The station recently recorded a program featuring Gail Thomas, Co-Organizer of New Tampa Seniors (NTS). This organization was founded by Glynis Ross-Munro of CPS (Competency & Performance Solutions) and is sponsored by CPS. The URL is http://www.meetup.com/New-Tampa-Seniors/.

The upcoming air dates are

Sunday, February 19 at 7:00 PM on Verizon 30, Bright House Network 950, Comcast 20 and watchus.tbcn.org
Thursday, February 23 at 7:00 PM on Verizon 36 and Bright House Network 949
The show may be viewed anytime, anywhere on Youtube.  Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TSftBFZg3A&feature=g-user-ucontext=G2b8e2caUCGXQYbcTJ33Yh_CbTR3zwg8a_g3z_y4KHdwL4gDKj9Gw

NTS was created some time after Glynis’ father passed away. Her mother had become relatively isolated from years of nursing him but there were no suitable groups for seniors, only dating or church groups.

NTS focuses on building friendships for seniors, and empowering them to work together to enjoy many affordable, fun activities. The group is self-governing and free, sponsored and protected from exploitation by CPS. It has over 40 regular members so far.

Seniors groups work best if they are local, so that seniors do not have long drives, especially at night. NTS is based in the New Tampa area. If anyone is interested in starting a group like this, please contact Glynis Ross-Munro (glynis@c-psolutions.com) for advice. Remember that success creates an on-going need to protect the group from exploitation, so please only contact her if you are committed to free, safe groups for seniors.

(Branding is one thing – exploitation is another)

New members (over 60) are welcome to join NTS at http://www.meetup.com/New-Tampa-Seniors/.

IBM’s report on Black Friday & Cyber Monday shows results of the long, slow struggle of the US economy back towards prosperity.

It also shows that managers, leaders, planners and entrepreneurs need solid skills to access and interpret data, as they lead their businesses into 2012.

Business is too complex to trust to “gut feelings.” Your whole team needs good thinking skills and information-crunching skills, including the ability to find and assess data sources. They also need to understand the strategic implications of hard data.

CPS works with leaders, planners and front-line sales people on this issue, because businesses buy from those who understand their market, their industry, current trends and future developments. No one wants to buy from an uninformed order taker. Vendors add value by knowing,  thinking, and being ahead of the curve.

It’s not that difficult.  Organizations like IBM lay out the pieces for you. Okay… so my father was an IBM training manager – but read their report and tell me if I am wrong!

Online sales were up 33% on the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend. Social networking impacted sales. The timing of sales has a clear pattern. iPads and iPhones dominate everyone’s “iWant” lists.

What about your industry?

1. Where is the demand coming from?  Can you map your patterns of demand? Which sources are most profitable? Which are growing or diminishing? Where is there confusion/ambiguity (probably opportunity)?
2. What are your industry’s three biggest problems? What is the iPad of your field? How can you deliver it? What are your three biggest internal areas of resistance (internal attitudinal factors) to tackling this? What are your main technical/logistical or other practical barriers to delivering it?
3. What is your sales cycle? What can shorten it or to make your business a better choice for your customers? (Review you differentiators.)
4. Imagine you’re a purchaser. You’ve turned your back on some vendors this year. Why? Which was the biggest reason? Rank the reasons. If you were a customer, buying your own products or services, what information would you want from your sales consultant?
5. Now be yourself, a vendor, again. Which of your own sales people knows and provides this type of information to customers?  Does this result in sales or simply in unpaid consulting?

Please contact CPS for more information about training and coaching in this area. Contacts include: Glynis: 813-598-9184. Glynis@c-psolutions.com or Hilton: 813-598-9180 Hilton@c-psolutions.com.

Thank you to IBM and other top organizations who generously share their data with many other businesses who do not have the reach or resources to collect valuable information. You help teams to grow their businesses in a challenging economy. You make a difference.

• Preparation 1: Think. Browse my monstrous library. Browse the net. Think again. Pencil and paper, then computer. Draft, write, structure, edit.
• Preparation 2: Mezes with pita, sea bass, rice, salad, dessert.  An army marches on its stomach.
• Preparation 3: Large easel pad, mechanical pencils, small note pads.

The planners bring cold Spanish wine to complement the fish, and discussion begins. Soon the table is covered only with the easel pad, flanked by coffee. We drill down, challenging each other’s assumptions and blind spots, opening new doors, closing others for good reasons. Risks and opportunities, process and content, perspectives and worldviews.

My note pad fills with ideas to be added to my original notes and emailed to my visitors. The easel pad is covered in pencil notes, and (strangely) some pretty good drawings of Batman. The notes will leave with the planners. They will work with other thinkers. The business plan will continue its polishing evolution.

One planner is a professor of Entrepreneurship and the other has a Masters degree in the subject. They were both finalists in SXSW this year. They know the value of sharing diverse and innovative thinking.

I think of the difficulty I sometimes have to get my CPS clients to think innovatively, or even to believe that they can think creatively or innovate. Their profitability and their joy in what they do can be increased so easily, yet the lure of the comfort zone, and the known, can be so strong.

Maybe I should feed them sea bass?

Differentness comes in many forms: age, culture, ethnicity, thinking style, life experience, language, gender, etc. As Vice President of the Tampa Bay International Business Council, I work towards including our many diverse communities into the Tampa Bay economy, because this inclusion is a guarantee of growth and prosperity for the region.

My company, CPS, also trains fluency and inclusion of differentness, culture, generations, and diversity of every kind, because this is a guarantee of growth, innovation, security and development for the businesses and people of the Tampa Bay region.

The facts speak for themselves. More than half of the Silicon Valley companies founded in the past decade were led by at least one immigrant, according to a new study on the contributions of foreign-born entrepreneurs.

Nationwide in the US, about a quarter of technology and engineering companies created from 1995 through 2004 had at least one foreign-born founder, according to the report by Duke University’s Master of Engineering Management program.

The Duke University report expanded on a  study by UC Berkeley Professor Anna Lee Saxenian, which found that foreign-born scientists and engineers played a critical role in the growth of the California economy, particularly in Silicon Valley.

Successful innovators everywhere seek differentness, and invite new perspectives, input, and insights from the different minds in their organizations. They grow a culture of collaboration and critical thinking. They fight homogeneity and group-think as the path to stagnation, same-old-same-old or The Bay of Pigs (the classic case study of similar thinking people, who were not challenged by different perspectives).

Along with seeking differentness, successful organizations learn the ability to hear even soft murmurs from non-mainstream team members. One of Nissan’s most successful designs was created when the entire staff of NDI was brought out to see what was wrong with a model. A shy secretary mentioned quietly that the car looked sad: a simple redesign of the headlight angles was the key requirement.

Great companies walk the walk of growing their people from the (normal, human) position that most people occupy, which is  comfort with their own culture.  It is not easy to take the journey to recognizing, accepting, adapting to and integrating with other cultures or forms of diversity.  Good organizations provide innovative, enjoyable training and coaching that guides their people and supports them on this path. Ultimately, this helps everyone grow, to think in new ways, and to be ready to serve new markets and new customers in a multi-cultural, multi-generational and global world.

Differentness, distance and innovation require a set of thinking tools that are seldom taught in the US education system. However, once they are learned, these become key assets in 21st century business growth, innovation and project success. As they are learned, they also seep into homes and communities, improving the quality of life outside work, and preparing new generations for our ever-more complex world.

Tampa Bay is home to nearly 130 different ethnic and national groups – a wealth of differentness that can fuel an explosion of growth and innovation if we place a solid value on inclusion and diversity.

The Tampa Bay International Business Council is committed to this work – it delivers, but also values all the help we can get.

Competency & Performance Solutions is an innovative, exciting and affordable learning resource that delivers strong, sustainable and measurable  results within the area of differentness, thinking, management and communication. Call us at 813 598 9184.

They do, of course (see links, below*).

Can you harness a significant amount of that power, skillfully and systematically, to build your career and business, in an economy of complexity and information overload?

Can you guide your team to use that power? Can you direct this capacity towards the things that super-computers can’t do: innovation, effective communication, relationship-building, collaboration and results?

Brains are wonderful, but they have two drawbacks.

1. They don’t come with a users’ manual. There is a widespread scarcity of training for leveraging their real capacity. This is serious, because thinking tools are needed for single users, or for those who need to think effectively in collaboration with others.

2. Power in any form is intimidating. Brains are very powerful, and success creates expectations.

Those who think well often acquire new responsibilities for problem solving, conflict resolution, project success etc.

