Bridging the gap: How fusion teams drive business-IT alignment
The traditional boundaries between information technology (IT) and business units are becoming increasingly blurred. Especially as organizations adopt digital transformation initiatives such as artificial intelligence, the need for alignment across teams becomes even more critical.
To stay competitive and drive innovation, organizations should work to bridge the gap early between these two domains with high-impact collaboration and consensus on objectives.
THE CHALLENGE AND IMPLICATIONS OF SILOED OPERATIONS
Historically, IT and business units have operated in silos, each focusing on their individual department goals. In fact, according to McKinsey & Company's 2023 The State of Organizations report, 33% of respondents say initiatives in their companies are being launched in organizational silos, thereby limiting their effectiveness. This separation can lead to miscommunication, misaligned goals, and inefficiencies.
Business teams may view IT as a support function, while IT departments might see business units as lacking technical understanding. When IT and business strategies are not in sync, the consequences can be significant. Common challenges include:
Delayed Projects And Outcomes: Without clear communication and shared objectives, projects may face delays due to conflicting priorities or misunderstandings yielding delayed benefits.
Increased Costs And Risk: Disjointed priorities can lead to redundant efforts or investments in technologies that do not support business goals, resulting in wasted resources or increased risk.
Reduced Agility: Organizations may struggle to adapt to market shifts if IT and business units are not working cohesively, leading to missed opportunities.
THE SOLUTION: BUILDING FUSION TEAMS
To overcome these challenges, organizations should consider embracing fusion teams, which are cross-functional groups that integrate members from IT and business units. These teams work collaboratively toward shared objectives, leveraging diverse expertise to drive innovation and efficiency.
By breaking away from the traditional silos, fusion teams can combine technical knowledge with business insights to ensure both perspectives are considered from the start.
At my company, we've embraced the fusion team model to connect the dots between IT and business units. By dedicating professionals from operations, marketing, and technology to work together as cohesive pods, we've witnessed great improvements in project delivery times and value realization, without losing oversight. This collaborative approach has facilitated our ability to align our technological initiatives closely with business objectives, resulting in solutions that are both technically sound and strategically relevant.
KEY STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESSFUL FUSION TEAMS
Building a fusion team is a strong first step toward spanning the divide between IT and business, but assembling the team is only the beginning. To unlock real value, leaders should focus on how to set these teams up for long-term success by ensuring they have the structure, support, and shared goals needed to drive meaningful outcomes.
Strategies leaders can consider include:
Align On Shared Goals: Set clear, common objectives and target outcomes that connect directly to your organization's broader strategy. When everyone understands what they're working toward, teams remain focused, motivated, and aligned. Regularly revisit these goals to ensure they remain relevant as priorities evolve.
Dedicate Resources: Assign employees from IT and business units to work together full time with clear role definition and embedded decision rights. By committing dedicated resources, you foster stronger collaboration and create a sense of ownership within the team.
Choose The Right Team Structure: Think about whether a centralized or decentralized approach fits your organization best. Centralized teams provide structure, consistency, and focus, while decentralized teams may offer more agility and closer ties to specific business functions. In some cases, a hybrid model may offer the best balance.
Rethink Reporting: Consider adjusting reporting lines to drive deeper collaboration. For example, having IT team members temporarily report to business leaders across certain projects can help shift mindsets and instantly realign priorities.
Bridging the gap between IT and business teams is no longer a luxury, but a necessity in today's business environment. By fostering fusion teams and promoting a culture of collaboration, organizations can enhance efficiency, drive innovation, and achieve strategic objectives more effectively.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
TechCrunch
27 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
After a string of successes, early-stage fund Felicis raises fresh $900M
In Brief Felicis founder Aydin Senkut is celebrating his 20th year as an institutional early-stage investor by announcing the firm's biggest fund yet: a $900 million Fund X. This follows the $825 million Fund IX raised in 2023 and the $600 million Fund XIII raised in 2021. Felicis, a seed and Series A firm, is known for backing a long string of successes, including Ayden, Bonobos, Ring, Shopify, and Twitch, among others. Since being founded in 2006, Felicis has backed over 50 unicorns and had over 125 exits, it says. Lately, Felicis, like most VCs, has been all over AI. Its portfolio now includes, for example, Browser Use, Poolside, Runway, and Supabase. 'We believe dozens of $100B+ AI companies will emerge this decade (not merely $1B or $10B),' Felicis wrote in its blog post, adding that 70% of its active portfolio are what it considers AI native startups. Senkut did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
Wall Street Journal
27 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Soft Serve at Home? This $350 Kitchen Gadget Makes It Possible
Making soft serve at home hasn't, historically, worked out so well. Most countertop appliances are designed for hard ice cream. If you go Luddite and leave a carton of ice cream out to thaw just so, it easily ends up somewhere between a milkshake and soup. So, when appliance maker Ninja released the Ninja Swirl by CREAMi Soft Serve & Ice Cream Machine ($350) earlier this year, I was—cautiously—hopeful. Would the quality of the soft serve make it worth laying out the money and the counter space? First, you mix the base—largely milk, cream and sugar—in the provided pint container. (The Swirl comes with recipes.) Then you freeze it for 24 hours. The next day, you load the container into the machine, choose the soft-serve setting, and wait 4-5 minutes as a metal shaft with a toothy blade moves through the frozen base. Next, move the pint container to the Swirl's top left corner and ready a cone or cup. Hold the lever down for about 10 seconds, and a piston pushes the ice cream through a star-shaped silicone tip similar to the kind that pipes frosting onto a cake. The ribbon of soft serve meanders down slowly, tantalizingly. The ice cream will definitely be soft, but it can also be icy. My freezer was already set to zero degrees, but I learned that carving out a spot in the very back chilled the base faster, reduced the iciness and delivered a mouthfeel closer to commercial soft serve. I also found that the base works better with eggs, and experts back me up on this. 'I add eggs when I make soft serve at home,' said Kimberly Bukowski, a dairy foods extension specialist at Cornell University and former ice-cream-shop owner. 'Eggs are a natural emulsifier, so you can use yolks without necessarily having to use any stabilizers.' Adding a couple yolks did make for a richer consistency. You have to cook them first—for food safety and thickening—in a saucepan, to about 170 degrees. Ninja includes egg-based frozen-custard recipes in the book that comes with the Swirl. But this bit of fuss lengthened an already 24-hour-long endeavor. The easier route: Use store-bought hard ice cream as your base. Commercial ice creams have stabilizers to ward off iciness and come in flavors and colors tricky to replicate in your kitchen. (I happen to love an artificially green mint chip.) The machine is loud enough to make your kitchen sound like a wood shop. And it's big, with a 12-by-10-inch footprint. But it's also a twofer, since it churns scoopable ice cream too. Most important, while the ribbon it produces isn't quite as fat as what you get at Mister Softee, it comes close. Turns out, it is pretty exciting to make soft serve at home. The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.
