There's an abundance of business strategy tomes to mug up on but some of the best advice comes from other sources.
The Art of War, written 2500 years ago by the Chinese General Sun Tsu, for instance, is still frequently digested by business leaders. We asked a panel of current and former CIOs for their business strategy tips.
What is business strategy?
Business strategies consist of several components but there are two big points for the IT chief to consider. The first is the commercial strategy, which is all about product and customers.
This isn't always the CIO's sphere of influence, although he or she must know it inside out.
The second is the business model, which is concerned with, among other things, how to segment customers and deliver product. This is the realm of the CIO and it's your task to engage with it and, if necessary, change it.
Align IT to the business
The alignment mantra is pretty old hat, but for some companies and CIOs it never goes away. If you're not doing that as a bare minimum, there's going to be a problem.
Ideally IT should be fused to the business, supporting it and following it all the way.
Sometimes this is referred to as an information systems strategy, where infrastructure stuff is pure IT strategy. There's a toolkit of methods and techniques to help you evaluate and put information systems strategy in place.
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The first step is to call a workshop and get senior business leaders involved in the necessary analysis.
Conduct analysis
There are lots of fancy names for methods but they all amount to the same thing and are pretty straightforward.
Your analysis should identify the business' objectives and then, how information systems can support or improve their delivery. In retail, for example, it may be a calculator that tells a customer at the till how much they have saved by not shopping at Tesco that week.
Another analysis will deconstruct the value chain and how information is passed up and down it. If this can be made more efficient, it could help you flog more products.
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