Most teams treat prompting like a technical skill.
Write the perfect command, get the perfect answer. Use the right syntax, get the right output.
It sounds logical. It’s also wrong.
A recent study from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (arXiv:2409.08811) looked at who actually works best with AI. The correlation with technical skill was close to zero. Same with IQ. Same with experience.
So what mattered?
Context. Perspective. Framing.
The best users don’t “instruct” the model. They coordinate with it.
That shifts prompting from a technical skill to a meta‑skill — the same kind of skill you use when facilitating a complex conversation.
This matters a lot for RevOps teams, because most AI failures we see aren’t tool failures. They’re interaction failures.
Most AI workflows start with control:
“Do exactly this.” “Don’t deviate.” “Give me the perfect output.”
When the output is wrong, we blame the model. When the output is inconsistent, we blame the prompt.
But if the interaction is framed poorly, no prompt will save you.
The model will mirror the frame you set — whether you mean to or not.
That’s the shift: AI outputs are a derivative of interaction framing, not instruction complexity.
Think of these as the “collaboration stack” for AI.
Catch the moment you think, “This is obvious, it should know.”
That’s an unspoken assumption. And unspoken assumptions are where AI work breaks.
Notice which parts of the picture only exist in your head — and bring them into the conversation.
Not more instructions. More context.
The moment you realize you and the model are operating in different mental models.
Don’t push harder. Change the angle.
Is the AI a tool? An executor? A co‑thinker?
Pick a frame, then be consistent. Models respond to the frame more than the words.
RevOps teams are drowning in AI tools right now.
Enrichment, forecasting, summarization, reporting, routing — it’s all AI‑enabled.
But most teams are still using AI like a vending machine: “Give me the answer.”
That creates two problems:
When you treat AI as a collaborator, the output becomes more consistent and useful. Trust rises. Adoption follows.
Same pattern we see in CRM systems: good process first, adoption second.
Step 1: Create an AI Interaction Brief
Step 2: Train on Framing, Not Prompts
Step 3: Normalize “Context First”
Start internal docs and requests with: “Here’s the context you don’t know yet.”
It feels slow at first. It saves hours later.
Prompting isn’t a technical skill. It’s a coordination skill.
The teams that win won’t be the ones with the fanciest AI stack.
They’ll be the ones who learn how to collaborate with these systems — the way good teams collaborate with each other.
Stop chasing prompt tricks. Start building interaction clarity.