What turns a design leader into a true catalyst for change? It’s not just about title or authority — it’s about leading beyond hierarchy and influencing at every level of the organization.

When you’re a senior design leader, your impact extends far beyond your title or job description. True influence in design leadership doesn’t come from authority alone — it’s cultivated through relationships, alignment, and a shared vision that resonates across the organization.

The best leaders are those who lead through influence rather than control. They understand that while authority can get things done in the short term, influence creates lasting change and builds a culture of collaboration. Here’s how to start leading beyond authority and amplify your impact across teams and the entire organization.

1. Align Design with Business Priorities

Influential design leaders know that every decision they make must tie back to the organization’s goals. It's not enough to design excellent solutions; those solutions need to drive measurable outcomes.

• Know the Metrics That Matter – Familiarize yourself with the KPIs and business outcomes that the executive team values. Are they focused on customer acquisition, retention, revenue growth, or NPS? Tailor your design strategy to align with these priorities.
• Frame Design’s Value in Business Terms – Communicate design’s contributions in a way that resonates with stakeholders outside of the design function. If design improved a product’s usability and led to a 15% increase in customer satisfaction, share that success in a way that highlights its impact on the company’s goals.

By actively aligning design with business goals, you’ll make it clear that design isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s a strategic driver of growth.

2. Build Trust by Being a Consistent Partner

The most impactful design leaders are those who take the time to understand their stakeholders’ needs and challenges. This means going beyond design to see where teams can work together toward common objectives.

• Invest in Cross-Functional Relationships – Take time to meet with stakeholders across departments: product, engineering, marketing, and beyond. Understand their priorities and where design can be a true partner. Listen deeply, ask questions, and look for ways to support their goals.
• Create Wins for Other Teams – Offer design as a resource that can help solve other teams' challenges. Perhaps marketing needs help visualizing a new campaign, or product needs design thinking to tackle a complex feature. By proactively contributing, you’ll build credibility and foster allies across the organization.

Trust isn’t built overnight, but it’s the foundation of influence. When people know they can count on you to add value, they’ll invite you to contribute to decisions at every level.

3. Inspire with a Vision That Others Can’t Ignore

Influence often stems from the power of a clear and inspiring vision. Design leaders with influence don’t just have a vision for their teams—they create a vision that resonates across the organization and drives everyone toward shared goals.

• Paint a Compelling Picture of the Future – People are naturally drawn to leaders with a sense of purpose. Share a vision for the role of design in shaping exceptional customer experiences and driving business impact. Make it tangible by showing what’s possible, whether through design concepts, prototypes, or customer stories that bring the vision to life.
• Highlight the Shared Wins – Show how design can deliver value that benefits multiple teams. When people understand that your vision helps them achieve their goals, they’re more likely to rally behind it.

The most influential leaders don’t just talk about what needs to change—they inspire people to want to make it happen. They pull teams in with a shared mission that feels exciting and worth pursuing.

4. Build Scalable Systems to Extend Your Influence

Influence is about more than individual wins; it’s about creating systems that sustain impact even when you’re not in the room. Great design leaders develop frameworks, playbooks, and processes that make it easy for others to adopt design-led thinking across the organization.

• Create Repeatable Processes – Design frameworks, tools, and playbooks that teams across functions can use. A UX framework that product teams can leverage, an AI Playbook, or a set of brand guidelines that marketing can follow—these enable design to influence beyond direct touchpoints.
• Empower Your Team to Lead – Equip your team members to be influencers within their projects and cross-functional teams. Encourage them to share design’s strategic impact with partners and lead discussions on how design can help meet objectives.

By building scalable processes and empowering others, you create an influence that lasts far beyond individual projects and enables others to carry your vision forward.

As design leaders, our greatest impact often lies beyond our own teams. Leading through influence isn’t just about getting things done; it’s about shaping a culture of collaboration and innovation across the entire organization.

In Design Leadership at Scale: Executive, we go even deeper into these principles, exploring frameworks and strategies to expand your influence and become a true strategic partner. If you’re ready to step into a role where you shape outcomes and lead change, this course is your path forward.

Find more details here and secure your spot.

For many design leaders, the leap from tactical execution to strategic leadership is the defining shift of their career. It’s not just about overseeing projects or ensuring quality outputs; it’s about transcending the day-to-day and becoming an integral force in shaping the future of the business. It’s where influence extends beyond your immediate team, and your role evolves into a catalyst for organization-wide transformation.

