Head of Learning and Development at CIB Egypt

Morcos Mikhail

The conference room buzzed with a nervous energy far removed from its usual purpose of fostering professional growth. Nancy, the organization’s esteemed Head of Learning and Development lay lifeless at the center of the table with an open book—The Future of Learning—clutched in her hand. Murder weapon? No one knows… Suspects? Too early to say.

The police finally arrives, and quickly holds an unlikely bunch in detention. There’s Rasheed, the organization's resident AI system, with his ever-increasing ability to automate tasks and potentially render whole L&D departments obsolete. Then there were a couple of spurned digital learning platforms. Their flashy interfaces and gamification tactics a constant thorn in Nancy’s back. Even the dusty stack of traditional textbooks in the corner seemed to hold a silent grudge, their reign threatened by this digital revolution. A group of other detainees included some executives, past training participants, and some strong competitors.

The investigation delved into the murky world of corporate training. Was Nancy a victim of progress, her commitment to human-centered learning a liability in the age of automation? Did a disgruntled employee lash out at her rigorous training programs? Perhaps the ed-tech industry saw her rather traditional methods as an obstacle.

As the detectives interviewed the suspects and reviewed Nancy’s correspondence, a more sinister plot emerged! Emails retrieved from Nancy’s mailbox revealed heated debates with Rasheed about the purpose of training, with the AI advocating for pure efficiency. Digital learning platforms, their user numbers stagnant under Nancy’s focus on human interaction, displayed concerning glitches just before the murder.

While previously known for being creative, innovative, proactive, and influential, Nancy who once was a respected L&D Head seems to have been slowly losing that respect over time. Recurring top management invitations to meetings where the organization’s strategic goals and directions are put on the table were no longer recurring on her calendar.

Internal correspondence also revealed that Nancy has lately been accepting mediocre employees under her department by order of human resources, she has frequently been offering expensive training programs to members of staff for the purpose of employee retention and not particularly to serve the organization’s goals. In fact, Nancy obviously couldn’t say no to human resources because HR is what her function reported to.

Feedback surveys from current and past trainees revealed that learners weren’t happy about the relevance of the training they received. These trainees neither showed any improvement on the professional level, nor did they enjoy the training which they found to be very traditional and obsolete.

Investigations have prolonged for many months, interrogations have taken place with all the suspects, each possessed powers and motives but also an impeccable alibi. The spiked detective looked on a big mat with Nancy’s picture in the middle and the tangled strings among all the suspects, trying to crack the clue, wondering if Nancy got really murdered or deliberately abandoned to die of neglection and desertion, closing the case with unsolved, and doubtful futuristic vision on the world of corporate learning, when the line between progress and elimination can only be razor-thin.