Sanjay Mirchandani is president and CEO of Puppet, the standard for automating the software that powers everything around us.

IT has a perception challenge. While IT is the heart of the business, it is frequently overlooked as a back office firefighter — or worse, the cause of a problem during an outage or a help desk call. If transactions are not processed, customers are not supported or products are not shipped on time, IT is often blamed.

That said, times are slowly changing. Businesses now require more performance, stability and security with digital innovations to penetrate new markets and disrupt their industries. As the CIO, you can use your end-to-end view of the business to help the company succeed. But first, your leaders must see you as strategic.

As an accidental (and now recovering) CIO, I quickly learned to shift my focus from being technical to having a business strategy while overcoming challenges and promoting our contributions better to earn a seat at the table. Here are some learnings that have worked not just for me but also for other strategic CIOs who are now CEOs.

1. Own A Business Within The Business

To be perceived more strategically, CIOs should ask to run an additional business. For instance, as a CIO, I led the company’s Centers of Excellence which helped me:

• Experience first-hand what IT’s internal customers received or endured daily

• Use business unit metrics to manage the team like any other business line

• Prove my ability to drive operational excellence and pursue business results that matter