As Smith explained, "It's no longer about infrastructure. It's about developing solutions that are built for operations, and having an understanding that goes all the way through the chain." To accomplish that goal, he said, "You can no longer have a dev group and an ops group."

Clear Channel broke down barriers between IT architects and developers and now maintains a tight connection between the team designing and building applications, and the team responsible for the systems architecture. At least, that's how the PR department might describe it. According to Szurek, the cultural evolution doesn't mean that everyone likes each other. "We don't have too much hugging and kissing going on," he said. "But people are learning to be more respectful of each other." And they're behaving in ways that benefit everyone.

In day to day terms, said Smith, developers and operations people understand that "this problem is a common problem." They describe it as a problem ownership issue rather than one of personal friendship. The software belongs to both teams, he said: "We're not doing each other a favor," he said. The attitude is, "This is my work, too."

Behind the consciousness-raising, said Smith and Szurek, is a cultural awareness in the Clear Channel IT community, spearheaded by the company's CIO, David Wilson. Using techniques to help people improve how they talk and listen to one another, explained Smith, has encouraged everyone to be aware of how they work together. "And to get better at it," Szurek added.

Doing so was a necessity. Clear Channel had grown swiftly from mergers and acquisitions. Naturally, the company wanted to keep the top notch IT people, but the M&A activity generated "a whole bunch of strong, aggressive people with overlapping job functions," said Szurek, as well as uncertain domains of where one's responsibility began and ended. So the company put an emphasis on identifying roles, improving communication skills, and offering training for conflict resolution skills.

It's worked. People listen to understand, Smith said. Not to agree, not to wait for their turn to talk. But to understand—and good decisions follow. "You can taste the difference in the conversation," he said. That means that IT conflicts are resolved faster, with potential fires stomped out before the flames start.

Previously, problems would be escalated before they were resolved, sometimes up to the CIO level. Now, Szurek says, they're being resolved at the peer level. Smith said, "We, like everyone, had situations where inappropriate, ranting e-mail messages went out. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've seen one of those!"