If you have a good toolbox of thinking strategies, you may be expected to guide others through complexity, or show them how to step up to 21^st century challenges.  This can interfere with hobbies, community service or relaxing on the sofa in front of TV. There are many people who are not really interested in learning how to think well, because their comfort zone would be disturbed by their true abilities.

*1: Video: Your amazing brain: http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html

2: Read: We have no computers today that can begin to approach the awesome power of the human mind: http://insidehpc.com/2009/03/12/even-supercomputers-not-yet-close-to-the-raw-power-of-human-brain/

3: Browse: Google “human brain power supercomputer teraflops.”

Joe requested a short program from CPS, built on these principles. The sales team (Jamie, Rick and Craig) helped out with the front-end analysis, and the rest of the team added information as the workshops progressed.
The program ended with each sales team giving a graduation presentation. They chose areas where they saw opportunities to grow their knowledge and develop innovative ideas.

Jamie organizes the slides

Each team gave a presentation, often with tastings, hand-outs, displays and other graphics.

The standard was fantastic. The judges (Joe, Woody, Jamie and Troy) were repeatedly impressed beyond all expectation. Glynis was ecstatic.

The teams reported that they had enjoyed the process, become closer as teams, and learned an immense amount, mainly through their own efforts.

They are mastering the complexity of their product range, and then guiding each customer to benefit from their knowledge, as they grow as business experts and partners: the sales gurus of the 21st century.

Al and the Witbier expertsThe Rolling Rock "Under Sold Products" Team

The photographer couldn't wait for the whole team - or the cider.

An amazing soup and then THIS apple dessert - and the cider!

Craft beer explained...

Gary's team explain old and new beer

Hilton Ross-Munro, Tim Tangreti (Dais CEO) and Dr. HJ Yang. Dais Analytic Corp's nanotechnology-based heating, cooling, ventilation and water filtration products are the cornerstone of a five-year, $200 million agreement with the Chinese government, that could create as many as 1000 jobs for the Tampa Bay region.

The photographs show TBIBC/IBS reaching out to Dais Analytics, as Dr Yang, aka HJ, of the Chinese American Chamber of Commerce, fulfils the TBIBC/IBS mission of reaching out to local businesses who can benefit from cultural and international business competency, in order to be more successful. Dr. Yang is also a director of TBIBC/ IBS.

Others present at the meeting were Glynis and Hilton Ross-Munro of Competency & Performance Solutions (also directors of the Tampa Bay International Business Council/International Business Summit).

The local bi-national Chambers of Commerce offer free and voluntary support for any US or internationally-owned business that can benefit from networking, business or cultural information.

Glynis Ross-Munro, Holly Benson and Dr. HJ Yang at Dais Analytics

Coming events:

The Tampa Bay International Business Council (formerly the International Business Summit) Cocktail party will be held at Brio Tuscan Grille at International Plaza at 5 p.m. on Thursday, 21 October.

The annual IBS Summit will be held on Thursday, 10th March, 2011. Please contact glynis[@]c-psolutions.com regarding sponsorship opportunities for both events, or contact your chosen bi-national chamber of commerce (British, Carribean, Chinese, French, Hispanic, Indo, Philippine, Scandinavian-Baltic etc.) More details and chamber contacts: www.ibsummit.org.

The aquatic metaphor is also apt. We swim in our culture, so like fish we do not notice it. It is the water that surrounds us, and we don’t analyze it. It is simply the environment in which we live.

The other common image of culture is the onion. Our daily lives are framed by layers upon layers of  unseen assumptions and mind-sets. Because we have no need to conceptualizing our world differently, we seldom see it through different interpretations, until some rather dramatic event gives us new eyes. Or until we choose to study behavioural sciences that may help us see many things are hiding, in plain sight, right in front of us.

One layer of the onion that interests me particularly (especially in recession) is the way that trust and collaboration operate in US business, and how this often limits opportunity and prosperity. I am also interested by the way that numerous scientific studies and popular books prove that our tendency to withhold trust and collaboration is ineffective, but it still prevails.