Associated Press
28 minutes ago
- Associated Press
House approves Trump's request to cut funding for NPR, PBS and foreign aid
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House narrowly voted Thursday to cut about $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress as President Donald Trump's administration looks to follow through on work done by the Department of Government Efficiency when it was overseen by Elon Musk. The package targets foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service as well as thousands of public radio and television stations around the country. The vote was 214-212. Republicans are characterizing the spending as wasteful and unnecessary, but Democrats say the rescissions are hurting the United States' standing in the world and will lead to needless deaths. 'Cruelty is the point,' Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said of the proposed spending cuts. The Trump administration is employing a tool rarely used in recent years that allows the president to transmit a request to Congress to cancel previously appropriated funds. That triggers a 45-day clock in which the funds are frozen pending congressional action. If Congress fails to act within that period, then the spending stands. 'This rescissions package sends $9.4 billion back to the U.S. Treasury,' said Rep. Lisa McClain, House Republican Conference chair. 'That's $9.4 billion of savings that taxpayers won't see wasted. It's their money.' The benefit for the administration of a formal rescissions request is that passage requires only a simple majority in the 100-member Senate instead of the 60 votes usually required to get spending bills through that chamber. So if they stay united, Republicans will be able to pass the measure without any Democratic votes. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Senate would likely not take the bill up until July and after it has dealt with Trump's big tax and immigration bill. He also said it's possible the Senate could tweak the bill. The administration is likening the first rescissions package to a test case and says more could be on the way if Congress goes along. Republicans, sensitive to concerns that Trump's sweeping tax and immigration bill would increase future federal deficits, are anxious to demonstrate spending discipline, though the cuts in the package amount to just a sliver of the spending approved by Congress each year. They are betting the cuts prove popular with constituents who align with Trump's 'America first' ideology as well as those who view NPR and PBS as having a liberal bias. In all, the package contains 21 proposed rescissions. Approval would claw back about $900 million from $10 billion that Congress has approved for global health programs. That includes canceling $500 million for activities related to infectious diseases and child and maternal health and another $400 million to address the global HIV epidemic. The Trump administration is also looking to cancel $800 million, or a quarter of the amount Congress approved, for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation, and family reunification for those forced to flee their own country. About 45% of the savings sought by the White House would come from two programs designed to boost the economies, democratic institutions and civil societies in developing countries. Democratic leadership, in urging their caucus to vote no, said that package would eliminate access to clean water for more than 3.6 million people and lead to millions more not having access to a school. 'Those Democrats saying that these rescissions will harm people in other countries are missing the point,' McClain said. 'It's about people in our country being put first.' The Republican president has also asked lawmakers to rescind nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it's slated to receive during the next two budget years. About two-thirds of the money gets distributed to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations. Nearly half of those stations serve rural areas of the country. The association representing local public television stations warns that many of them would be forced to close if the Republican measure passes. Those stations provide emergency alerts, free educational programming and high school sports coverage and highlight hometown heroes. Advocacy groups that serve the world's poorest people are also sounding the alarm and urging lawmakers to vote no. 'We are already seeing women, children and families left without food, clean water and critical services after earlier aid cuts, and aid organizations can barely keep up with rising needs,' said Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, a poverty-fighting organization. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the foreign aid is a tool that prevents conflict and promotes stability, but the measure before the House takes that tool away. 'These cuts will lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, devastating the most vulnerable in the world,' McGovern said. 'This bill is good for Russia and China and undertakers,' added Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. Republicans disparaged the foreign aid spending and sought to link it to programs they said DOGE had uncovered. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said taxpayer dollars had gone to such things as targeting climate change, promoting pottery classes and strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Other Republicans cited similar examples they said DOGE had revealed. 'Yet, my friends on the other side of the aisle would like you to believe, seriously, that if you don't use your taxpayer dollars to fund this absurd list of projects and thousands of others I didn't even list, that somehow people will die and our global standing in the world will crumble,' Roy said. 'Well, let's just reject this now.'
