IMD-3-2015 © 2009
Marchand, Donald A.; Margery, Philippe
Top great individual accomplishments. The CERN Atlas Job in high energy particle physics, where human aspirations, values and rules are ambitious, financial resources are in the billions, and human collaboration on an international scale must be developed to successfully pool ideas, share learning and innovation, and mobilize a large number of people over several years to execute these initiatives successfully. The ATLAS particle detector is among the biggest, most sophisticated scientific devices ever built. No traditional project management or leadership techniques could have seen through the successful conclusion of the world’s largest scientific machine ever built.
The scale and range of the collaboration mainly outside CERN for pooling resources global challenges conventional views of leadership, project management and cooperation in science and industry. Did 169 institutions and national agencies from 37 nations agree to finance and develop ATLAS? How could a group of 2,500 scientists and engineers, disperse such a long time span? What lessons are there to be learned for leaders and project managers in terms of 1) developing a common vision and strong belief system; 2) engaging thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians and hundreds of suppliers; 3) enabling these people from dozens of countries and ethnic backgrounds to work collectively; 4) accomplishing such successful results on such a large scale; 5) directing without formal authority; 6) earning credibility and legitimacy through consensus building. Learning objectives: Comprehend how “ collaboration on scale” works. Appraise how people “and head” manage a large scale job that's unique with elevated levels of uncertainty and risk. Concentrate on the decision-making challenges and working principles of collaboration from notion to reality that is operational.
Subjects: Leadership; Collaboration; Project management; Knowledge and information management; Large-scale collaboration and project management; Information and knowledge oriented cultures and collaboration
Settings: Worldwide; Scientific research; 2,500 employees; 1989-2009
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