Most of the activities IT performs aren’t strategic. Like clean sheets, they’re important, but not differentiating. How do you determine what’s strategic? Evaluate the domains of your business. Suppose you’re in the hotel business. One of the things you have to do is make sure customers have clean sheets. If you don’t change the sheets or launder them properly, you’re probably not going to stay in business long. The bad news is that clean sheets are expensive and they don’t differentiate you very much—all your competitors have clean sheets. You’re stuck.