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In This Issue

Choosing The Right Legal Structure For Income Tax

The Three Tiers of Non-Customers

Nurture The Process

How To Achieve Things You Don't Know How You Are Going To Achieve

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Business Dictionary

What is Game Theory?

Set of concepts aimed at decision making in situations of competition and conflict (as well as of cooperation and interdependence) under specified rules.

Game theory employs games of strategy (such as chess) but not of chance (such as rolling a dice). A strategic game represents a situation where two or more participants are faced with choices of action, by which each may gain or lose, depending on what others choose to do or not to do. The final outcome of a game, therefore, is determined jointly by the strategies chosen by all participants. These are also situations of uncertainty because no participant knows for sure what the other participants are going to decide.

Two-person zero-sum games (where one's gain must mean the other's loss) are used by military-strategists. Many-person (non-zero-sum games where it pays to cooperate) are used in study of economic behavior.

Games such as prisoner's dilemma (where two players must choose-without communicating with each other-either to cooperate or betray) are used in political theory and union (collective-bargaining) negotiations. In business schools, game theory is closely associated with decision-theory, and is used to study situations where management-psychology can play an important part.

Developed by two US mathematicians, Oskar Morgenstern (1902-77) and John von Neumann (1903-57) in their 1944 book 'Theory of Games And Economic Behavior.'

Nicolas Azar

Nick Azar is Managing Director/Partner of Azar and Associates, a full service business consulting and executive coaching firm specializing in the dental industry. Visit our website, or E-mail Nick.

The Dental Post's

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR TODAY'S LEADERS

Greetings!

Accounting & Finance - Choosing The Right Legal Structure For Income Tax

In deciding which type of ownership structure is best for securing capital and managing their business, owners should also consider the income tax factor. They should know the key differences between two basic type of business entities from the income tax
point of view.

Taxable-entity C corporation: These corporations pay income tax on their annual taxable income accounts. The shareholders pay a second income tax on cash dividends that the business distributes to them from profit, making C corporations and their owners subject to double taxation.

Pass-through entities - partnership, S corporations, and LLCs: This type of tax entity does not pay income tax on its annual taxable income, instead, it hands off its taxable income to its owners, who pick up their shares of the taxable income on their individual tax returns.
Note: Most LLCs opt to be treated as a pass-through entity for income tax purposes, although under the tax law they can choose to be taxed as a C corporation.

The following illustrate the differences between the two types of tax entities for structuring a business.

Read the full article.

Sales & Marketing - The Three Tiers Of Non-Customers

Although the universe of non-customers typically offers great opportunities, few companies have keen insight into who non-customers are and how to unlock them.

There are three tiers of non-customers that can be transformed into customers. They differ in their relative distance from your market. The first tier non-customers are the closest to your market, while the third tier non-customers are the furthest.

The first tier non-customers are buyers who minimally buy your product or service out of necessity or based on an offering but are mentally non-customers of your product or service. However, if offered a leap in value, not only would they stay, but also their frequency of purchases would multiply.

The second tier of non-customers is people who refuse to use your company product or service. These are buyers who see your product or service as an option to fulfill their needs but have decided against it.

The third tier of non-customers is farthest from your market. They have never thought of your product or service as an option.

By focusing on key similarity's across these non-customers and existing customers, you can understand how to pull them into their new market.

Let's look at each tier of these non-customers to see how you can convert them into real and thriving new customers source and expand your market potential. Read more.

Managing People - Nurture The Process

Even in the best companies, the economic conditions of the marketplace may demand varying degrees of downsizing, or in basic language layoffs.

For the downsizing initiative to have an impact on the company's bottom line, the plan must include and analysis not only of headcount, but also of the remaining employees who are "survivors." It is these survivors who ultimately will be responsible for making the stated goals and objectives of the downsizing initiative successful.

The survivors of the downsizing have emerged from a highly traumatic experience. For weeks and maybe months they have waited for the ax to fall on their head. They watched colleagues lose their jobs. They saw entire functioning departments of the organization dismantled. They survived.

As in any trauma, the impact frequently lingers for a quite a time after the initial incident. Employees who have survived a downsizing or layoff are now faced with redesigned work environment, increased work responsibilities, frequently a chaotic structure, and in many cases the personal guilt that accompanies being a survivor. Within this new
environment they are expected to perform a peak efficiency.

Read the full story.

Operation & Administration - How To Achieve Things That You Don't Know How You Are Going To Achieve.

The most common way organizations try to improve is they usually look for wastes or react to problems, develop a corrective action plan, and try to eliminate them.

This scattershot approach may not achieve meaningful improvement that moves the organization forward. It misspends their limited capacity for making improvements, and they don't learn much, because they're not experimenting. Organization may think they know how they will get there, but both knowledge and the situation change as they move forward with the action plan.

The Improvement KATA is a different approach
With the improvement Kata you work iteratively toward a target condition, on the way to a vision, learning along the way. You work on those things that you discover you need to work on to reach the next target condition.

Thriving in uncertain and competitive circumstances involves striving for
something, not just reacting to problems and trying to counteract entropy. Read more.

To learn more about how the improvement Kata can be used throughout the organization, Azar and Associates conducts training workshops in cities throughout North America. Call us today at
(661) 810-2446 or visit us on-line at www.azarandassociates.com

Sincerely,

Nicolas Azar - Coach & Consultant
Azar & Associates