In September 2011 Hewlett-Packard had just dismissed two CEOs in quick succession before inviting Meg Whitman to step into the role. She was taking the reins of a badly damaged company, and although she has presided over more than 80,000 layoffs, she has restored stability in her four and a half years on the job. In November 2015 HP became two new $50-billion-plus companies, with Whitman the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the chairman of HP Inc.
In this edited interview she talks about why she agreed to take the job (“I thought that HP was a global icon and that nothing was fundamentally wrong with the bones of the company”), how the disastrous Autonomy acquisition happened (“It was financial misrepresentation”), the company’s core values (“the ability to do incredible innovation; a passion for customer support and service; giving back to the community”), the role of a leader (“You have to communicate that you believe your goal can be achieved. You have to exude confidence. You have to celebrate the victories along the way”), and much more.
Whitman says she is the product of her experiences in a variety of companies—Procter & Gamble, Bain, Disney, Hasbro, FTD, Stride Rite, eBay—and of her unsuccessful campaign for the governorship of California, during which she significantly developed her communication skills. She also played a lot of sports as a girl, “so I knew how to be part of a team.”
When Meg Whitman became CEO of Hewlett-Packard, in 2011, she was taking the reins of a badly damaged company. Whitman was the third top executive in just three years, and her immediate predecessors, Mark Hurd and Léo Apotheker, had both flamed out in disgrace. Once a paragon of innovation and success, HP had lost its way.
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