There are some technologies now available that can "temper the tempers," including Online Development Inc.'s xCoupler. The configuration tool has been adopted by companies such as Rockwell Automation, which uses it to move data between its Logix processors and enterprise databases. xCoupler is not unlike some of the middleware approaches currently available, except that it is not application-specific, and it can populate multiple databases with one read of data. This eases the burden on people -- regardless of which group they are in -- to validate the accuracy of the data because it is all coming from the same source. "There needs to be something everyone can agree on," says Ron Monday, Online Development's president and CEO.

xCoupler is a big step forward in helping companies access one version of the truth, but the lingering problem is more social than technical. "It's two different mindsets," Monday says. "The guy in the front office wants data every eight hours, while the manufacturing guy is doing everything in real time."

Managing Emotion

When Robert Reed joined Coffee Bean International as vice president of manufacturing three years ago, there was no interaction between the IT department and the production floor, mainly because there were no computers in the plant and therefore no need for the IT group to get involved in what was brewing on the other side of the house. But Reed was responsible for moving production to an electronic format. And to do that, he needed IT.

"The first thing I did was get the IT department into the plant and let them tell me what they would do given the opportunity and the money," Reed says. "I also started looking for manufacturing people, be it machine operators or managers, who had a desire to develop IT skills or had an IT background."

The group Reed formed drove the entire project from beginning to end and was ultimately responsible for taking the paper out of the plant. What's more interesting is that the plant managers learned a new lifestyle. "The production and QA [quality assurance] managers are so involved with IT that they are almost a part of that department," Reed notes. They can even program and troubleshoot software.

It is, he says, "one big technology group." Granted, Coffee Bean International is a small, Portland, OR-based company of 125 employees, and therefore may be more manageable, but if the will of the employees is strong, it doesn't matter how many people are involved.

Motivational Drivers

What are the drivers that motivate teams to collaborate? A study of Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceuticals businesses conducted by researchers affiliated with the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (EI Consortium) boiled it down to accountability, balance, and drivers that increase trust, ownership, and high performance within cross-functional teams. (See sidebar.)

Some of the findings from the J&J study are straightforward and easy to implement, such as aligning team goals with business, developing a clear and specific action plan, diligently documenting work, and conducting lessons-learned reviews. But other aspects of the study require people to step back from rigid rules and corporate governance, and inject some empathy into the initiative.