The author states that a CTO should ask questions rather then give orders. What kind of questions?
Even more questions to the business / CEO ( Why this, why now )
"why", "how", "can we", "who can"?
Just try to be humble in the world where nobody knows anything (including yourself)... :)
Then, in a group, probing together for 12 factor app or AWS well architected type principles as well as something like BSA security principles, gets you a very long way.
The framework doesn't matter, just something to cause a beat of design, ops, and threat modeling and "rugged manifesto" thinking.