Each year around this time, companies enter the familiar ritual of budgeting. For many, it feels like a long and exhausting negotiation between ambition and constraint. Everyone knows, it has to be done. Few look forward to it.
This year carries a different mood. Lately, most of my conversations start the same way. People say they have been saving money all year, that new initiatives they planned had to be postponed, and that they’ll be satisfied just keeping the same budget, minus the usual five percent.
At that point, I often pause for a moment and ask whether they are still spending money.
The answer is always yes. Infrastructure projects. Workplace projects. Maintenance. Meaning that there is a running cost that consumes the entire budget. So my question is:
Are you spending it on the right things?
That question often quiets the room. I understand why. I have been there myself – promising a future state to secure funding, then chasing that promise with determination, even when the world around me was already changing. It’s difficult to stop, reassess, and admit that stability has become inertia.
Most leaders strive to build environments that feel safe and predictable. We carry responsibility for people, for teams, for families. Predictability makes that easier. But the same predictability that builds trust can also dull movement. What feels like steadiness can gradually turn into resistance.
An IT organization running like clockwork may look successful, yet that same perfection can start blocking growth. In chaotic companies, stability creates relief. In stable ones, too much of it becomes a quiet obstacle.
There is a word from my studies that describes what happens next: Reflektionsentlastet, which means “relieved of reflection.” It’s the state in which tasks have been repeated so many times that the brain stops paying attention. Typing without thinking where the letters are. Executing processes without noticing their purpose. For me, typing is comfort zone; for someone in a manufacturing plant, it may be a complex skill that requires full focus. Everything depends on what has been practiced long enough to feel automatic.
This is how comfort zones form; not from laziness, but from repetition. To leave that state often requires an external push: a deadline, an unexpected pressure, a changing market, or, quite often, a shrinking budget. Such pressures bring awareness back. They interrupt routine and make room for new thinking.
I’ve always appreciated stable and reliable IT and Data environments. They are the foundation on which companies run. But I also notice how often leaders proudly mention people who have worked in the same infrastructure teams for twenty years. Experience deserves respect, yet time changes context. Within that same period, technology has gone through at least two or three major shifts. Managing through each of them successfully once does not guarantee readiness for the next.
A balanced team matters most: veterans who carry the depth of experience, and newcomers who question established paths. When that balance fades, one phrase begins to echo through meetings: we have always done it this way.
External factors exist to break that pattern. Economic pressure. Market shifts. A smaller budget. They all force the same reflection: what is truly necessary, and what continues simply because it always has? That tension can feel uncomfortable, but it keeps the organization alive. It keeps IT relevant instead of ornamental. Companies that keep moving in this way become digital innovators; those that don’t end up paying for scattered tools and shadow IT that fills the gaps.
From this angle, shrinking IT budgets serves a healthy purpose. They cut through noise and habit. They demand focus. They expose what still creates value and what only consumes it. And when IT and Data act as real enablers of progress, organizations naturally start investing in them again.
Smaller budgets, in that sense, are a reminder. Pressure keeps us learning. Reflection keeps us sharp. And clarity —born from constraint— is what keeps technology meaningful.
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