Do Fish Know They Are Wet?

Let me take you back to an era before “Human Resources” was even a term most companies used.

Genesis

When I was starting out, people who worked with employees were called Personnel. Personnel Clerk. Personnel Officer. Personnel Manager — all tucked under Finance and Administration, and nobody questioned it. Training was training. Simple.

I was young, freshly diplomed in Personnel Management, and quietly determined to change things. I lobbied my General Manager, made the case for a standalone HR department, and won. Then I designed what felt like the logical next step: a Graduate Trainee Programme. Two students came on board. I called them HR Attachés. They reported to me. I was proud.

Acts

Then one morning, everything shifted. I was walking past one of the HR offices when I caught a glimpse, just a flicker, of an elderly factory employee seated across from one of my trainees. His posture said everything. Shoulders dropped. Head low. The body language of a man being made to feel like a problem.

I had a full day ahead. I kept walking. But that image wouldn’t leave me. So I had him called to my office. When he came in, he went straight to his knees in front of my desk, begging for forgiveness, saying he’d never repeat his mistake. I was completely disoriented. I’m not God. I came around the desk, pulled him up gently, took his hands, and got him seated.

Then I called in the graduate trainee. He arrived slowly. Unhurried. Sauntered in with his hands in his pockets and leaned against the doorframe like he’d wandered in from a lunch break. The moment he appeared, I watched the elderly man’s face tighten with fear. I asked what had happened.

The trainee shrugged and responded in Shona: “Oooh, mudhara uyu akajambwa necomputer. Pane ka$5-00 kake kasina kubhadharwa, saka ndamuudza kuti achaiwana next month.”

For those who don’t follow: “This old man’s $5 payment was skipped by the computer. I told him he’d get it next month.”

That was it. A $5 underpayment. An administrative error. And this young man, educated, placed with authority over the financial wellbeing of factory workers, had handled a frightened elderly employee with the casual indifference of someone clearing spam email.

Armageddon

I blew up.

The trainee was removed from the building, out of company accommodation, and left at a highway bus stop that same afternoon. The university was notified. The $5 was paid immediately, and I personally apologised to the employee. Then I shut down the Graduate Trainee Programme on the spot.

I told myself I was doing the right thing.

It took time, and honesty, to sit with what had actually happened.

Yes, the trainee had behaved appallingly. But I had placed him in front of vulnerable people and assumed that a diploma and good intentions were enough preparation. I had not once sat him down and said: the people in those chairs are carrying lives. Their salaries are not numbers. They are school fees, groceries, rent, dignity. I had taught him the system. I hadn’t taught him what the system was for.

There’s a question that comes to me often when I think about Learning and Development:

Do fish know they are wet?

A fish has never known anything other than water. It cannot step outside its environment to see it, name it, or question it. The water is simply… everything. Invisible precisely because it’s always there.

We build programmes. We write competency frameworks. We onboard graduates and measure learning outcomes. And we can do all of that rigorously and still produce people who are technically capable and humanly unprepared.

The gap between knowledge and wisdom is not filled by more content. It’s filled by intentional formation: by helping people understand who they’re serving, why it matters, and what it means to hold someone else’s vulnerability with care.

That is the work. And it doesn’t show up on a training register.