How HDO helped Michelle navigate a major change initiative

Lewis Miller, MPP
Assistant Director, HDO

July 17, 2020

Michelle Jack is an alumna of the HDO Master’s Degree program. In the video below, she chats with Dr. Art Markman, a Professor of Psychology and HDO’s Founding Director, about how she used her HDO education, particularly Dr. Markman’s course on behavior change, to successfully lead a major change initiative for her previous employer.

About HDO

The University of Texas at Austin is proud to offer Human Dimensions of Organizations, a first of its kind in the nation program. Drawing on an innovative combination of liberal arts, behavioral sciences, and social sciences, we created HDO to meet a need not addressed by existing education options: providing a deep understanding of people, the key components of any organization.

Technical expertise in a particular domain is a necessary element for workplace success. However, recognizing behaviors and motivations, communicating across organizations and cultures, and thinking strategically to solve complex problems – a few examples of core competencies developed in HDO – are the skills that create transformational leaders.