In one of the magazines, the writer likes to read, there is an article by Sir Richard Branson head of the Virgin group. Recently Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson Virgin Books, 2008 was read. Mr. Branson writes about about reputation and brand. On the operating side, he says Virgin has never let a company go bankrupt, even though there were times that would have been easier. Virgin pays its debts, wrapped up operations and moved on. Moving on is easy to say, harder to do and that is why you need honest people around you.

Mr. Branson gives credit to the many people working with and for him for Virgin’s success. Part of the moving on is Mr. Branson gives people leeway to ask questions and make mistakes (as long as the mistakes have not broken a serious rule or damaged the brand) mistakes are expected and learnt from. One method to move on is transfer people to other areas of the company. Another method is to encourage people to continually ask questions – what if? what could be? what should be? can we enlarge our corporate footprint? does it make sense and what would be the results? All those questions are half full questions – is the glass half full or half empty? all the answers could go one way or the next. There always is opportunity, but execution has to be done on a daily basis. Finding the opportunity is only the beginning, possibly an exciting beginning but only the beginning. Then the work begins.

Linking to dividend paying stocks,  a company consistently earning dividends can become complacent in the marketplace, one of the things on your list as an investor is to see how the company handles its mistakes. While the first step is to ensure enough money is made to keep paying the dividend, several steps down is the need to continually update the company. There are always many choices – you may remember Beta or VHS. Instinctively you know every once in a while the company will throw good money at in retrospective was a bad idea and will waste it resulting in write offs. How does the company handle it? How does it move on?

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