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In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, Curtis Forbes sits down with Michaela Murray, founder of Progress Amplified, for a conversation about the layer of company-building that gets ignored until something breaks: people infrastructure.
Michaela works as an embedded fractional HR partner for growing companies, especially those moving fast enough to feel the strain of scale but not yet ready for a full internal HR leadership team. Her view is refreshingly clear-eyed. Most organizations do not actually have a people problem. They have a leadership problem, a process problem, or a systems problem that eventually shows up in people-shaped ways.
The conversation covers what people infrastructure really means beyond software and policy binders, why misdiagnosing performance issues quietly drains companies of trust, time, and money, and how leaders can tell the difference between a person in the wrong seat and a system that is setting everyone up to fail. Michaela also explains why simple HR is usually better HR, what founders should build first before they overengineer the function, and why benefits education and total compensation transparency matter far more than most companies realize.
Along the way, Curtis and Michaela dig into where AI can genuinely help inside the people function and where human judgment still cannot be outsourced, plus a deeper question many leaders are not asking yet: if AI absorbs more entry-level work, where will the next generation of managers learn the craft of leading people?
If you are scaling a company, wrestling with turnover or performance, or trying to build a healthier operating rhythm before the cracks become culture, this one is worth your time.
Michaela Murray is the founder of Progress Amplified, where she provides embedded fractional HR support to growing companies that need stronger people infrastructure without the overhead of a full in-house team. Her work focuses on helping leaders build the systems, rhythms, and accountability structures that make teams healthier and companies easier to scale. With a practical approach to HR that cuts through jargon, Michaela helps organizations diagnose what is really underneath so-called people problems, whether that is inconsistent leadership, weak process design, unclear expectations, or gaps in total rewards communication. She brings a grounded perspective on what effective HR should actually do: make the human side of the business simpler, stronger, and far more sustainable.
