Dividends can be a tremendously powerful part of your investing strategy. Not only can they give you a continuing source of cash to reinvest, but they also serve as powerful tools to align a company's management's priorities with its shareholders'. This alignment comes because many companies offer their leadership some form of stock-based compensation. Thanks to a solid, supported, and generally rising dividend, that leadership has an incentive to hold on to the company's stock for the long haul. After all, the dividend can continue to reward them for their efforts long after they're done directly working for the company.