The Living Room Lesson: Managing Product Priorities Like a Big Family

I used to think setting the perfect priority was all about metrics and numbers. I would spend hours arguing over a spreadsheet, completely missing the point. The real issue was never the data. The real issue was pure ego.

How does that happen?

Think about it like this. Managing product features feels exactly like organizing a big family dinner. Everyone wants something different. Everyone feels their request is the most critical thing on the table. And in the end, someone will always throw a fit if they do not get their way.

I have spent two decades building products. I have worked at Tokopedia, Hijra, and Flip. I have built three of my own startups. Right now, I lead four product teams at a Middle Eastern superapp. You might think the higher you go, the more elegant and rational these decisions become.

That is not the reality.

The dynamic is identical to dealing with your stubborn uncles and aunts at a family gathering. In a big family, you have that one uncle who throws a tantrum because he wants roast lamb. In the office, you have a stakeholder pounding the table, demanding their feature goes live this week.

Both are completely convinced the world will end if their request gets delayed.

As a product manager, setting priorities is not just about calculating return on investment on a whiteboard. It is about conflict resolution. It is about managing the expectations of people with very fragile egos.

Filtering Ego from Actual Needs

When your uncle gets mad about the roast lamb, the real problem is rarely the food. He usually just wants to feel heard. He wants his opinion respected.

The office is exactly the same. When a stakeholder demands an immediate release, do not fight back with technical arguments. You have to listen to their underlying anxiety. Maybe their boss is breathing down their neck. Maybe their team is falling behind on targets.

I vividly remember managing the account integration between Tokopedia and Gojek. It was a massive project involving dozens of teams across different divisions. The original target was three months. We were pressured to finish it in just one month. Imagine how many heads we had to align. Think about how many divisional interests were colliding.

If I had just used a standard prioritization framework, our meetings would have deadlocked on day one. Every single team lead brought their own customized priority list.

My approach was a direct copy of how I handle my extended family. I pulled the team leads aside individually, outside the meeting room. I listened to what actually terrified them about failing. Some were afraid their systems would crash. Others were terrified of client complaints. Once I understood the root cause of their fear, I could craft a unified solution that let everyone sleep at night.

The result? We launched successfully. We cut operational costs by USD 2 million per year. We also unlocked 1.5 million new monthly transactions.

I saw the exact same pattern as Head of Product at Hijra Bank. I was directing five PMs across four different product streams: acquisition, transaction, identity, and retention. Every single PM believed their feature was the most urgent and had to be in the current cycle.

Again, this conflict of ego is not a technical problem. It is psychological. You have to pick one main focus and be willing to delay everything else.

The results of having the courage to delay were massive. Total apps entering the platform jumped 571 percent in three months. Our Zakat product skyrocketed 549 percent above the normal monthly baseline in just two months. That only happened because we were willing to cut other features to protect the one priority that delivered the biggest impact.

You cannot please everyone. You have to make decisions that make sense for the whole system, not just feed the ego of a few individuals.

Efficiency Always Hurts at First

Speaking of bold decisions, this habit of aggressively cutting priorities brings real results. People often look at my profile and ask about the $4 million plus in yearly cost savings I have driven for companies. They always assume it is some kind of magic trick.

The reality is very different. Making companies efficient is an old habit of mine, long before AI became popular. That $4 million plus per year came from a mix of cost-saving initiatives: process improvements, cost optimization, and more efficient product decisions. Automation was just one part of it, not the only source.

Take my time at Flip, for example. We cut money transfer costs by about 32 percent in six months. That value was equal to around USD 2.12 million per year, or 450 percent of our initial target. On top of that, we automated customer support tickets from zero to 70 percent, cutting support costs by 42 percent.

Back then, many stakeholders protested because their workflows changed. Their comfort was disrupted. But setting priorities requires the courage to take risks for a healthier business.

In the past, getting leverage like that required a senior title, a team of dozens of engineers, and very expensive systems. A simple efficiency idea had to wait in a long line just to get executed. That was my old world. Ideas were easy to talk about, but execution was always expensive.

New Technology, Same Humans

Things are drastically different now. Today, AI is the sharpest tool for building these same efficiency habits, and it can be taught to everyone on your team.

As proof of this new era, I use these same efficiency principles for new things. I built an 8-channel content distribution system that I run entirely by myself. I created the Applied-AI Certification program and built AI Circle. The systems run on their own, schedule themselves, and send me daily reports. Work that used to require a full content team is now handled from my laptop.

But there is one thing no machine will ever replace.

You cannot send an AI into a meeting room to calm down a panicked stakeholder. You cannot ask an AI to negotiate with someone who is acting purely out of emotion. No matter how good your model is, it does not have the empathy required to resolve human conflict.

Conflict resolution and ego alignment are still purely your job as a leader.

You can use AI to crunch research data in seconds. You can use AI to write automated reports. But the final decision on feature priorities stays in your hands.

Going back to the living room analogy: you can buy the most expensive automated cooking robot for your family dinner. But if you pick the wrong menu and your uncle still gets mad, the dinner is still ruined.

The tools are getting smarter. The humans have not changed at all.

The true price of a tool is not what you pay upfront. The true price is the massive damage it causes if you expect it to replace your own empathy.

Which Side Are You On?

Product management always comes back to the basics of dealing with people. It is how you speak, how you listen to complaints, and how you build understanding without making people feel small.

If you want to dive deeper into adopting AI for your own individual career, you can join AI Circle. We regularly break down these best practices without the empty theory.

Or, if you are looking for ways to help your company increase efficiency using AI without causing inter-departmental drama, check out my corporate page. We can sit down and figure out the most logical path forward for your team.

Prioritization is hard. But it gets a lot easier when you know exactly when to use a tool, and when to just use your ears.