Nate Beran wrote a really good post about how IT views itself within a business over at his personal blog. It is called Dangers of IT Exceptionalism and I recommend you go and read it. It cuts to the heart of how IT views itself and how it is viewed within businesses. Both really excellent things to look at.
Here is one of my favorite lines:
The other problem, as I see it, is that IT has a uniquely global view of the enterprise.
That is 100% true. IT has the opportunity to touch almost every aspect of an organization. This is both a great power … and a great responsibility.
I agree with everything else Nate writes in the post about treating other departments as colleagues because, really, that is what they are. Every person you work with as an internal IT member is a colleague at that organization. You all are working toward the same goals and need to keep that in mind.
This can mean cutting people some slack when they seemingly “just don’t get it”, but also speaking your mind and being outspoken about things as well. The part about being true colleagues is that everyone should feel free to both agree and disagree on almost every subject because from that mass of ideas and/or opinions a good one will pop out you were not expecting.