From Training to Transformation: How Teams and Organizations Grow with Harvard Online

Published May 14, 2025

Course mentioned in this post: Open Innovation, Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care, Outsmarting Implicit Bias

In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, the most forward-thinking organizations are making bold investments in their most powerful asset: their people. As teams navigate new technologies, shifting priorities, and complex global challenges, the need for shared learning has never been greater.

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Through Harvard Online’s learning partnerships, teams and organizations gain access to flexible, high-impact courses taught by leading Harvard faculty. These programs aren’t just designed to teach—they’re built to transform how teams think, collaborate, communicate, and lead.
 

Learning as a Team Isn’t Just More Efficient—It’s Transformative

Something shifts when teams commit to learning together. They begin to speak the same language. They bring the course material into meetings and strategy sessions. They reflect on challenges with more nuance.

It’s not unusual for a partner to tell us that a course sparked conversations within their team about something that they hadn’t considered before—or that it helped reframe a persistent issue in a new, more productive light.

While participating in a Harvard Online course, the team at the Alaska State Ombudsman’s Office engaged in weekly discussions to share reactions and insights on the course content. These sessions opened up meaningful conversations that deepened their understanding of each other and their work.

Kate Burkhart, former Alaska Ombudsman stated, “The biggest outcome has been being able to articulate our thoughts out loud and address them collaboratively. It’s not just something we thought about during the coursework—it’s become part of our daily work.”

These moments don’t come from content alone—they come from what happens when content meets collaboration.
 

Courses That Spark Collective Insight

Some courses naturally lend themselves to team-based learning. Here are a few that organizations keep coming back to:

Open Innovation: Empower your team to implement a practical open innovation strategy—learning how to identify and leverage external resources to drive growth, foster collaboration, and stay ahead of the competition.

Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care: Equip your health care team to ensure accountability and surface leadership at every level—breaking down hierarchies so the right person can lead at the right time.

Outsmarting Implicit Bias: Help your team learn to recognize where bias arises in everyday workplace processes—from hiring and promotion to team management and client interactions—equipping them to foster more effective decision-making.

View our full list of courses here

Some organizations begin with a pilot—just a few participants—and then scale over time. Others enroll entire departments at once. Either way, the stories that emerge are inspiring and lead to positive organizational change. 

What We’ve Learned from Organizations That Learn Together

Harvard Online’s partnerships team, led by Henry Kesner, has worked with hospitals, nonprofits, universities, and businesses from across the globe to help teams make the most of their learning experiences—curating programs of long and short form content that help groups build skills together today that sustain learning beyond the end of their course.

“When a team learns and reflects together, they are not just acquiring knowledge or adding a skill, they are building capacity and forming trust” offers Henry. “In turn, this results in greater productivity, boosts employee motivation, and results in a greater return for the organization at large.”

Across our work with a variety of organizations, we’ve noticed a few patterns:

• Teams retain more when they debrief and reflect together.
• Leaders see more impact when learning is aligned with a real-time challenge or initiative.
• The ripple effect extends beyond the participants—new tools, frameworks, and approaches start to show up across the organization.
   

What Learning Partnerships Can Look Like

No two organizations learn the same way. Some come to us with a clear challenge in mind—such as  preparing a team for a digital transformation or building leadership capacity across departments. Others are testing the waters, curious about what’s possible when learning is approached not as a one-off initiative, but as an integrated part of team development.

We’ve partnered with hospitals navigating care coordination, nonprofits working to better serve their communities, and businesses seeking alignment during times of change. Some teams start small with a core team or a few individuals. Others enroll entire departments and some even extend the experience to their own customer audiences to help form better understanding of their own relationships and industry challenges.

In every case, the partnership is just that—a collaboration. We listen, we learn, and we shape a plan that fits your timeline and goals.
 

Learning as a Strategy for Change

For many of the teams we partner with, learning isn’t an add-on—it’s a strategic choice. It’s how they align around business goals, navigate uncertainty, and build capacity for the work ahead.

If your organization is thinking about learning as more than just a resource—as a strategy—we’d be excited to help you put it into motion.

Contact the Partnerships Team to Get Started