Group boss Diess next to Tiguan GTE: Strategic foresight, but deficiencies in communication
Photo: RALPH ORLOWSKI / REUTERS
Winter time has been in effect again since last Sunday.
However, you could have set your clock after another event.
Every autumn, the so-called planning round takes place in Wolfsburg.
Top managers and supervisory boards - mostly men - are struggling to invest billions in plants and new products.
It is an unprecedented deal that is bringing Europe's largest auto company to the brink of a leadership crisis with tiresome regularity.
So also in November 2021.
The main topic becomes a minor matter
Some then speak of "breaches of trust", others of "blockade". The main topic of the planning round - the utilization of the VW locations with future-proof products - then becomes a minor matter. Now a four-member conciliation committee must try to re-establish unity. As if the company didn't have any major problems right now.
While VW suffers from a slump in sales, Tesla announces record profits quarter after quarter.
New Chinese competitors are entering the European market.
And the German competition is also recovering: Diess' ex-employer BMW manages the chip shortage much more professionally than the Wolfsburg-based company.
But Volkswagen is busy with itself again.
The outsiders rub their eyes and ask: Why actually?
Wasn't VW considered a pioneer of the e-turn until recently, Tesla's number one pursuer?
Nobody in Wolfsburg can give satisfactory answers.
It's like in kindergarten when the argument about a new toy car escalates.
You grapple, beat yourself up and bully yourself - up to and including the child's birthday party.
And at some point nobody really knows why.
In Wolfsburg, too, it is often difficult to understand the origin of the ongoing conflicts between top management, works council and supervisory boards.
Especially since those involved like to emphasize that they are "actually not that far apart".
So it's also about power, pride and vanity.
Such low instincts naturally also exist in rivals like BMW or Daimler.
But nowhere else are they celebrated as in Wolfsburg, in the form of semi-public to public show fights.
This is fatal for the group and its 660,000 employees worldwide.
Since Herbert Diess took over the post in spring 2018, the frequency of such major conflicts has increased further.
He almost lost his job twice last year because he messed with supervisory boards and works councils.
The focus was not on the future of the company, as whose pioneer Diess likes to present himself, but on the premature extension of his executive board contract.
Diess actually got it in July after months of jostling.
It was a vote of confidence in a top manager whose leadership qualities are controversial.
And a strong mandate for the continuation of its consistent electric offensive.
However, instead of using the chance to break new ground and putting rivals like Tesla in their place, the company prefers to tear itself apart.
In the end, the working conditions for Diess seemed optimal. His long-standing rival, works council boss Bernd Osterloh, accepted a highly paid executive board position at the truck subsidiary Traton. Successor Daniela Cavallo is just as tough on the matter, but appears less rumbling. While Osterloh was still considered unpredictable, choleric and no less power-conscious than Diess, Cavallo is valued throughout the group for its prudence. If the company boss does not succeed in finding a stable working mode with her either, this indicates serious deficiencies in negotiating and communication skills.
Diess has a strategic vision that even its critics admire.
He recognized earlier than any other German car boss how radically the industry had to change course and that bits and bytes would in future be more important than disdainful sheet metal bodies.
The fact that he still gets bogged down in pointless small wars makes even his most ardent supporters despair.
Why, for example, did he initially think it appropriate to cancel participation in the staff meeting on this Thursday despite the crisis mood among the workforce?
It will probably remain Diess' secret forever.
Only after Cavallo's public scolding ("This behavior is unprecedented in the history of our company") did he give in.
Apparently, in the often evoked Wolfsburg wagon castle, there is no sense of the sad image the car manufacturer sometimes gives in public.
Once again Diess' post is up for grabs, and once again the future of the entire group is in question.
Will there be a final escalation this time, will it be expelled?
Up until now, you could always set the clock after another event.
After weeks or months of wrangling, the brawlers usually agreed on a compromise.
And then publicly proclaimed how much they loved each other.
