All large organization have rules or principles which suit their purposes. Most of the time, the principles are the ones that should be tied to the organization. Sometimes leaders tie their organization to a rule, which by any degree of common sense, the age old question of what were they thinking? comes into play. Because the client base, does not buy into the policy, defending the principle is only digging the hole bigger.

From the book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I Kertzer, Alfred A Knopf, New York 1997, an example is the Edgardo Mortara case of 1858 in Italy. A 6 year Jewish boy was taken from his parents, because the Catholic church said by the virtue of a maid saying the rites of the baptism, the boy was transformed from a Jew to a Catholic. (as opposed to the normal baptismal ceremonies which happen in the church). This baptism gave the church the authority, through the Inquisition department to resue the boy from his parents and relocate him to a Catholic home in order for the boy to be raised Catholic. The Pope in 1858 was a 100% behind the decision. Soon the world knew about the continuing policy and was against it. Eventually, the Pope ran out of supporters and one of the many outcomes was the unification of Italy. The world knew because the Jews in Italy were segregated in ghettos from the Catholics, they had to and did developed social networks, which were used to tell the world.The Catholic Church had felt there were above reproach and had used their various sources to tell their story, but many did not buy it.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, often times the companies that are paying dividends are large and because they have been successful, always think they will be. Those that think they will always be successful, become arrogant and alternatives in the marketplace develop. Policies which make common sense at both the policy and implementation level keep customers. When the two are different, the seeds of doubt and the beginning to look for alternatives happen. If you own shares in a company and have a relationship with it, you will be able to tell if the two policies are in tune. Defending bad policy whether it was 100 years ago or today, is wasting a lot of resources in a never ending hole.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions