decision maker and this had to remained focused on the mission, goals and objectives in order to realise the vision and true potential of ebay.

Exceptional Organisation Skills

In the early days Meg found ebay to be run by a “den of geeks” (Sexton, 2007) and needed to transform the business into a professional standing.  Before being listed on the stock exchange she took time out to fully comprehend the EBay business model.  In Whitman own words. “In the beginning, I was certainly not an entrepreneur who came up with the idea, but I think I was fairly entrepreneurial in trying to figure out how to bring that idea to life and build a backbone for the company that could take it to the next level.”  (Anon, 2003)

Employee Response to Leadership Style

Users ultimately began to criticise Meg for becoming too focused on the big accounts and forgetting the small people who were the initial driving force behind getting ebay started. Service was being channelled to the large accounts away from the small customer base. Many customers remained loyal to ebay but there was an alarming trend of dissenters who moved to other online auction sites.

Conclusion

Analysts felt that by Whitman adopting this discriminatory approach she was ultimately putting EBay at risk.  Nevertheless, the majority of Companies are not organically controlled as eBay and certainly a large proportion of Corporate CEO’s do not measure up to the standard of Whitman in modern leadership styles.  The inability to tread carefully through the business minefields.  A lot of the larger firms are equally burdened with large capital investments not being fully vested into the internet market place.  Meg was also never afraid of political decisions and provided strong leadership when matters of controversy arose.  The best example being the wholesale ban on the sale of weapons on eBay.  Despite an active gun lobby in the USA  she went ahead and implemented this decision.

Essentially good leadership is concerned with influencing only those things that really matter and disregarding the rest.  It is expected that good leaders will be able to influence others and obtain the best result from their employees. The concept of optimizing individual performance. Meg had those hybrid qualities that encompassed flexibility, inclusion, motivation whilst retaining the strength of a leader in the ability to make those decisions that matter.

Whitman  stepped down from her role on the Board in 2008 and remained in an advisory capacity whilst she explored political aspirations.

Works Cited

Anon. (2003). Meg Whitman – The Driving Force Behind eBay. Retrieved 11 11, 2009, from ICMR: http://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/Leadership%20and%20Entrepreneurship/Meg%20Whitman-The%20Driving%20Force%20Behind%20eBay-Leadership%20and%20Entrepreneurship-Case%20Studies.htm#Whitman_-_An_Exceptional_Manager

Meyers, W. (2005, 10 31). US News. Retrieved 11 16, 2009, from US News.com : http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051031/31whitman.htm

Sexton, T. (2009). eBays Meg Whitman. Retrieved 11 2009, 11, from Associated Content: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/151915/ebays_meg_whitman_americas_greatest.html?cat3