Commercial Literacy
Sufficient understanding of how the business makes money and what it is measured on to translate technical work into terms that compete for funding.
Technical proposals compete for the same money as everything else, and they compete badly when expressed in technical terms. Commercial literacy is what makes the translation possible.
What it consists of, concretely: knowing how the organisation makes money — which products, which margins, which customers; what the current strategic priorities are and what the executive team is measured on; the cost structure, including what is capital and what is operating expenditure, since that distinction affects how proposals are received; the competitive position; and the regulatory environment, which is frequently the strongest lever available for funding technical work.
How it changes the work: it determines which technical risks matter — a risk to the revenue-generating path is different from one to an internal tool; it supplies the units in which benefit must be expressed, since money, time and risk are what decisions are made in; and it identifies which capabilities are differentiating, which is the input to build-versus-buy and to where engineering effort should concentrate.
How to acquire it: read the annual report and the investor materials, attend business reviews, and ask product managers what they are measured on. It is a small amount of effort that changes an architect's effectiveness more than most technical study.