Latest news with #skeptics
Forbes
20-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Live Both: Mastering The Growth Vs. Value Investing Paradox
Young woman sitting on maze and looking to the distant tree. (3d render) getty When I was in high school, I became fascinated with stock market investing. But after only a few weeks of studying it, one thing became clear: I had to pick a side. On one side were those captivated by growth—the optimists who cheered on rising revenues and loved backing a winning horse. On the other side were the skeptics—penny-pinchers who saw hype as a red flag and preferred scouring neglected corners of the market for hidden value. These were the value investors, searching gutters for overlooked $5 bills. This age-old tension is known as the growth versus value investing paradox. Growth investors pay a premium for companies with accelerating revenues and compelling futures. Value investors, by contrast, seek companies with strong fundamentals that are temporarily out of favor, often trading at discounted price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios. As a teenager, I recognized the merit in both approaches, but I felt pressure to choose. In war, you cannot execute a blitzkrieg and a siege at the same time. Similarly, in tennis, you cannot charge the net and play defensively simultaneously. Or can you? This tension is a classic paradox. A paradox is a situation that appears logically contradictory but, upon closer inspection, may reveal a deeper or more complex truth. As Charles Handy explained in The Age of Paradox , modern life forces us to navigate complexities our ancestors never faced, such as the tension between efficiency and humanity or between individual freedom and collective responsibility. Paradoxes are difficult to manage because our minds are wired for binary choices like fight or flight, yes or no, and buy or sell. Either-or thinking helps with quick decisions and survival. However, paradoxes require a different type of reasoning that embraces both perspectives at once. In investing, this means resisting the urge to pick a side and instead learning to hold the desire for growth and the discipline of value in creative tension. Why Art Helps With Investing Paradoxes Art, more than logic or spreadsheets, helps us make sense of complex truths. Pablo Picasso once said, 'Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.' Paradoxes often live at this deeper level where metaphor can reach but data cannot. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in Metaphors We Live By , describe metaphor as understanding one thing in terms of another. For example, we think of time as money when we say we are 'spending time' or 'saving time.' Emotions are also described as liquids, such as when someone is 'boiling with anger' or has a 'heart overflowing.' Metaphors make complex truths more understandable and relatable. The more metaphors we use to explore a paradox, the more insight we gain into the deeper truth it represents. To develop meaningful metaphors, start with a familiar concept that is tangible and accessible. Then identify a shared underlying principle between that familiar idea and the more abstract concept you want to understand. This shared principle is the foundation of the metaphor. Using this approach, I have found two metaphors that help reconcile the growth versus value investing paradox: waves and volcanoes. Metaphor 1 For Navigating The Growth Vs. Value Investing Paradox: Waves A crowded day at Pipe with dozens of surfers and photographers all trying to catch the perfect wave. getty I worked as a surf instructor in college and have spent most of my life riding the waves of the ocean. A wave can be big and exhilarating, or small and disappointing. The best waves usually attract large crowds. If you move away from the crowds, you might find an underrated spot, but more often the waves are not as good. My favorite strategy was to paddle just outside the most crowded break. The waves might not have been quite as good, but there was less competition and more opportunity to enjoy the ride. In investing, this translates to looking for companies that show real potential but are not overly hyped. These are not the flashy front-runners, but the reliable backups who are quietly positioned for solid performance. This allows investors to find rising revenue potential at a more reasonable price. Metaphor 2 For Navigating the Growth Vs. Value Investing Paradox: Volcanoes Farmers plant chilies in a rice field on the slopes of Mount Merapi, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 9, ... More 2024. getty Volcanoes are one of nature's most paradoxical features. They are among the most destructive forces on earth, yet they also create fertile ground that sustains life. Living near a volcano brings both great risk and great reward. If you plant yourself at the edge of an active eruption, you may gain quickly, but you also risk losing everything. However, if you build near a dormant or stabilized volcano, like in parts of Hawaii, you benefit from rich soil and lower risk. In investing, this is similar to focusing on companies that have moved past their most volatile growth stage but still have fertile ground for long-term performance. They are no longer speculative, but they are not yet overcrowded. These are companies in the sweet spot between high risk and full maturity. Embracing The Tension In Investing Paradox cannot be fully resolved by logic alone. It requires a shift in thinking and a willingness to see through both lenses at once. This is the heart of the investing paradox: holding onto both growth and value as meaningful components of a more nuanced strategy. In an investing world that often demands clear choices, wisdom may lie in learning to ride the second-best waves while planting near a slightly less fertile/active volcano.
