Project Deception

  Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

A leader's values set the tone for the team. In the case of Volkswagen’s emission scandal, the CEO’s long-stated goal of besting a competitor had nothing to do with adding value for customers. Accordingly, a culture emerged to circumvent challenges rather than solve them.

It’s another auto “scandal.” But unlike the GM ignition switch issue earlier this year, Volkswagen’s emission problem wasn’t the result of lower level neglect. It was proactive deception.

It’s inappropriate to call this a scandal. A CEO affair is a scandal. This was an orchestrated project to circumvent the law. U.S. regulators say Volkswagen deliberately programmed some 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles to emit lower levels of harmful gases in official tests than on the roads. Henceforth, I shall refer to this as what it was: Project Deception.

An emissions problem may not seem fatal, at least not immediately. But in ways that matter, Project Deception is far worse than GM’s failures. Leaders went to great lengths to create software that would give false emissions readings. We don’t know how many people were involved, but projects like this can’t be accomplished by just one person.

CEO Martin Winterkorn, an engineer and former head of Audi, resigned shortly after the Project Deception story broke saying he was stunned by the scale of the …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.