But how do you make that shift from tactical execution to true strategic leadership? It’s not a single step, but a progression marked by distinct, actionable changes in mindset and practice.

Here’s where it starts:

1. Aligning with Business Priorities

As design leaders, we’re adept at solving complex problems, but strategic leaders take it a step further. They ensure that design solutions are tied to measurable business outcomes. To align with business priorities:

• Speak the Language of Business: Familiarize yourself with KPIs, revenue models, and market strategies. When you talk design, frame it in terms of how it moves the needle for the company.
• Map Design Work to Impact: Create a narrative that connects your team’s efforts to larger company goals, whether that’s customer acquisition, retention, or market differentiation.

Begin each project by asking, “How does this contribute to our company’s strategic objectives?” Anchor your design strategy around these answers, and you’ll naturally position design as a driver of business success.

2. Elevating from Deliverables to Direction

Many leaders stop at deliverables, focusing on the what and how. Strategic leaders, on the other hand, focus on the why and where. They don’t just ensure products ship; they shape the product roadmap, influence prioritization, and contribute to the company’s vision.

• Lead with Perspective: Guide discussions with insights on user trends, competitive landscapes, and long-term impacts. Your input should shape not just what gets built but why it’s being built in the first place.
• Shift the Conversation: Engage with stakeholders early in the planning phases. Position yourself as a partner who can help steer strategic initiatives, not just execute them.

Develop a quarterly strategy presentation for your leadership peers that outlines user insights, experience strategy, and opportunities to align with broader business targets. This helps shift your role from reactive to proactive.

3. Embedding Design Across the Business

Strategic design leaders know that their role isn’t confined to leading the design team; they must embed design thinking throughout the business.

• Build Cross-Functional Partnerships: Cultivate relationships with leaders in product, engineering, marketing, and finance. Position design as a collaborative partner that can help solve broader business challenges.
• Be a Trusted Advisor: Show up prepared with data and stories that highlight the value of design. Being seen as a knowledgeable and trusted advisor changes the perception of design from a support function to a strategic asset.

Schedule regular touchpoints with leaders outside of your immediate function. Use these conversations to understand their challenges and demonstrate how design can contribute solutions.

4. Building Scalable Practices

Sustainable impact requires more than just executing today’s projects; it demands that you build a design infrastructure that can scale. This means creating processes, systems, and culture that support consistent high-quality work as your organization grows.

• Standardize Without Stifling Creativity: Develop scalable processes through design operations and your design system, but ensure there’s room for creativity and iteration.
• Invest in Your Team’s Growth: Build programs for mentorship and skill-building to keep your team engaged and equipped for larger challenges.

Implement a design operations plan that details workflows, team norms, and how tools are leveraged. This provides clarity and frees up your designers to focus on high-impact work rather than process ambiguity.

Making the Shift to Strategic Leadership

Moving from tactical execution to strategic design leadership isn’t just challenging—it’s transformative. It’s the difference between being part of the conversation and leading it, between delivering on today’s expectations and shaping tomorrow’s possibilities.

Want to dive deeper?

In Design Leadership at Scale: Executive, I guide senior design leaders through this transformative journey. With a focus on practical frameworks and executive-level insights, this course is tailored to empower leaders ready to move from tactical execution to strategic influence. If you’re ready to step into a role where you shape outcomes and lead change, this course is your path forward.

Find more details here and secure your spot.

I had the pleasure of joining Ravi Tej on the Nodes of Design podcast, where we discussed Intelligent Interfaces and the evolution of design leadership in an intelligent future.

We talked about what intelligent interfaces are, how they’re reshaping our interactions with technology, and how designers’ roles will evolve in this new future. Enjoy!

Listen to the episode here

Let’s break two myths out of the gate.

Keeping your head down and doing great work in isolation never yields the impact you want — it takes a team. And you can’t ignore organizational politics if you want to be successful.

As you move through your career, as you elevate and take on more significant roles, you learn that the lone hero model is a farce. Building products is a team sport. And when you’re driving transformation, collaboration is even more critical since you need to create a movement to make progress.

The relationships you build across the organization are crucial to getting any work out the door, let alone great work. Your network, reputation, and partners all come into play when driving strategic programs. Operational leadership is required to get things done, but you need shared outcomes, alliances, and partnerships to make your efforts successful.

1: Find ways to develop shared outcomes with other leaders.

You’ll run into challenges, and sometimes even a brick wall, when your agenda and goals are at odds with another leader.

