Sometimes I wish I had a Prism of Priorities in my hands.
Not a metaphor, but a real tool. Something I could hold up to every incoming request, every feature idea, every “quick win,” and instantly see its true color; its real weight, its actual impact.
In my mind, it works like light passing through glass. A single request enters as a bright, confident beam, full of urgency and conviction. Then it refracts into a spectrum, revealing what it is truly made of; user value, business impact, technical cost, timing, and sometimes, pure bias.
The Illusion of Clarity
we do not live in a products centric storyland and in reality it might not be as helpful as it sounds.
Because the honest picture of every request would likely create more chaos than clarity. Imagine showing every stakeholder that their “high priority” request breaks into faint, scattered colors when measured against real user needs. Or discovering that multiple “critical” initiatives are simply competing opinions with no grounding in evidence.
As Ben Horowitz said:
“The hard thing about hard things is that there is no formula for dealing with them.”
Prioritization is one of those hard things. There is no perfect framework that removes ambiguity. Only better ways to navigate it.
Products Are Built on Perspectives
Products are not built in isolation. They are shaped by people, and people come with perspectives, incentives, and biases. Every wishlist carries a story;
- a sales target to hit,
- a customer complaint to resolve,
- a feature a competitor just launched,
- or simply a belief in what “should” work.
This is where many products quietly drift. According to Marty Cagan, the primary responsibility of a product manager on an empowred product tem is to manage two of the four critical products risks: Value and Viability.
The tension lies in that balance. Value is often assumed. Viability is often negotiated. And both can be distorted by internal bias if left unchecked.
The Role of Corporate Diplomacy
This is where corporate diplomacy becomes an essential skill. Not politics for the sake of survival, but structured communication for clarity. It is about guiding conversations in a way that uncovers what truly matters:
- What problem are we solving?
- For whom?
- Why now?
It is about keeping stakeholders engaged while gradually shifting the conversation from opinions to evidence.
- You listen carefully.
- You translate requests into hypotheses.
- You validate them through data, user behavior, and experiments.
Data does not remove bias entirely, but it anchors decisions in something more stable than intuition alone.
You Don’t Need a Prism
We may never get that perfect Prism of Priorities. But perhaps we do not need one.
Because the real craft of product management is not about revealing a single “true color” of every request. It is about navigating the spectrum; understanding where each input fits, filtering what matters, and continuously aligning the product with the problems it is meant to solve.
Or as Steve Jobs famously said:
“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
Final Thought
A Prism of Priorities would make things easier, but it would also remove the judgment, context, and nuance that define strong product thinking. The real value lies in how we interpret, challenge, and align; not just what we see.
Sitting in the space where clarity is incomplete requires a different kind of discipline; translating urgency into understanding, and opinions into direction. It comes down to choosing what truly moves the product forward, even when the signal is faint and the noise is loud.
If these ideas resonate, or if you see prioritization differently in your own work, there is always value in exchanging perspectives and learning from real experiences across teams and products.
Tahir Shahzad
Tahir Shahzad is a Product Manager, Product Owner, and technology consultant with over a decade of experience helping startups and organizations build products people actually use. If you are working on a product problem worth solving, reach him at tahirshahzad.com/contact/
