Hello again!
Like so many of us, at the Novaspex Academy we leverage AI to support our business. Recently we shifted to a team account on Claude.
With the new account, we could have kept doing what we had done in the past and what I suspect plenty of people do: open an AI tool, type a question, and work with whatever comes back. We wanted ours to work more like a new member of the team, so we spent time thinking carefully about how to set it up and what context to share. We wrote down the history of the Academy, our goals, who the team is, which tools we use and where things live, how we like to work, and the rhythms we work to, like sending this monthly newsletter. We knew it would start with no idea of any of that, and that if we took the time up front, working together would be so much easier.
The setup is still growing. As we work together, we keep refining it and adding the context we learn it needs.
And yet, with a real teammate, I have not always taken the time to catch them up and share my thinking at the start, let alone kept adding what they needed along the way. I can remember several times when I simply assumed that the other person had all the context, had connected the dots the same way I did, and would know what I wanted without me expressing it directly.
The benefit of the doubt
Many of us now give AI more context than we give our colleagues. We expect an AI tool to know nothing about our situation, so explaining to it feels natural, yet when a colleague sits in the same meetings and works for the same company, we expect them to already know.
Picture handing a colleague a request on a busy afternoon: pull together a few slides on the project for tomorrow's leadership meeting. In your head, it is obvious that the meeting is really about whether the project gets more budget, that one of the leaders has doubts, and that the slides need to answer those doubts. None of that makes it into the request. The next morning you get a clean, thorough project update that answers a question nobody is asking.
A disappointing answer from an AI tool usually sends us back to add more detail, while a disappointing piece of work from a colleague tends to get read as their gap: they didn't get it, they didn't think it through, maybe they aren't quite up to the task. Over time, that quiet judgment influences who we trust with the next piece of work, even when the missing piece was something only we knew and never said.
In August we wrote about digging for the context nobody hands you. Most of the time, we are also the ones holding context that someone else needs.
Refining as you go
Our setup with Claude gets better because we treat an off-target answer as information. We ask what it didn't know, and we add that to what we share, so the next piece of work starts from a better place.
We rarely give colleagues the same treatment. A handover is usually a single moment, a message or a quick call, and then we wait for the result. When it falls short, we fix it ourselves or send it back with notes on the output, and the context that would have prevented it never gets shared. Asking what information or insight the other person was missing, rather than what they got wrong, gives us something to add for next time.
As AI takes over more of the producing, the work people hand to each other is more and more about judgment: why a decision went the way it did, what matters most in this situation, and who still needs to be convinced. That kind of context lives in our heads, and it only helps once we share it. If we are willing to take the time to do that for an AI tool, why not take the same time with the actual people we work with as well?
Try This: The human briefing
A catch-up for one piece of work this week
Pick the handover. Choose one piece of work you are about to hand to someone, or a request you are about to send.
Write the catch-up you would give an AI tool. Note down the background, what good looks like, why it matters now, and what you are still unsure about.
Look at what you would have left out. Mark everything you would normally have skipped, and ask yourself why. Did you assume they already knew, or did it feel like too much to explain?
Share it, then ask what is missing. Give them the catch-up, and ask what else would help them do this well. Pay attention to the questions you did not expect.
When the work comes back, compare it with what you usually get. What changed?
A quick look at where you stand
It is easy to assume we share our thinking more clearly than we actually do, and the same goes for many of the skills we rarely stop to check in ourselves. Our short readiness check gives you a snapshot across six capability areas, built on recent research from the World Economic Forum into the skills that matter most for the future of work.
Once you have completed it, you will also receive our free Micro-Skills email series.
What's Next?
Curious what is coming up at the Novaspex Academy? Here is everything we have planned for the months ahead.
When did someone last take the time to catch you up properly, and what difference did it make? Hit reply, I'd love to hear.
All the best,
Amanda
on behalf of The Novaspex Academy Team