Six months ago, if First International Bank CEO Brett Silvers spoke once a month to his VP of IT, John Garner, that was a lot. Now, with the bank in the throes of an E-transformation effort, the two speak daily. In recent months, each has learned more about the other's work than they ever expected to before the E-business undertaking began. And that cross-pollination doesn't stop at the top: One-on-one collaboration between business and IT managers takes place at every level of the bank.

"We've become much more collaborative," Silvers says. "We never had tech people so involved in the guts of the organization. The more our technology people are trained on sales and credit, the faster they can translate and integrate what we do into E-business."

As companies pursue new ways of doing business, an increasing number of business and IT managers are finding it necessary to learn more about their counterparts' areas of expertise. In training centers and on corporate campuses nationwide, business professionals are learning about new Internet technologies, and IT managers are studying the finer points of sales, marketing, and finance.

 Some go it alone, reading, studying, and surfing the Web to expand their sphere of knowledge. Others carve time out of their too-busy schedules to attend intensive one-day or one-week courses offered by universities or other organizations (for example, InformationWeek's five-day Executive Boot Camp, being held this week in Berkeley, Calif.). Some even go back to school, juggling a combination of on-campus and online learning while maintaining a significant profile within their companies. Whatever the method, the increased collaboration between IT and business has caused a blurring of the lines that demands an open mind interested in learning.

The new cross-training programs go far beyond well-meaning efforts to foster career development in professionals. A growing number of executives and educators are citing knowledge-sharing between business and IT professionals as a requirement for companies to achieve customer satisfaction, efficient operations, and a competitive advantage in today's fast-paced, technology-powered new economy.

"Marketing and business are constantly asking what's possible. IT needs to know what's desired," says Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and a professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. For that reason, the traditional, hierarchical business model no longer works, and the new economy calls for companies that foster collaboration via a more horizontal structure. Marketing and IT have to continually share information with each other "so they can have a continual stream of information going to their customers," Reich says.

Yet only 20% of U.S. companies have begun to create customer-driven teams that bring these departments together, Reich says. But as more companies begin to realize the importance of shared knowledge, they're emphasizing collaboration between the once-disparate departments of business and IT and forcing changes in the very structure of the business.

At Schneider National Inc., the nation's largest long-haul freight carrier, business analysts are learning how to manipulate a multidimensional database so they can analyze their own data rather than wait for the IT department to serve up results. They receive the most in-depth IT training of any nontechnical professionals in the company--as much as 10 days at a business-intelligence training center at Schneider's headquarters in Green Bay, Wis. "We spent a lot of energy making sure it was taught in business language, not IT language," says Bill Braddy, director of knowledge services at Schneider.

Meanwhile, IT managers shadow customer-service representatives on the job--even donning headphones to listen in on customer calls--to gain insight into how reps use IT on the front lines of the business. "It's a necessary and advisable part of getting comfortable with the business," says Braddy, who participated in the customer-service insight training when he joined Schneider. "It was a humbling experience."

The experience taught Braddy that the service rep must have quick access to a wealth of information about each customer, including personalized data, geographic location, and the level of importance of meeting delivery dates. Equally important--and not to be found in any manual--the training experience gives IT professionals a chance to observe the relationship between customers and service reps. "When you listen to the conversations and watch them interact, you can see what they need to know about the customer and gain first-hand knowledge about how those information services are used," Braddy says. "It's much more powerful than what you get out of a procedures guide."

But the best interaction at Schneider, Braddy says, is an intense, early-morning weekly meeting of a nine-member committee that represents all major units of the company. The purpose: to audition the ideas of business managers proposing IT-driven projects.

In preparation, business managers perform research across just about every department in the company. They must explain the reason for a project, its methodology and time line, and the expected return on investment. "The audience has a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't," Braddy says. "They'll be listening very carefully to see what's feasible. They ask tough questions."

Fortunately, IT collaboration helps preserve the credibility of any E-business idea that business managers float: Each presenter is flanked by an IT sponsor who can assist with technical questions from the committee.

