IT vice president Zeke Zoccoli and EAP group services president Cindy Sheriff found that the two groups of professionals they represented worked and thought very differently. Going to endless meetings and making collaborative decisions about software implementation and desktop interface taught them a lot about how to communicate.

"I learned, as an IT person, to start the meeting by asking everybody how they felt, and then by ending the meeting by asking them if they felt better," Zoccoli recalled. "It was interesting how Zeke approached it with his IT staff," added Sheriff. "They learned our personalities and would adjust their meetings based on who they were meeting with."

"I think every one ended up slightly changed," said Zoccoli. "The relationship between the two groups, which actually was a very bad relationship at the beginning of the project (the two groups had never really worked that well together), is actually the best I've ever worked with, now. Usually at the end of a big project it gets worse, not better."

And it was that good relationship that enabled the EAP group to get the bigger budget they asked their corporation's leadership for. Zoccoli told us:

"This shared vision between business and IT is often talked about, and very rarely experienced. With such strong synergy and willingness to take a risk, our management felt confident that it would be successful, if only by the strong desire that IT and the EAP group had to fulfill the vision. In the end it was the teamwork and true shared opinion that swayed the leadership."