That said, there's no need to take them to the nearest "greasy spoon", Mahoiney notes. "Don't be ridiculous about it. I knew a chairman who said that lunches should be provided by staff internally, CIOs should also reflect conspicuous frugality but not be defined by it. They should resolve to occasionally and visibly splash out a little -- where it really matters to staff moral such as training courses or software development tools. Work on real money saving like flying economy instead of business class -- but avoid empty-gesture cost cutting such as taking cookies off the plate at management meetings.

Theme 4 and Resolution #10: Newer technologies to get experience of in 2009: With so much work to do, Gartner reminded CIOs that they need to protect the time to stay in touch and get 'hands-on' with some key technologies in 2009:

-- e-book readers

-- Google Chrome

-- Building mini cloud applications