Let us call the general trend we can all observe the “small pie approach”. Small pie behavior says “If you win, then I am probably losing.” Small pie behavior prevents sharing ideas (they could be stolen and claimed by others), networking (others may get to know our prospects and then steal them), growing and building others (they may grow more powerful/successful that us and displace us) or trusting others (they may use us and then stab us in the back when they have gained all the benefit there is to gain.)

Let’s look at the science.  As always when examining culture, remember the mantra: cultures are not right or wrong, they is simply different. We are all acculturated, and one cannot make value judgments about cultures.

Firstly, as a culture, in the US we think short-term. Trompenaars noted that the US is a very present-oriented culture. Geert Hofstede measured the United States’ Long Term Orientation at 29, compared to the world average of 45. This aspect of culture is one of those deep, unseen and unnoticed dimensions which one seldom sees if one has lived all one’s life within a short-horizon thinking world.

Planning horizons in the US are less than 5 years, whereas they are about 10 years in Europe. They are closer to 20 years in the Far East.

Present-oriented cultures tend to expect shorter term relationships. Long-term “people farming” (which includes putting oneself on the line for people, and demonstrating caring and integrity over long periods of time) is therefore not core to such cultures.

Secondly, the US is a specific-oriented culture. We therefore tend to keep private and business agendas separate, and we tend to “box” our relationships into clearly defined sectors. We do not invite our contractors home to hold our babies and play with our dogs, and we are surprised when this happens in certain foreign countries. We have ‘mental boxes’ for tennis friends, gym friends, place-of-worship friends, and work friends. Few people overlap between these categories. As such, trust and collaboration are limited to the particular box in which a person fits.

Thirdly, as all social scientists note, the US is the most individualist nation on earth. We value individual achievement and self-determination as the highest form of personal development. While collectivist cultures value group well-being, and group belonging, as the apex of development, individualist cultures measure self-improvement by the achievement of our own potential.

(This is only beginning to sink into some US human resources departments, who are often still happily using Maslow’s hierarchy. This has started changing because individualist reward systems have produced some very odd results with collectivist Asian, African and Hispanic employees.)

Anthropological data like Trompenaars’ and Hofstede’s research is neither new nor secret. There is a Hofstede iPhone application (CultureGPS) to help international business people to understand US-international differences when traveling. You don’t get more mainstream than that free Mac apps!  http://www.culturegps.com/About.html

Let us turn to the many books and websites that prove that the “small pie” approach is more than ineffective: it is counter-productive to the development of wealth.

• Many things from McKinsey (e.g. Lowell L. Bryan, Claudia L. Joyce’s Mobilizing Minds)
• Most things from FranklinCovey (e.g. The Speed of Trust)
• Anything (almost) with the words Integrity, Innovation, Ethics, Collaborative Intelligence or Collaboration in the title (e.g. The Integrity Dividend, by Tony Simons)
• Anything (almost) that you can Google that talks about how ethics, trust and collaborative intelligence are profitable.

We live in a world where our international competition is often better educated, less fearful and more confident that we are. They are forging ahead in an age when collaborative intelligence and innovation are the keys to wealth, and when cooperation in the only answer to an Age of Complexity.

We can, however, collaborate more, trust more, make our pie bigger, and keep enlarging it.

The barriers we need to fear are the barriers we cannot see, or which we become defensive about, when we do see them.

So it is now time to look at Big Pie people. You can probably look around you and see who builds you, connects you, inspires you and encourages, irrespective of the gain to themselves. There is your first collection.

Visit www.zipcar.com, an example of bigger pie thinking, that uses the concepts of mutual trust, also known as cooperative capitalism.  Robin Chase has another new venture too, called GoLoco.

Bigger pie thinking is seen in many of the ventures called social entrepreneurship, where trust, ethics, and social responsibility move from non-profit to a ‘more-than-profit’ or blended business models, in which everyone wins.

You have seen an example of small pie thinking in the last week or two. You have probably behaved in a small pie way in the last week or two. So have I.

We can do better. Each day we can consciously reach out and make a bigger pie for everyone, build our community, our region and our nation.

I will work with you. Tell me what I can do to make your pie bigger, now or in years to come. I’d like to invite you around to play with the dog and baby, but my ‘baby’ has a masters degree now, and lives in Korea. My old dog has passed on.  Perhaps you have another suggestion? I’m listening.

If we make a bigger pie now, our children will dine well.

