Gartner Video: 'Worst year ever' for IT spending

Gartner: 'Worst year ever' for IT spending

Gartner says Silicon Valley no longer in the driver's seat
At the Gartner Symposium/ITExpo 2009 in Orlando, Fla., Peter Sondergaard, a senior vice president of research at Gartner, says 2009 was the worst spending cycle ever. He adds that Silicon Valley will no longer be in charge of the rebound and emerging regions will drive IT spending and how it's deployed.

Expanding your career in a shrinking market

It is the aim and nature of all professional people to develop themselves to the maximum. The mantra states; we must maximize our potential and grow our careers.

To do that you have to achieve better results than those around you and without 'over' achieving. Although, this last point is more a problem for older more mature employees.

Remember there is a tiger at the door; So you are in direct competition with everyone else in your company

Consider some simple techniques to help you get more recognition and better results for your efforts.

1) When the bell rings, come out fighting.

• Be the first to arrive and the last to leave.
  
• Be sure to be caught working all the time you are at work.
  
• Start the day with the most important, onerous or the most difficult tasks.
  
• Do not surf the Internet, make personal calls, read the newspaper or make small talk with the 'losers'.
  
• Check your list of activities for the day,
  
• Focus on establishing priorities and get on with it.
  
• Start knocking down those skittles!
  

2) Fill your day with achievements.

• Always be the one that contributes positively at meetings and in face-to-face interaction.
• Ask your boss and yourself, what you can do to provide the greatest contribution to the organisation.
  
• Let everyone know that you are willing to go the extra mile or kilometre.
  
• Do more than the basic minimum, more than you are paid to do.
  
• Be seen to be the one that puts in more effort than the others.
  
• Look for solutions, methods or tools that will allow you and therefore the organisation, to be more effective.
  

3) Set a scorching pace.

• Your career is not a quick sprint or dash across the hurdles.
• It is more enduring like a marathon:
  
• Some runners sprint off at the beginning and get out way ahead of the pack.
  
• Most will be happier running with the pack, safe in the middle, un-noticed, unseen
  
• There are many who are less fit and not really motivated. They are content to be in the race at all but they are clearly seen to be struggling and lagging behind the pack.
  
• Your place is up amongst the leaders, being in the right place at the right time. Excel in hitting targets, achieving goals and milestones.

Take control of your life, your day and yourself. Start each working day with a list of planned activities carried over from the previous day. These will be organised by their priority, so you can address each task as the priorities dictate.

This is a life discipline not just an office routine and will make you more efficient, targetted and better directed as a person. This, in itself will make you stand out from the ambling, gasping crowd and when all around are losing their's, your career will soar.

If you are looking for promotion, assume the position

Stay Focused - Tough Times ahead

Budget cuts. Layoffs. Doing more with less. Sound familiar? Every manager is suddenly tasked with putting out fires on multiple fronts, as businesses struggle to survive amid the economy's smoking ruins. Don't forget your day job, little things like keeping the service levels (SLAs), servers and network availability in the greenest of green.

The mounting responsibilities and demands can be both personally distracting and professionally discouraging for some IT and business managers: The US's work-related worries jumped from 62 percent to 67 percent between April and October 2008, according to the American Psychological Association.

Now, more than ever, focus is the name of the game, especially when people and money are tight.

Finding and maintaining your office Zen isn't as easy these days. Drawing on past experiences, here's how some current and former CIOs have maintained focus in their role and within their department during a crisis.

"After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, business was struggling and the workplace was pretty tense," recalls Les Duncan, then senior vice president and CIO at Joann Stores.

To ease staff concerns, Duncan held regular meetings where he could speak directly about business conditions and highlighted that week's or month's hot issues. His staff knew how the company planned to weather the difficult times so they could focus on their work, he says. "This transparency also helped me to stay focused on what was really important i.e. the success or failure of the business during hard times."

Get busy and stay busy. We've all worked at businesses where large numbers of employees were cut from the payroll. Most of the employees ran around huddling in small groups talking about the latest rumour, but you want to be in the group that stays busy and focused on delivering. So busy that you don't have time to whine.

Positivity and flexibility is essential in staying on target at work. "Anticipate changes by checking in frequently with business decision makers and stay on the offensive by killing projects that are going nowhere".

Try to see the opportunity in any major change. It's a good time to offer assistance to colleagues and take on tasks that might normally be outside your scope. This is not the time to hide in an IT or business silo, but the ideal time to step out of it. Create the space and opportunity to innovate. It costs very little and can result in new opportunities and growth.