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How Herbert Diess used Syntegration® to lead Volkswagen through the biggest transformation in automotive history — and what sets this method apart from conventional approaches.
When the CEO of the world's largest automotive group describes a method as "unique and effective," it's worth taking a closer look.
Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen AG, has openly described in a widely read LinkedIn post how he used Syntegration®as a core leadership instrument – in one of the largest corporate transformations in business history.
Volkswagen is no ordinary company. Over 11 million vehicles annually, 12 brands, 670,000 employees worldwide, an ownership structure involving the founding family, the state of Lower Saxony, and a powerful trade union – and a management culture conditioned over decades toward internal competition.
When Diess took office in 2015, VW was in the midst of the diesel emissions scandal and simultaneously facing the most profound transformation in automotive history: electrification, digitalisation, and new competitors like Tesla. Diverging interests, political agendas, and deeply entrenched structures made the project even more complex.
The critical question: how do you get an organisation of this scale to rethink its direction – despite current success, despite ingrained structures, despite the most diverse stakeholder landscape imaginable?
Diess turned to an instrument he had already used in previous leadership situations: Syntegration® by Professor Fredmund Malik.
In his LinkedIn post, he describes the method as follows:
"It enables you to thoroughly work through complex topics in large organisations with the decisive stakeholders, efficiently and effectively. Participants analyse the situation, discuss and jointly agree on a strategy – and then carry it into the organisation and implement it together."
He describes two specific applications in detail:
Shortly after the diesel scandal broke, Diess organised a Syntegration workshop with 42 top executives from the Volkswagen passenger car brand. The opening question was:
What do we need to visibly do in the next three to six months to use our crisis as a launchpad into our new automotive future?
The result became the foundation for "Transform 2025 – the Strategy for New Volkswagen." Five years later, Diess noted, the measures developed were implemented more consistently than almost anything else in his career – including the decision to develop a dedicated electric platform (MEB), which now underpins ten models across five brands.
Five years later, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Diess organised a second workshop – this time with 31 top executives from Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche. The opening question:
What do we need to have achieved in the next 6 months to catch up with Tesla technologically by 2024?
The results: an accelerated build-up of software competence, the founding of Artemis – an organisation outside existing group structures – and the concentration of forces at Audi under Markus Duesmann.
Diess puts it plainly: conventional methods produce the lowest common denominator. Syntegration® produces the optimal shared result.
The difference lies in the structure of the method itself. Syntegration® was developed by Professor Stafford Beer based on cybernetic principles and refined into a management method by Professor Fredmund Malik. Participants – typically between 10 and 42 people – are networked in a way that optimally releases the collective intelligence of the group. No hierarchy dominates, no opinion leader blocks, no compromise dilutes the outcome.
This creates something rare in complex organisations: a shared assessment of the situation, a shared plan, and genuine commitment to implementation.
In organisations with complex power structures – as Diess experienced at VW – that is precisely the prerequisite for successful transformation.
The challenge Diess faced at VW is not exceptional. Many large organisations face similar questions: how do you work through complex topics with the right stakeholders? How do you create genuine commitment rather than superficial agreement? How do you implement a strategy that is truly owned by the people who need to execute it?
Syntegration® is not a method for straightforward decisions. It is an instrument for exactly those situations where conventional approaches reach their limits – when the complexity is too great, the stakeholders too diverse, and the consequences too far-reaching.
Read Herbert Diess' full LinkedIn post here
Learn more about Syntegration® at pims.ai: Transformation & Change
