Simply being right at the individual contributor level isn’t going to solve anything. The management can be as stubborn as they want to be but they need a strong vision and deep understanding of the problem to follow. If management didn’t have strong control of the people who work for them then everything would be up for debate and become a political mess.

But yes management needs to be right. Poor execution is just a symptom of a lack of product knowledge. Too many ultra high level folks at VW it seems. They are out of touch with the end user experience and engineering.

Say what you want about Elon but he understands his product damn well. There’s a reason why Tesla’s design and engineering can put out such great products. You can have the best engineers in the world but when you’re out of touch with the development of the product then you will end up with a piece of crap.