Today I’m noticing how often this requires holistic thinking, and a clear focus on the  customer’s world.

Example: A customer buys a lawn service, a pesticide service, occasional pressure washing, a pool service, some external repairs, gutters cleaned, etc. S/he gets occasional internal home maintenance, needs home appliance repairs or maintenance and sometimes forgets to replace the aircon filters, causing the whole air con thing to freeze up.

The customer is busy.  Arranging these services, paying the bills, checking that the providers do their jobs and get access to the property etc is a hassle.None of the actual work is that hard, but the thinking and managing and scheduling and remembering is a pain in the neck, in a world of information overload and endless complexity.

Enter Mr/s Entrepreneurial Thinker. The ultimate value, for the customer, is freedom from the frustrations of the drip-drip-drip of endless little tasks, and nickel-and-dime bills. Some kind of general property preservation contract sounds wonderful. What if someone else did this, and did it properly? Didn’t cut corners (enough fertilizer on the grass!), didn’t screw up (the gutters are always cleaned on time, properly),  and didn’t overcharge….

What if there were regular, coherent reports about what was done? Ahah! Peace of mind, paper or electronic, and one could present the reports to a buyer (or  critical parent!) like a car’s service record to prove excellent maintenance of the property.

Of course it takes thinking…

Some people are doing it already. And plenty of people are buying.

To what extent does your business think innovatively, then execute and deliver real value?  The key to success in the current economy is not about selling the same item or service for a few cents less than your competitor, it’s about changing the game. And then changing it some more. Whenever you want to. Because you can.

Imagine: On vacation, you log on to a website, and check on your pet. There are vidcams in the pet boarding facility, so you can watch your pet eating, sleeping, being groomed or exercising. You happily pay a premium fee to a business that provides both pet lodging and peace of mind. This business has delivered value through strategic thought, innovation and specialty skills.

Consider five more examples, each using strategic thought and insight into the way that customers perceive value:

1) Paperstone, a green manufacturer of kitchen countertops that look like granite, has changed the kitchen game by proving that sustainability, beauty and functionality can go together. Their products are harder than stone but are made from recycled paper and resin. A home can have green appeal, an “in” look and an inexpensive, practical kitchen solution. They also make furniture, paneling etc. What’s not to like?

2) In the 1960s, Helen, Ga, was a run-down ugly town in a pretty setting. The nearby forests were recovering from being logged-out, and the remains of a long-ago gold rush made it an eyesore. With the help of a local artist who had lived in Southern Germany, the townsfolk rebranded it as a Bavarian Alpine Village, and created a year-round roster of activities. Today Helen is the third most popular tourist destination in Georgia.

3) Zappos is one of the top-rated customer service firms in the world. They turned the call center game around by thinking about the best way their internal customer (the call operator) and their external customer (the on-line buyer) could work together to create value. They simply ask their people to solve the customer’s problem any way the two of them want. They don’t time the calls. They don’t monitor the calls. The representatives don’t have scripts. Their people are happy, their clients are happy. And they make a ton of money.

4) Visit Café Press or Ponoko. Each of these companies gives their customers the freedom to make things.  Whether you wish to choose an existing design or upload your own, you can create a t-shirt, hat, birdcage, lamp, table etc, in the color, fabric or material of your choice. You can have it shipped to your door for a startlingly reasonable price.

5) Are you worried that you have sleep apnea? Many sleep labs will drop off a test kit at your own home, for free, to see if you are at risk. This median step bridges the reluctance you probably feel about spending a night at a sleep lab, and also comforts your doctor about the possibility of ordering unnecessary, expensive tests. Once you know you have apnea, however, you will get to that sleep lab quickly, fearing heart damage, brain cell loss etc.

Traditionally, business has looked to deliver value in three ways. Companies have thrived through:

1) Offering the best prices. Any price-based business is an example of the first category. Bricks and mortar (Wal-Mart) or on-line, fast-food or overnight delivery, if the core criterion is price, this is the business model.

2) Carving out niche markets for rare, specialty or unusually high-quality products or services. A business in the second category often has unusual skills, technologies or competencies. This includes niche markets or markets with high barriers for new competitors. An example might be a business making the looms that weave the carpets seen in hotels, where the design fits the room irrespective of size or shape.

