Senior IT executives in North America believe they are successfully aligning IT strategy with the needs of the businesses they serve, according to McKinsey’s recent survey of chief information officers and other senior IT executives.¹ Such an alignment, in our experience, typically means CIOs are collaborating with the business in ways that add significant value, rather than just reacting to the demands of the business. Within our framework for maturity of IT strategy (Exhibit 1), we consider this to be a more advanced stage of IT strategy. IT organizations that have mastered the art of business collaboration may be poised to move to a more advanced form of strategic planning, a level at which they can truly show the business how, where, and when to use IT as a competitive weapon.