Our pilot journey begins
Hello,
Today marks an exciting milestone for the Novaspex Academy as we kick off our first Academy pilot course on Decision Making.
The pilot journey continues shortly after with Big Picture Thinking and Mastering Empathetic Techniques. Together, these pilots reflect the core of what we are building at the Novaspex Academy: future-ready human skills that help professionals adapt, stay relevant and act with confidence as the world around them continues to evolve.
There are still a few seats available across the pilot courses. If you have been curious about joining, this is a great moment to step in.
Learning in Action
Before opening these pilots more broadly, we ran several test sessions with small groups. What stood out most was not just engagement during the sessions, but how quickly participants began applying the ideas to their real work.
Here is a snapshot of what we heard:
“At the beginning, it was hard to force myself into a big-picture perspective. But it was absolutely worth it. Over the course, I learned practical ways to shift my perspective, identify the right leverage points, and see new possibilities for influencing situations differently.”
“From the very beginning I trusted this instructor. She brought so many examples from her own experience in facilitating decision making processes with her various teams and clients, and she helped me easily apply it to my own situations.”
“This course is so much more than just learning about empathy. I’ve learned so many techniques I can already apply tomorrow to help me guide better conversations and ultimately better outcomes for my organization.“
These reflections reinforce something we care deeply about. Learning sticks when it is practical, reflective, and closely connected to the realities people are navigating every day. That last insight even encouraged us to rename one of the courses to better reflect what it truly offers.
Looking Ahead: Improving Communication
As we think beyond the current pilots, one skill has consistently come up as a top priority in our community conversations and questionnaires: Clear, Simple Communication.
Not communication as in saying more, but communication as the ability to distill what truly matters and make it land across different levels, contexts, and channels. In complex environments, clarity is not about oversimplifying the work. It is about helping others understand what matters most and why.
This is one of the skills we are actively exploring for a future pilot offering
Try This:
To get a head start on improving your communication skills, focus less on what you want to say and more on the outcome you want to create.
Before sending an important message or walking into a key meeting, take a few minutes to ask yourself:
If the other person remembers only one thing from this, what should it be?
What decision or action should that understanding enable?
Then use those answers to actively shape what you say and how you say it. Over time, this habit can meaningfully change how your messages land, how others interpret them, and how they ultimately act in response.
Shifting Perspectives
Across all three pilot topics, we noticed a recurring pattern in our test sessions. Participants often came in saying things like:
“I don’t have access to that information.”
“I can’t influence that decision.”
“That’s outside my role.”
What shifted during the sessions was not just skill, but perspective. By seeing situations differently, many participants realized they had more room to act, influence, and experiment than they initially assumed.
So we’ll leave you with a gentle question to reflect on:
Where might you be assuming you have less influence or agency than you actually do?
If this resonates with your own experience, let’s connect. And if there are other challenges you’re navigating right now, we’d love to know what would be most helpful to explore in future Academy pilots.
The new year brings a natural moment to reflect and reset. We hope this offers a practical place to start your journey.
All the best,
The Novaspex Academy Team