Because of the length of my recent article, 10 Tried-and-True Tips for Switching Industries (http://www.cio.com/article/505209), a few ideas got left on the editor's clipboard that you may find helpful. So without the benefit of the best editors around, here are the remaining tips that could apply in either career transition or in general day to day department evaluation.

Industry standards like ITIL, PMP, and ITSM may not be all that helpful.
Now don't get me wrong; I appreciate the purpose and framework of these tools. ITIL is a great framework for IT management. But your organization’s potential value from ITIL will very greatly. Every organization will be at a different point in their IT maturity. Some places will embrace state of the art technologies, while others are more prone to letting older technology live on forever. The same applies for PMP and other standards. Before charging down uncharted territory, make sure the the future state you have in mind fits those strict standards.

Join the conversation early, long before you need to steer it.
So, how can join the conversation and become an expert in your new market? Find the key competitors and key players in adjacent industries, learn from them, and be willing to share with them. In my health care practice, I was able to uncover a few nearby practices who were in similar industries. The practice I served was ophthalmology, and the company has very little regional competition, but a lot of colleagues across the country. 10 years ago, I had to rely on my physicians and industry conferences to make those connections. Today, we have social media. (Yes. I LOVE social media.)
Find and follow the thought leaders in the industry, and seek out the top performers as well. When you bring something to the table like “So and so is doing this… I wonder if it will work for us.” Used at the right time, you can break thru the rookie status, bring credibility.

Figure out the true mission critical services for your industry.
Every organization has systems who’s critical status isn’t discovered until the system is off line. If you’re the CIO that uncovers these critical systems and preemptively protects them, then you’re the CIO who makes a big positive impact.
The best way to attack this is to develop a clear application dependency map. Starting from the critical job functions in the revenue path, determine the services that directly support this path, and then the applications, systems and network services that must be functional at to support these services. I find that it helps to think of this map as a variation of the 7 layer network model, adding the user and job functions. Once you identify these dependency’s, adjust your monitoring system an response procedures accordingly.

What tips have I missed? Comments encouraged.
-Marc

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