CERN's Collaborative Management Model

Business leaders could learn valuable leadership lessons from the collaborative management style at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

By Krisztina Holly

As a business leader, imagine trying to manage more than 7,000 scientists from 85 countries around the world—with their own languages, cultures, and expertise—on a 20-year collaboration to create the most complex system ever built.

Now imagine the goal is to recreate the conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. And none of the experts on your team will get personal credit for changing our fundamental understanding of the universe. And oh, by the way, you don't have control of anyone's paycheck.

It might seem like an impossible management situation. But that is exactly what is going on at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.

The LHC has garnered some attention to date: An explosion last September delayed the experiments for a year, myths of black holes still plague the program, and the just released movie Angels and Demons features a fictitious "antimatter bomb" from CERN. But these issues distract us from the real story.

Beyond the atom-smashing, business leaders have special reason to examine what is going on in Geneva. CERN's remarkable leadership and culture are what make their extraordinary advancements possible. And most important, we can apply these principles to stimulate innovation in our own organizations, no matter how big or small.

The Power of Collective Ownership

I visited CERN twice last year, and it is a wonder to behold: a 27-km-long circular tunnel and four enormous detectors, buried 100 meters underground. One of the four experiments, called ATLAS, weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower, has about 20 million components, uses 3000 km of cables and 1000 km of piping, and requires some 5 million lines of computing code to run.

You might assume a project this massive requires top-down, authoritative leadership. But there are no directors. No CEOs or presidents. No corner offices. In fact, the main building is cylindrical, with every office the same size. The leader of each experiment is called the "spokesperson," and a "resource coordinator" tracks the allocation of money and people.

LHC leaders create the framework for people to share and contribute. Gathering spaces throughout CERN serve as giant "water coolers" where ideas can be shared. Different perspectives are valued, and decisions are made with input from everyone. How? With weeklong summits, held three or four times a year; thousands of less formal meetings that are open to all collaborators, and an online system that allows participants to browse agenda and watch presentations remotely.

To a fast-paced corporate executive, this may sound like overkill, but the investment up front eliminates costly issues that can surface later. Everyone feels ownership and commitment.

Building a Sense of Trust

The entire community at CERN operates with a profound sense of trust that comes from a mutual code of ethics. Everyone is expected to work hard and share.

Because their community is close-knit and their most valuable currency is reputation, experimental physicists around the world know who contributes. Conversely, the few who have been too proprietary with their ideas have been ostracized. It's like a crowd-sourced performance review.

Notably, CERN promotes the open-access movement in scientific publishing; anyone can access results, which are posted to the CERN library site.

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