The Power of Many: Values for Success in Business and in Life »

MEG WHITMAN was the CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008, growing the company into an unparalleled engine of global e-commerce. Her thirty-year career includes helping many companies, including Stride Rite, Bain & Company, Procter & Gamble, Disney, and Hasbro. In 2009, she announced her candidacy for governor of California. She lives in Atherton, California, with her husband, Griff Harsh, and has two grown sons, Griff and Will.

JOAN O’C. HAMILTON is a former Silicon Valley bureau chief for BusinessWeek. She now works with executives and political leaders as a book collaborator and lives in Menlo Park, California.
 

Is it possible to run a multibillion-dollar corporation on the power of trust? Must you set aside your authentic self as you climb the corporate ladder? Is there another role for technology beyond saving costs and creating efficiencies? In The Power of Many, Meg Whitman, former president and CEO of eBay, speaks to these questions and more, identifying the ten core values-from courage to validation-that steered her to success without ethical compromise. Meg illustrates her approach to doing business with compelling stories about both her extraordinary career and her upbringing-from the harrowing twenty-two-hour system outage that nearly sunk eBay to the indomitable spirit of her mother, who grew up in Boston society but worked as an airplane mechanic during World War II.

The Power of Many offers the insights and motivation we need to propel ourselves to the next level in business and in life.

Publishers Weekly

Having helped shepherd Ebay, one of the few online commercial success stories, from a $4 million business to an $8 billion behemoth, former president and CEO Whitman reveals her methods in her debut, as much a memoir of her tenure at Ebay as a guidebook for struggling MBAs. Though timed to coincide with her California gubernatorial run (the out-of-place last chapter includes her reasons for running, and a defense of friend and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney), Whitman crafts an engaging and not altogether opportunistic narrative that spells out solid business values, a no-nonsense approach to work, and thoughts on corporate integrity centered around practical advice for employees, managers and business leaders ("Be authentic. You can't buy integrity"; "Enfranchise and validate"; "Prune distractions"). In an era of bloated corporate profits and downsized prospects for average workers, Whitman's sincere commitment to and insights regarding community-building are refreshing, and should prove helpful for entrepreneurs and voters seeking information about the probable candidate.

Introduction: The First question 1

1 Trust that people are basically good. 13

2 Try something. The Price of inaction is high. 39

3 Be authentic. You can't buy integrity. 73

4 Be frugal. Conserve resources. 107

5 Results matter. Be accountable. 130

6 Listen. Everyone has something to contribute. 152

7 Focus. Prune distractions. 180

8 Enfranchise and validate. Teamwork works. 200

9 Be brave. Most things worth doing are hard. 225

10 Be flexible. If you cannot scale, you will fail. 245

Epilogue 269

Acknowledgments 275