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Lies of HR

Martin Spiteri Schillig 3 Episodes Aug 9, 2026

Most of what HR preaches sounds good on an office wall and falls apart the moment it meets reality. Lies of HR takes one comfortable HR belief at a time — "people first," "hire for culture fit," "engagement equals productivity" — calls it what it is, and takes it apart in three steps: the myth, the cold truth underneath it, and the reframe an honest leader uses instead. Not HR-bashing — just swapping things that sound good for things that actually work. Created by Martin Spiteri Schillig, drawn from sixteen years running HR inside iGaming, working alongside founders and leaders who were openly sceptical of much of what HR preached.

Episodes

Change Can Be Managed — Why 95% of Transformations Miss | Lies of HR #10 Aug 9, 2026 1134 "Change is a project — give it a plan, a timeline and a steering committee, and you can manage it from A to B." Except you can't project-plan your way through a storm.In the tenth and final Lie of the first series, we take it apart: why most meaningful change is a complex system you can only influence, not control; why roughly 95% of corporate AI initiatives fail — and why the failures are organis

Reviews Measure Performance — Why the Annual Review Measures the Wrong Thing | Lies of HR #9 Aug 2, 2026 1196 "The annual performance review objectively measures who performed and who didn't." Except the score often says more about the manager who gave it than the person who earned it.In Lie No. 9 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: how recency, availability and affinity bias quietly distort every rating, why forced ranking and the bell curve are statistically invalid (real performance follows a power law, n

Hours Drive Output — Why the Punch Clock Still Runs Your Workplace | Lies of HR #8 Jul 27, 2026 1130 Productivity is a function of time — measure the hours and you've measured the output." The punch clock outlived the factory by a century, and nobody's quite sure why.In Lie No. 8 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why hours are a factory measure that collapses on knowledge work, why the fashionable "results-only" alternative is also a trap, and how the deeper lie is single-number thinking. Then the

Leadership Will Get Us There — Why Followership Is the Hidden Engine | Lies of HR #7 Jul 19, 2026 1062 "Leadership is what matters." We screen for it, promote for it, and blame it when things go wrong — while treating "follower" as a word nobody wants attached to them. But you can't lead an empty room.In Lie No. 7 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why leadership is a relationship rather than a title, what Robert Kelley's followership research reveals about the yes-people, the cynics and the exemplar

Leaders Are in Control — The Fantasy Running Your Org | Lies of HR #6 Jul 11, 2026 1195 "Leaders are in control." We want the calm pilot's voice on the intercom — someone at the top with their arms around the chaos. It's the most load-bearing lie in the corporate world.In Lie No. 6 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why most real leadership work lives in the "complex" zone where no one can dictate the answer (via Snowden's Cynefin framework), how organisations systematically confuse co

Perks Equal Care — Why the Office Playground Is a Costume | Lies of HR #5 Jul 5, 2026 1520 "Perks prove you care." Nap pods, craft beer on tap, catered dinners, wellness apps — the perks arms race is sold as proof a company is devoted to its people.In Lie No. 5 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why perks are weak, extrinsic motivators (and can even erode the drive that actually matters), how "free" dinners and all-inclusive campuses are really extraction dressed as generosity, why "unlim

Retain, retain & retain — HR's Most Comfortable Lie | Lies of HR #4 Jun 27, 2026 1259 Retain at all costs." The 95% retention slide gets the biggest applause in the room — but a glowing number can be the proudest slide and the emptiest.In Lie No. 4 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: why the lifelong-employee era is long dead (median tenure is down to 3.9 years), the crucial difference between regretted and non-regretted turnover, how a frozen job market created "job hugging" that mak

Engagement Equals Productivity — The Dial That's Wired to Nothing | Lies of HR #3 Jun 19, 2026 1112 "Push the engagement score up and performance follows." It's a multi-billion-dollar corporate obsession — and the dashboard dial it's built on is wired to nothing.In Lie No. 3 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: how the whole industry misread its own science (correlation is not causation), what longitudinal research actually found about the engagement-performance link, why global engagement can fall

Hire for Culture Fit — Why It Backfires | Lies of HR #2 Jun 19, 2026 1191 "We only hire for culture fit." It sounds like a commitment to quality — but in practice it often just means "people like us," and it quietly builds a comfortable, fragile monoculture where nobody sees the problem coming from a new angle.In Lie No. 2 of Lies of HR, we take it apart: where "fit" really comes from, why it screens out the difference a team actually needs, how AI threatens to automate

People First — HR's Most Comfortable Lie | Lies of HR #1 Jun 19, 2026 1295 "We put our people first." It's on every careers page — and it's a promise reality eventually forces companies to break. In the first episode of Lies of HR, we take the myth apart: why it erodes trust, how AI is exposing the gap between what companies say and do, and what an honest leader does instead.The voices are AI; the arguments come from Martin Spiteri Schillig's sixteen years in HR.Full wri

Lies of HR

Episodes

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