Meg Whitman

If you had to cast someone to play eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman on the silver screen, an apt choice might be that other Meg—Meg Ryan, the approachable blonde everywoman.

Whitman, 48, may have just unseated Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina as queen bee on Fortune’s annual list of the most powerful women in business, but she characteristically downplays her influence. You’re as likely to find the fly-fishing enthusiast rubbing shoulders with one of the company’s more than 430,000 sellers at an eBay Live gathering as you would be to find her in a high-powered conference room.

Whitman, who, along with her senior managers, sits in a cubicle rather than a spacious office, views her “job as a leader to help other people succeed rather than to help herself succeed,” says eBay board member Tom Tierney.

“From a leadership perspective, her most striking attribute is to enable other people and other groups to get things done,” says Tierney, former CEO of Bain & Co. “She is sort of the chief executive enabler.” Whitman’s collaborative style has had a big impact on eBay’s culture, he adds. “She is not trying to control the community. She is trying to respond to the needs of the community.”

Whitman also has put her schooling in economics and brand management—she once was in charge of Hasbro’s Playskool and Mr. Potato Head lines—to good use. When releasing its latest financial results in October, eBay adjusted its 2004 revenue projection upward to $3.25 billion and said it expects the value of IT products traded to reach $2.5 billion. To bolster that figure, eBay has been courting the channel, and it launched a program in August to assist VARs in disposing of used IT assets on the site.

Ted Hunter, general manager of Champion Networks LLC, Brunswick, Maine, says Whitman has made great strides embracing the channel. “I think it’s exciting,” he says. “This is an auction house that is coming to us and saying, ‘How can we help enhance your business?’ They want to know how we use eBay, if there are services that eBay can help us sell, and they are willing to establish a relationship to make that seamless.”

 Published for the Week Of November 15, 2004