3) Offering outstanding service and relationships, and working hard to become reliable and trust-worthy business partners. Nearly every company aspires to the third category, wanting to be trusted, liked, easy to work with, to be the supplier of choice, with great customer service and reliable quality.

As the economic landscape has shifted (into the technological age, not simply into recession) many companies are scrambling after all three of the value propositions. They are cutting prices, working on service and customer relationships and seeking the differentiation of something truly unusual by examining their skills, connections, patents, infrastructure, supply chains, contracts, certifications, relationships or other advantages that create entry barriers for competitors.

The work of lowering prices has led to tightening of businesses processes. Some organizations have done this more thoughtfully than others. One interesting case is Wal-Mart, an organization that has proved that analysis of every aspect of one’s business processes can deliver many savings, and that these can be passed on to customers. They are also an example of how this needs collaborative and strategic thought: in our transparent world, their corporate brand quickly deteriorated when they were perceived as cutting costs at the expense of medical benefits for staff, while companies like Starbucks provided medical insurance even for part-time staff. The Wal-Mart brand recovered when the market became more aware of their green and cost effective initiatives, and their work with local vendors and sustainability instead.

Value and innovation:

This changing economy forces us back to reanalyzing traditional models. Studies show that wealth and prosperity develop around knowledge, education, thought, the lodging of patents, and publishing of papers on new ideas.  Our economy rewards thinking, and innovation because they create value.

In this economy, competing simply on price is often a poor business model. It works like this: you sell roughly the same product or services as your competitor, while charging a few cents less. Costs remain much the same, because you can only tighten the screws on your suppliers to a certain extent before they make no profit. Anyone can Google the lowest price, and eventually price wars lead to a lose-lose result for everyone.

Value is another story. When one thinks about the customer’s definition of value, any business can innovate to become as useful to its customers as that rare company making the looms for hotel carpets.  The market may catch up with you in about 12 to 18 months, if you do not have unusual skills or technology, but when the rest of the market adopts your innovation, it is simply an opportunity to work out a new definition of value that differentiates you again in the eyes of your customers.

Our own company, Competency & Performance Solutions, is a training and consulting business. We find that customers value two things.

- Firstly, many groups and corporations want to think in innovative, entrepreneurial ways, and benefit from an external thinking specialist who can make this happen.

- Secondly, people need new skills, knowledge and new approaches and attitudes, but they can’t afford training that keeps people away from their work for long periods. They need learning to be customized: working time is so valuable that it is highly cost-effective to have a specialist pick out the key issues from otherwise-overwhelming amounts of information. Few companies can afford high-priced consultancies to design one-off training programs that meet all these criteria: the need is for excellent programs that can be customized within days by local providers.

CPS synthesizes and structures core, relevant learning material, and shapes it into interactive, accelerated learning experiences that include the interpersonal aspects of  learning (so that people “feel trained” and invested in).  The focus is on highly collaborative learning, so that people share ideas, innovate and commit as they learn, and build teamwork, higher-order thinking processes and involvement.

CPS therefore demonstrates two entrepreneurial trends:

1) Consulting as “thinking partners”, facilitating thinking, researching and actually doing a lot of thinking, communicating ideas, connecting thinkers (from our networks as well as our clients’ networks) and moving projects along:  This is an example of using unusual skill combinations that are seldom duplicated, but must be maintained by constant study, research and relationship building.

2) Developing interactive, accelerated learning designs: This is an example of a technique that the market can copy, but where there are relatively high barriers to entry because these types of instructional design skills are unusual and the high-level information synthesis skills are very rare.

In summary, the obvious questions are “Who is your customer?” “Who are you” “What can you do (if you put your mind to it)” and “What does your customer value?” The history of business suggests that there are few limits to innovation, and we are nowhere close to finding all the ways in which we can deliver value.

Then the question is “Do you wanna?” Change is not comfortable and innovation feels like rewiring your own brain and the brains of those around you. People may be excited in the short term, but they tend to return to their previous comfort zone or equilibrium. Innovation is hard work (but can be fun). Creating wealth is almost always hard work (but can be fun).

As you review your business value proposition, you may find that you can get along without innovation in the new economy. You may find that you are uncomfortable with an innovative orientation. You may find that you can outsource innovation. You may find that you are a great innovator. Just be sure that you know what you are choosing, why, and what the consequences are for your business.