Sometimes this happens because you’re driving transformation that would change the power dynamics that the leader is quite comfortable with. Other times it’s because you haven’t taken the time to get to know the individual, what’s important to them, and how to align what you are trying to achieve with what they’re going after. Let’s hope it’s the latter, and I’ll save that other topic for another article.

Shared outcomes are the way to get everyone facing the same direction.

2: Build alliances across, up, and diagonally within the company.

Alliances are the people that warm the room.

They’re the people that speak highly of you when you’re not present. The champions that start from a place of positive intent with your proposals. They’re not just people that like you; they’re people that want to help you succeed.

Alliances are critical to your success since they are often not directly involved in your programs but have work that loosely aligns or has dependencies. Usually, these alliances start because you garner alignment and trust; by doing so, the efforts you’re partnering on enable you to row in the same direction. When you begin to feel the wind on your back instead of your face, that’s when these alliances are working.

3: Drive collaboration with partners to get things done.

Get to know leaders across disciplines and teams that you’ll need to work with closely to get things done. Building great products and services requires teams that understand the meaning of collaboration and how to leverage each other’s expertise and strengths. So take the time to understand where your partners are coming from and what they’re trying to achieve, then develop alignment. Get to know them as people beyond the work you’re doing. Lean in and help them with something they’re trying to accomplish, support new proposals, and lead by example in the ways you’d like them to show up for you.

And pay attention to peer relationships. They are some of the most critical partnerships you’ll have. Your peer connections are more important than you think; along with your boss, they’re your “first team.”

Reflection Activity

If you haven’t created a stakeholder map/matrix in a while, you’re probably not paying enough attention to your relationships.

My recommendation is to couple the matrix with a plan for each individual and revisit it monthly. In Leading Without Authority, Keith Ferrazzi discusses creating a “Relationship Action Plan” for each person — that’s how meaningful building and maintaining relationships are to success. If this type of artifact doesn’t exist, take the time this week to create it. You’ll be surprised by what you learn and how much more intentional you will become in building solid relationships across the enterprise.

People often overlook their relationships and networks’ importance in achieving positive outcomes.

Stop wasting time thinking you must do it yourself, and start making the time to invest in your relationships with peers, partners, and stakeholders. Not only will it enrich your experience and give you tailwinds, but many things you’re driving hinge on your ability to influence others — especially any change management or transformation work.

Here are four ways to expand your network and organizational influence:

1: Create connections that go beyond the basics.

Leverage 1:1s to understand partners’ and stakeholders’ visions, goals, and mindsets.

Find out what’s essential and drives them. Share what you’re doing and how you want to partner to reach those goals together. Think through a plan to get there. Take a similar approach with your boss (and their boss and peers) as you build your relationship.

Create forums or small groups to go deeper on topics and create an environment to share ideas, input, and feedback.

Many times, larger meetings aren’t the place for deep discussions. Create a space where you can have them with groups of 3–5 people. Ask for and share feedback once you’ve established a repertoire.

This step is a litmus of how well you’ve created an environment of openness and learning.

Align on shared outcomes that you work towards together. Instead of staying heads down in your world, spend time collaborating with partners and peers. Align your goals with what’s essential to the business — move the metrics that matter.

Cross the finish line together and continuously nurture these relationships.

2: Bring your systems thinking and enterprise mindset to the table.

Having a point of view within your area of expertise will be natural, which is required to gain credibility as an expert at what you do.

But where real enterprise operators are a cut above is when you lean into conversations outside your wheelhouse. Have a point of view on business topics and adjacent spaces that aren’t your discipline. Demonstrate across and up that you are thinking about the business and understand how functions come together across the enterprise to deliver value.

Make it evident that you are paying attention to the market and trends that could impact the company.

Establishing yourself as a functional expert is one thing, but showing up as an enterprise leader who understands how things connect will get you the street cred required to get included in strategic conversations and sought out for your opinion beyond topics around your discipline. Be prepared for meetings, and make sure you’re contributing.

Take inventory if you find yourself in meetings where you’re not talking.

3: Share thoughts and approaches early and often with others.

Don’t keep everything to yourself until it’s polished, waiting for a grand reveal.

Instead, invite peers and partners to contribute to proposals to make them better or highlight something you’ve overlooked. Strengthen your pitch by getting input and feedback from others. When others contribute and share diverse perspectives, the proposals are more robust and well-rounded, and others view your open and collaborative nature as something to reciprocate.

