A seat at the table: know when to hold ‘em
It’s the old cliché - we’ve all heard it - design fights hard for a seat at the table. It’s ingrained in battle-weary designers as a sad design principle: if you want influence, you have to earn it, prove it, claw your way into the room. And it can be utterly exhausting.
And yes, there’s truth there. In an earlier post, I wrote about The Path to Product Impact that unpacks clear organizational, operational, and strategic steps to build credibility by managing expectations, aligning with outcomes, and speaking the language of the business. That’s the work we can control.
But here’s the thing: even when you walk that path and build that Design Impact Pyramid, it doesn’t guarantee the seat. Sometimes design influence lands partially. You get traction in one area (say, interface polish) but get shut out of another (long-term strategy). Leadership nods along when you present insights, but decisions still get made without you. Or the org adopts design language — “journeys,” “systems,” “friction” — without giving design actual accountability.
These are uneven landings. And too often, the blame gets pushed back on design: if only you were more strategic, more data-driven, more business fluent. My design friends, this is gaslighting.
I’m here to tell you the hard truth: you can do everything right and still hit an organizational wall. Because maturity isn’t solely about designer effort; it’s about whether the company is ready to make room for it. And sometimes, it’s not you, it’s them.
I’ve seen this pattern across startups, mid-size growth companies, and large enterprises. The details differ, but the rhythm is the same: design earns a few early wins, then hits the ceiling of organizational readiness. Some companies break through. Many stall.
And here’s where it gets tricky: it’s tempting to believe that if you just push harder, you’ll finally “prove” design’s worth. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s not. The real leadership challenge is discerning the difference.
One way to tell: look at where design lands. If your wins are expanding into higher-order problems — strategy, cross-functional decisions, investment — you may be on a growth trajectory. If doors suddenly open to rooms you didn’t even know existed, you might be headed in the right direction. But if your wins stay trapped in execution and you’re stuck in tactical mode, you may be looking at an uneven landing that never levels out.
This doesn’t mean designers should stop trying by building fluency, showcasing value, and aligning with outcomes. It all still matters. But the reality is, you can’t force an org to change before it’s ready. It’s like a bad relationship: they’ll change when they want to, not because you made the perfect case.
That’s why part of design leadership is diagnostic. You have to read whether a partial landing is a step toward maturity, and worth investing more energy or whether it’s a dead end that won’t shift no matter how hard you push. And you have to decide what matters to you.
Or, to borrow from Kenny Rogers: you gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.
About Design Unfiltered
This series is my “design gets real” space where I share the messy truths about design and design leadership that don’t usually make it into case studies or conference decks. Think of it as field notes from experience: unpolished, candid, useful, and hopefully even a bit cathartic if you’re a designer or leader navigating the same challenges.
