"We wanted something everyone could use with minimal training," Carroll says. "What we need are very simple systems, not a lot of fancy bells and whistles. That differs from the commercial market, where they want you to have all these new network options and all these reports and all these fancy things that require you to have the tech guy."

Carroll says IT executives, whether military or corporate, should question whether they need such advanced technology or whether their missions could be met with simpler (and often cheaper) equipment.

Escalate suggestions to the next level. Good ideas get lost even under normal working conditions, so it's easy to imagine how they could get overlooked in a crisis. Consider, for example, that the computers the American Red Cross set up in Louisiana will be wiped clean when the work is done. Any new program installed on the fly, no matter how helpful, won't make it to the next disaster zone, says Matthew Feeney, information systems manager at the St. Paul, Minn., American Red Cross chapter and volunteer manager of the organization's Response Technical Team.

So when a volunteer in Louisiana suggested using Microsoft Windows SharePoint to prevent data loss, Feeney made sure the idea first went to the right people in headquarters, who then approved it. Sound like bureaucracy? Not quite, Feeney says. The process ensures that this good idea will be incorporated in future work.

Use personalities to your advantage. Feeney's staff in Louisiana was an odd mix of business and IT executives, students and workers of every experience level. More important, though, Feeney found that these volunteers had a mix of personalities, too.