"People get overlooked based on everything from age to how they come off," Thode says. But good managers seek out expertise from all sources and then pull those people into the team.

Foster a service attitude. It's easy to forget relationships when work focuses on routers, servers and networks. But Thode can attest to the importance of building rapport among colleagues. "The relationships helped us get right to work," he says.

When he showed up at 1 a.m. on a Sunday outside a previously vacant facility taken over by America's Second Harvest, agency workers welcomed the unexpected support. Work started immediately, despite the hour, and later that day, Thode was rolling out new systems and training agency staff.

Thode says the seeds of such cooperation are sown well before a crisis. "It's really an attitude you have to ingrain in your staff. So whether you're selling widgets or you have an IT department that supports a sale, take a service attitude," he says. That approach will win points with clients, whether they're signing a contract or queuing up for emergency supplies.

Name a point person. Lt. Col. Mike Plummer commands the Army's 67th Signal Battalion and oversees teams of IT workers who support field work. After Hurricane Katrina, his battalion deployed to Camp Shelby, Miss., to support relief operations, taking with it data packages that included equipment needed for secure Internet, phone and network connections.