The new era of collaboration often starts at the CEO level. At First International, in Hartford, Conn., Silvers knew that for a successful E-business implementation, close collaboration with Garner was essential. In the process, he had to change his way of thinking about IT. "As CEO, I'm the one most inclined to believe that technology is this imponderable black box and that technology solutions are expensive and very time-consuming to develop," he says.

Silvers searched for companies well into their global Internet business-to-business efforts, concentrating on the industrial marketplace--chemicals, steel, and plastic. He and Garner set up meetings with IT, business, and sales executive teams from 10 companies, hoping to gain a sense of direction for their own efforts. Why the industrial market? Silvers knew such companies might be interested in the bank as a strategic partner for their commercial customers who require financing.

The breakthrough for First International's business-to-business implementation came within 48 hours of one of the first of these meetings. "John [Garner] had the whole process delineated, illustrated, and ready to go at very little cost," Silvers says. "The entire process was mirrored out for how information would need to flow. I was surprised."

During the course of their collaboration, Silvers has learned a great deal about IT, and Garner, who had never been involved in the business of the bank, has become conversant in acquisitions, loan processing, disbursement, and servicing.

Throughout First International, the pace of change and the newness of a technology-driven marketplace is providing excellent learning opportunities, Silvers says. As the company moves toward E-business, workers across every department are learning together, hashing out what their E-business model will be.

"We have technical people sitting in a room [with salespeople] theorizing all the way through implementation," he says. "That never used to happen. And because technical people are involved, our sales staff is becoming more technology-savvy. We're starting to see them develop leadership with their own staff along the way."

Meetings are only the starting point; after they've wrapped up, the sales staff is expected to implement the strategy, involving yet more cross-discipline collaboration. In addition, "The head of IT is now called on for soup-to-nuts conceptualizing--leading people, cajoling them, and training them," says Silvers. "It's made our IT people better managers, too."

There will be formal training as well. Silvers plans to send all of First International's executive managers, including those from IT, to Yale's Management School for executive education, which he describes as "very heavy into organizational behavior, working in teams, and leadership." This year, IT staffers will attend sessions on the core business--banking, financial accounting, and statements, for example. Outside trainers who worked with the sales staff will offer sales training to IT staff.

Meanwhile, colleges and universities are pushing hard to meet rapidly growing demand for cross-training. For example, Stanford University's graduate school of business in Stanford, Calif., will launch a three-day E-commerce program in September (it's already oversubscribed); and Bentley College is building a multimillion-dollar E-commerce education facility set to open in July on its Waltham, Mass., campus.

Executives and managers should be completely open to continual learning and ready to absorb new information as fast as they can, says Bill Miller, former board chairman of Borland International Inc., professor emeritus, and one of the co-founders of the executive education program at Stanford. The one- and two-week programs hosted by the university, at a cost of $6,300 and $11,500, respectively, bring in as many as 50 executives from companies around the world. Usually the group includes five CEOs and five CIOs, with the balance consisting of direct reports, such as VPs and business-unit mangers. In addition to learning from one another, they also come to glean insights from Silicon Valley notables who serve as guest lecturers.

Several courses fall under an area the university calls Strategic Uses of Information Technology. All involve theory, analysis, and business case studies done in teams. "There's a triangle that includes technology, strategy, and organization," says professor Haim Mendelson, who directs the program with Miller. "We provide instructors from each of these areas to offer perspectives on each of these concepts." It's important to give students the ability to put the concepts into practice, Mendelson says. "Actionable information is what's most important. We make sure we show people how to use that."

According to Miller, the courses' greatest benefit stems not from content, but from an attitudinal shift. "The combination of analytical work, plus the cases, helps them orient their mindset," Miller says. For example, business managers "won't be great technical experts after two weeks, but this gives them a strong framework."