Socialize ideas before large meetings through 1:1 conversations.

“Warm the room” by having champions for your ideas and proposals before stepping into the [virtual] room. Meet with key stakeholders and showcase that you’ve addressed their concerns so they can provide support. This approach turns what would typically be a high-pressure approval meeting into a discussion of next steps.

It will feel uncomfortable at first — work through that apprehension and do it anyways.

4: Team across the enterprise.

Offer to lead or help on a program that cuts across business groups and is of strategic value for the company.

Use the opportunity to meet people you don’t usually work with and expand your network. Gain visibility on a company priority, and show up as an enterprise leader concerned about outcomes that have an impact. If someone else is on point, be a strong contributor and use that experience to build stronger connections with the people in the core team.

Keep those connections even after program completion, and find ways to broaden your network’s reach continually.

Thanks Andrew Hogan and Figma for highlighting my post “10 Truths From Building Design Organizations at Scale” in your 2022 Design Hiring report, Elevating culture to attract the right talent. Great insights and perspective throughout — very timely and relevant.

Leading large Design organizations, I’ve realized one of the most important areas to gain leverage is through time management. I’ve prototyped many approaches to streamlining my days, maintaining focus, and getting results.

I’m going to share three routines that will provide leverage, allow you to scale, and drive impact for the business. I’m inspired to share these because I’ve used them myself, and reaped the benefits.

With these routines, I hope you’ll be able to achieve 10x results.

#1: Audit your calendar and align your schedule with your top priorities.

Make sure the meetings on your calendar move you forward on your most important goals. After you’ve defined your ruthless priorities, map out how meetings, reviews, and worksessions move those programs forward. Audit where you’re spending your time and remove as many unnecessary meetings as possible — aim for a minimum of 30% reduction. Time block your schedule to reduce context switching.

The reason you audit and align your calendar is to eliminate anything from distracting you from the priorities that will move your team and the business forward. This exercise has one of the largest impacts on your performance because it’s where you spend your time day-to-day. You never get more time in the day, but ruthless time management will help you get the most out of each one. Take back your schedule.

#2: Start every week with a planning session and end with a review.

On Monday morning, set aside 30 minutes to plan for the week ahead. On Friday, spend 60 minutes on a weekly review to recap the week, assess progress, and reflect on learnings. Making space for planning and reviewing will increase your velocity and progress against priorities. It will also highlight anything that’s creeping into your schedule that needs to be removed.

#3: Design your meetings for outcomes, and expect the same from others.

Meetings should only be to debate, decide, discuss, or develop your people. When you do require a meeting, make sure it has an agenda and clear outcomes. Otherwise, decline meetings like it’s your job. Everything else can happen asynchronously with digital tools.

I hope these routines give you the impact that they’ve provided for me. Reach out to me with any questions!

Appreciate Fast Company including me and other industry experts for our perspectives on how consumer psychology can help you identify ways to exceed expectations and drive customer satisfaction.

"Deep customer insight stems from understanding the needs, wants, and desires of the humans you’re designing for. The strongest design and product leaders use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, connecting behavioral and interaction data with ethnographic approaches like in-depth interviews. The quantitative data can tell you the “what” and “how many,” but the qualitative gives you the “why.”

I prefer an experience-led product development process. I could probably write a book on this one. For now, I’ll provide the core of my POV.

An experience-led process yields better outcomes. It de-risks going to market by ensuring you’re solving an actual customer problem and people desire what you’re bringing to market. It’s a measure twice, cut once approach where you avoid building things that no one wants.

Experience-led means the technology is in service of the experience, not the other way around. MVPs aren’t determined by what engineers can build in three months. If you’re only delivering the minimal, you probably aren’t delighting anyone.

Experience-led product development requires a cross-functional team and leverages human-centered design. It produces concrete artifacts that set the north star vision, materials to socialize, and aligns people through a shared understanding. It makes the future tangible.

A key artifact is the experience roadmap, outlining the path to the north star. It’s broken into experience releases that show the services and features required to power that experience. This keeps the team focused on customer value and impact, not just shipping something.

Experience-led means you widen the aperture at the beginning of the process to be inclusive. Not at the end.

Experience-led means you’re not working on features or pages, you’re thinking holistically about end-to-end experiences. Customer journeys are a thing.

Experience-led means the prototype determines the requirements. The actual experience you want to deliver is then deconstructed to figure out what to build first. The whole, then the parts.

If you’re interested in more on this topic, let me know.