Ever feel like you’re running a group project where half the team thinks they're in charge and the other half is just waiting for instructions? You set the goals, you hold the meetings, you send the follow-up emails and somehow, things still feel like a chaotic game of telephone. Marketing and sales are at odds, product is rolling their eyes, and ops is wondering why no one follows the process.

At this point, you might start questioning everything. Did I not explain the strategy clearly? Do they even read my Slack messages? Should I just send a carrier pigeon?

Take a deep breath. The issue isn’t your strategy. It’s how people interpret it.

Your Team Isn’t Broken, They Just Think Differently

Most misalignment happens not because people don’t understand the vision, but because they process information in completely different ways.

• Your Head of Sales hears “launch timeline” and immediately wonders how it impacts revenue.

• Your Product Lead is debating feasibility before you even finish your sentence.

• Your Marketing Director is busy crafting a compelling story around it.

• Your Ops Manager is crying because no one followed the workflow they painstakingly built.

It’s not that anyone is wrong - it’s that they’re all speaking different dialects of “work.” And when teams don’t understand how their colleagues think, they start making assumptions.

Marketing thinks sales is pushing impossible timelines. Sales thinks product is overcomplicating things. Product thinks marketing is making empty promises. And ops? Ops just wants someone to read the damn Notion doc.

So, How Do You Fix It?

You can’t force people to think the same way. But you can help them understand each other better.

This is where self-assessments like Prism come in. It’s not just another personality test that HR makes you take and then never talks about again. It actually helps teams see why certain people communicate, make decisions, and handle pressure the way they do.

• If your Sales Leader is highly analytical, hit them with data, not gut feelings.

• If your Product Lead is intuition-driven, focus on real-world impact, not spreadsheets.

• If your Marketing Director is a visionary, give them space to think big - but pair them with someone who can bring them back to Earth.

When teams adapt their communication styles to fit how their colleagues actually process information, everything gets easier. Meetings don’t feel like hostage situations. Feedback actually lands. Decisions get made without an existential crisis. And MOST importantly -departments stop secretly resenting each other.

AI Can Help - But Only If It Stops Sounding Like a Robot

AI is great at automating workflows, summarizing meetings, and sending reminders. What it’s not great at? Understanding why the Head of Sales ignores half their emails or why your Product Lead needs three days to think before responding.

When AI is layered with personality insights, that’s when things get interesting. Imagine

• AI-generated Slack messages that adjust tone based on who’s receiving them.

• Meeting insights that help you understand how to present your ideas effectively, collaborate seamlessly, and work with different personalities on the call.

• An AI coach at your fingertips, offering real-time guidance on how to approach a situation with a co-worker, manager, or employee based on both of your personality insights.

That’s the future of work - not just AI that makes things faster, but AI that makes things smarter and more human.

The Real Issue

Your team isn’t misaligned because they don’t understand the strategy. They’re misaligned because they don’t understand each other. Fix that, and suddenly, everything starts working the way it was supposed to all along.

And maybe, just MAYBE...ops will finally get someone to read their Notion doc 😉

P.S. You can take our Prism self-assessment for Free. Download the SurePeople app below and DM Gargi Potdar your email address and we'll get you set up!

** Reminder - self-assessments work best when your whole company has access and we're happy to get them all set up once you experience it for yourself. **