It’s the bête noire of C-level managers the world over — too often, it’s easy to be pulled into the morass of day-to-day issues at the expense of strategy. If the role is predominantly operational, fair enough, but being forced into operations when you were hired to be strategic (or vice versa) is frustrating for everybody involved. So how do CIOs balance operations and strategy? Aligning the departmental business plan with the organisation’s strategic plan is an obvious starting point. Beyond that, however, CIOs have developed their own methods of staying strategic.