In my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers, one of the leaders on whom I focused was Martin Winterkorn. Winterkorn was chief executive officer of Volkswagen between 2007 and 2015. He presided over the company during virtually the entirety of its emissions scandal – Volkswagen regularly installed in its vehicles a “cheat device,” deliberately intended to mislead regulators on the number of pollutants being spewed in the air – blackening his name forever and Volkswagen’s for years thereafter.
Winterkorn was not, of course, alone to blame. Bad leaders cannot function without bad followers. As I wrote in the book, “All his followers followed his [lead]. And a number were complicit from start to finish, including in the coverup. What happened at Volkswagen was then a consequence of bad leadership and bad followership. Both evolved over the years, and congealed over the years, from bad to worse.”
But the buck stops at the top. Winterkorn was primarily responsible for what happened, responsible for being not only a corrupt leader – year after year he tolerated and tacitly supported an illegal scheme – but a callous one. Throughout his tenure at the top Winterkorn was personally and professionally arrogant, dependably rude and highly controlling.
Withal, until now, he got away with a slap on the wrist. Until now, like nearly every other executive found guilty of wrongdoing, he was able largely to escape the long arm of the law. However, just this week the worm turned. Finally! Winterkorn was obliged to appear in a German courtroom after the judge rejected his umpteenth appeal to postpone the trial on the grounds of poor health.
Once upon a time, what seems long, long ago, Martin Winterkorn was Germany’s best known and highest paid chief executive. He was hard charging, intensely ambitious, and driven, so to speak, to beat every last one of his competitors. That was then. Now he is facing criminal charges that include fraud, market manipulation, and making false statements.
Given that on Winterkorn’s watch Volkswagen and its various units sold some nine million cars outfitted with illegal, deliberately deceptive software, it seems only fair and entirely fitting that at long last he’s being held to account. Would we could say the same of all highfliers who are wrongdoers.