Collaboration with universities can come in a number of ways. Steve Finnerty, CIO of Kraft Foods Inc., recalls a cross-training effort that began with a book assignment and led to a program with Northwestern University's business school. In mid-1999, 10 to 15 top IT managers, including Finnerty, who was chief technology officer at the time, and Jim Kinney, who retired as CIO in March, met for a three-day strategy session, using Unleashing The Killer App (Harvard Business School Press, 1998), by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui, as a springboard for discussion.

To draw in business leaders, Kraft's executive committee, led by CEO Robert Eckert, then brought in Northwestern University business professor Anthony Paoni to lead a two-hour discussion of E-business strategies. That led Kraft to hire Northwestern to create a two-day E-commerce program in July for about 50 of its executives, including Finnerty and other top IT managers. "We had people surfing the Net together, conducting brainstorming sessions," Finnerty says. Managers who before thought of E-business only in terms of reaching consumers online to sell products now understand other strategies, such as business-to-business marketplaces.

Finnerty, who has an MBA, says the most important cross-training still goes on outside classrooms. Midcareer IT managers can take part in leadership programs that pair them with more senior mentors on the business side, such as finance or marketing, to provide them with real-life understanding of business issues. "Training programs only provide 10% of the growth; 90% comes from experience," Finnerty says.

In their haste to get managers up to speed, some companies are pushing universities to do more. Case in point: PricewaterhouseCoopers' strategy for putting 10,000 partners through a three-day, custom E-business strategy program. Rather than dictate a specific curriculum, PricewaterhouseCoopers went to six top business schools and asked them each to build a program focused on the characteristics an E-business executive needs, such as understanding how the Internet has increased the rate of change in business. "We want to make sure they get the message: E-business is different," says Chris Kinsey, a consultant in global E-business leadership who worked on the education program.

Last May, PricewaterhouseCoopers pushed the University of Virginia's Darden Business School to create the first course in two months, instead of a traditional six-month cycle for a new executive education course. The firm also insists that the schools--Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, University of Virginia, Instead in France, and the business schools of London and Melbourne, Australia--update the program after each session and share their courses with one another. In return, the schools get a steady flow of paying consultants and PricewaterhouseCoopers clients to the on-campus program, and the firm lets the schools sell the custom course to people unrelated to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Traditionally, business and IT people have been on opposite sides of the room, says David Hernandez, executive creative director of consulting firm Quantum Leap Communications Inc. Hernandez is working with American Airlines Inc. to redesign its Web site using technology from BroadVision Inc. that provides customers visiting the site with personalized content. "Even to have credibility in a conversation with the IT department, you have to have a base level knowledge of what the IT people are using--so they can at least push back."

Sales and marketing executives at American Airlines are taking training with BroadVision products to keep up with the technology capabilities of their Web site, which services 32 million frequent fliers and occasional visitors. "They need to understand and manage the business rules involved in BroadVision," says John Samuels, VP of interactive marketing at the airline. "Once they can apply the business rules to the frequent-flier data in their Sabre reservation system and AAdvantage DB2 database, they can create personalized travel promotions." IT staff from US Web/CKS, which handles the technical side of the site, gets some training on the inner workings of the airline's business.

Not every executive views cross-training as a necessity in the move to E-business. Irving Miller, who was appointed VP for office of the Web at Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. earlier this year, isn't sold on the idea. "I don't know if you need to do crossover training or not," says Miller, who comes from a business marketing background. His own approach to learning about IT involved "hours and hours and hours of surfing," and keeping up with IT publications. Of the businesspeople he's brought into his seven-month-old division, he says, "It's not a formal training that's required as much as a 'no-fear' attitude."

One of the biggest challenges of knowledge sharing is the language gap between business and IT. Surprisingly, the gap can be particularly wide at the CIO-CEO level, according to Northwestern's Paoni. CEOs tend to talk in broad strategic terms, while CIOs focus on implementation and turn to technical language. It's the difference between why do it and how to do it. "I've seen CEOs ask strategic questions and watch the CIO jump right into the how," Paoni says.