Avoiding the "cost center" mentality.

CIO Magazine 2013 State of the CIO Survey lists five stages of an IT organization from a business stakeholders' view:

1. Cost center
2. Service Provider
3. IT Partner
4. Business Peer
5. Business Game Changer

I don't think an IT department needs to start at one phase and work their way forward. However, I do think this list exemplifies the categories of IT organizations I've dealt with. If you think about the book "The Phoenix Project", it really is about how to leap ahead to be the last (best) category.

I think that many people don't even know that anything other than "cost center" is a possibility. Just having an awareness of these 5 categories would help inspire a lot of IT goodness.