Mike Cilla·Austin, TX·People Operations
My work sits at the intersection of People Operations, workforce analytics, organizational design, and HR technology. I've spent my career looking at organizations from different sides of the table — operating inside them, advising them, building products and services for them, teaching about them — and now leading the systems that help them scale.
| Education | M.S. I/O PsychologySan Jose State University |
| Credential | SHRM-CP |
| Experience | Startup to enterpriseOperator · Advisor · Builder · Educator |
| Base | Austin, TX |
| Current exploration | Leadership OS ↗A free methodology for leaders working with AI |
Startups, mid-market companies, and large enterprise — I came into HR through behavioral science and have spent most of my career where people strategy meets operational infrastructure.
Most organizations that struggle with change — new technology, rapid growth, leadership transitions — aren't struggling because of strategy. They're struggling because the underlying people systems aren't solid enough to absorb it.That's usually where the real work is.
Three domains, twenty entries — the short version of a long career.
Operating values:
Individuality · Openness · Efficacy · Winning · Humility
+ Sense of humor
Not a straight line — a repeated movement between vantage points. Each mode added another way of seeing how organizations work.
The chronology — expand any row
Writing from over the years — mostly on behavioral science, HR operations, and talent. Some of it holds up better than the rest.
A working notebook — observations and experiments, written down because writing is how I think things through.
Something I didn't plan for happened while trying to transfer context between AI tools. It turned out to be more interesting than the original task.
Read entry →I was trying to transfer context to an AI. What came back was a more detailed picture of how I think than any formal assessment had produced.
Read entry →The first two notes were about building something. This one is about trying to break it — six synthetic leaders, each designed as a trap for the framework.
Read entry →I handed the same person's inputs to two different AI models and watched them behave completely differently. A note on what survives when the models get better.
Read entry →The areas of the most sustained thinking — the ones that eventually led somewhere.
Some of these questions stopped being abstract. Leadership OS is the one I built something around — putting the AI-augmented development question in front of other people, not just running it on myself.
Started playing at 13 and never stopped. Drumming is the longest continuous practice of my life, and the one that taught me the most about timing, listening, and working within a structure. There's something about holding a rhythm for other people that translates directly to how I think about operational leadership.
Austin has a way of humbling you in the garden — the heat, the clay soil, the cedar. I've spent a lot of weekends figuring it out anyway. There's something satisfying about work that asks you to think in seasons rather than quarters, where the feedback loop is honest and unhurried.
I gravitate toward writing-driven work — the kind where you notice the craft in retrospect, when a line lands in the third act that was planted in the first.
Moved here for a career opportunity and stayed on purpose. Married, no kids. Good food, great music, and a city that still has the texture of a place in the middle of becoming something.
Happy to connect if you're working through something in People Operations, thinking about HR technology, or just want to compare notes on any of the above.
The views, opinions, and content expressed on this site are solely my own and do not represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of any current or former employer. All information is intended to represent my individual professional profile and perspectives.