March 26, 2001, 4:44 PM — Steven Bandrowczak has a big issue with information technology staffers who don't know how to mingle beyond their own department. That kind of "us and them" mentality is not only antisocial, but also self-defeating, says Bandrowczak, Avnet's CIO.
To counter that attitude, Bandrowczak will send Avnet programmers and marketing executives out on trail rides together. He sometimes teams network administrators with sales managers for a night of bowling. And once a month, he hosts "Breakfast with Steve," where he briefs IT staffers on important non-IT business issues at the Phoenix-based company.
When it comes to making sure his staff is clear on company direction, Bandrowczak leaves nothing to chance.
Anything "to try and get a sense of commonality" between the electronic distribution and material management company's many separate business divisions, Bandrowczak says. The payoff: better communication, productivity, and morale for his staff and the rest of the company.
The "us and them" mentality Bandrowczak is challenging at Avnet is hardly an anomaly in corporate America. IT professionals and their managers often find themselves relegated to their own, somewhat isolated corner of the corporation, waiting to be called on when in-house technology goes wrong or upgrades are required. The result: IT staffers are often dissatisfied with their jobs.
That's exactly what Questar, a full-service research and consulting company, found. The Eagan, Minn.-based research firm specializes in employee and organizational behavior and recently analyzed how its own employees from different departments communicate with one another.
"When Questar employees from outside IT talk to our IT support staff, which is on a pretty regular basis, it is usually with a sense of urgency because something has gone wrong," says Jennifer Mattocks, a Questar consultant. These exchanges, Mattocks has found, tend to be "more negative" and less empathetic than interactions between employees in other departments.
That isn't the case at Avnet, AirGas, or Solectron, all deemed Best Places to Work. In fact, the one thing all three companies have in common is they actively push cross-divisional team-building.
Cross-divisional teams, as defined by those companies' CIOs, could involve activities ranging from exercises designed to mix staff and managers from different divisions to the formation of teams of employees from different units who work together on IT deployments. These CIOs see team-building as a way to eliminate communication gaps.
On average, 61 percent of employees at the companies on this year's Best Places list work in cross-functional teams with business staff.
How do the employees feel about it? For them, team-building can result in greater job satisfaction, a more exciting career path, and a greater sense of purpose.
"If team-building can help me get to know the people I'm supposed to serve better, that is better for me. It increases my value within the organization and puts me on a better, more diverse career path," says Casey Zandbergen, a senior information systems manager at AirGas.
When Zandbergen first came to the Radnor, Pa., industrial and medical gas distributor, he knew little about the company's non-IT-related business. Not anymore.
Through the cross-divisional field project management approach established by AirGas CIO Sandy Goldstein two and a half years ago, Zandbergen says he's received a crash course in Business 101.
Under Goldstein's tutelage, AirGas instituted an "externship" program where IT staffers and managers are assigned to work in divisions outside of their own for several weeks a year. To further facilitate communication, AirGas has invested in a videoconferencing network based on Microsoft NetMeeting, which enables IT and non-IT project associates to communicate with one another from their home or field sales offices.
"I've seen a lot of my friends working in other IT departments become pigeon-holed, working on the same types of projects with the same people," Zandbergen says. "Not me. I have a lot of understanding of business processes, not just IT business processes."
It's exactly that kind of broader business process understanding that Ken Ouchi, vice president and CIO at Milpitas, Calif.-based Solectron, wants for his IT staff.
Solectron provides manufacturing services to resellers in the electronics and computer industry. With 23 sites around the globe and multiple business units, Ouchi says he knew it would be difficult to keep his 350-person IT staff on the same page as the rest of the companies' 30,000 or so employees. "We are growing so fast, bringing in so much new technology. This could be a real frustrating job if you didn't understand what it was all for," he says.
