Remember January – It’s over. Not the recession, but the concern that we might be headed into the next great depression. Now it just looks like the worst recession in decades.

After a heavy focus on sharp cost cutting many organizations are now starting loosen up and restart the strategic programs that were cancelled and delayed earlier in the year. For IT this means that the pendulum is about to swing in the opposite direction as companies respond to the strategic move of their competitors, rapid mergers and acquisitions, operations consolidations, changes in customer behavior, product mix & government stimulus.

I expect that there will be a wave of new business demands that the IT organization will need to address in order to maximize the opportunity that exists as we move from expected depression, stagflation, and recession to slow to moderate growth. These challenges will be hard to address with staffing thin, strategic programs stalled and resources focused on short term ROI initiatives.

Here are 5 ideas to help you prepare for the next wave of IT investment:

1) Hire to the bench

Preemptively hire key skills and talent, taking advantage of the current job market.

2) Implement strategic and tactical vendor relationships -

with service providers with critical high demand skills such as Business Intelligence, BPM & SOA

3) Work with HR and the executive team to create innovative staff retention strategies for key IT team members.

If your staff has experienced salary caps, reductions, 401k match eliminations, tuition reimbursement eliminations then they may be lured away by competitors who can make them whole again. (Think GE’s rapid stimulus funded growth in electronic medical records?)

4) Loyalty is an emotion.

Get on the floor and tell team members how much you appreciate their hard work and commitment during the last 9 months. Take them to lunch and spoil them!

5) “Just did it”

Create a culture of action and results and reward accordingly.