Fast Company
21-05-2025
- Science
- Fast Company
Why diversity training should be customized to different ‘personas'
Diversity training is more effective when it's personalized, according to my new research in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology. As a professor of management, I partnered with Andrew Bryant, who studies social marketing, to develop an algorithm that identifies people's 'personas,' or psychological profiles, as they participate in diversity training in real time. We embedded this algorithm into a training system that dynamically assigned participants to tailored versions of the training based on their personas. We found that this personalized approach worked especially well for one particular group: the 'skeptics.' When skeptics received training tailored to them, they responded more positively—and expressed a stronger desire to support their organizations' diversity efforts—than those who received the same training as everyone else. In the age of social media, where just about everything is customized and personalized, this sounds like a no-brainer. But with diversity training, where the one-size-fits-all approach still rules, this is radical. In most diversity trainings, all participants hear the same message, regardless of their preexisting beliefs and attitudes toward diversity. Why would we assume that this would work? Thankfully, the field is realizing the importance of a learner-centric approach. Researchers have theorized that several diversity trainee personas exist. These include the resistant trainee, who feels defensive; the overzealous trainee, who is hyper-engaged; and the anxious trainee, who is uncomfortable with diversity topics. Our algorithm, based on real-world data, identified two personas with empirical backing: skeptics and believers. This is proof of concept that trainee personas aren't just theoretical—they're real, and we can detect them in real time. But identifying personas is just the beginning. What comes next is tailoring the message. To learn more about tailoring, we looked to the theory of jujitsu persuasion. In jujitsu, fighters don't strike. They use their opponent's energy to win. Similarly, in jujitsu persuasion, you yield to the audience, not challenge it. You use the audience's beliefs, knowledge, and values as leverage to make change. In terms of diversity training, this doesn't mean changing what the message is. It means changing how the message is framed. For example, the skeptics in our study still learned about the devastating harms of workplace bias. But they were more persuaded when the message was framed as a 'business case' for diversity rather than a 'moral justice' message. The 'business case' message is tailored to skeptics' practical orientation. If diversity training researchers and practitioners embrace tailoring diversity training to different trainee personas, more creative approaches to tailoring will surely be designed. Our research offers a solution: Identify the trainee personas represented in your audience and customize your training accordingly. This is what social media platforms like Facebook do: They learn about people in real time and then tailor the content they see. To illustrate the importance of tailoring diversity training specifically, consider how differently skeptics and believers think. One skeptic in our study—which focused on gender diversity training—said: 'The issue isn't as great as feminists try to force us to believe. Women simply focus on other things in life; men focus on career first.' In contrast, a believer said: 'In my own organization, all CEOs and managers are men. Women are not respected or promoted very often, if at all.' Clearly, trainees are different. Tailoring the training to different personas, jujitsu style, may be how we change hearts and minds. What still isn't known Algorithms are only as good as the data they rely on. Our algorithm identified personas based on information the trainees reported about themselves. More objective data, such as data culled from human resources systems, may identify personas more reliably. Algorithms also improve as they learn over time. As artificial intelligence tools become more widely used in HR, persona-identifying algorithms will get smarter and faster. The training itself needs to get smarter. A onetime training session, even a tailored one, stands less of a chance at long-term change compared with periodic nudges. Nudges are bite-sized interventions that are unobtrusively delivered over time. Now, think about tailored nudges. They could be a game changer.
