How does design earn influence? (Q&A)

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Today we’re jumping into @Mehekk_Bassi’s article, The Best Designers Are Not Talking About Design Anymore. Her core idea is that as designers gain experience, they realize design decisions do not live in isolation. The best designers stop centering tools, processes, and trends… they start talking more about people, systems, culture, power, ethics, and outcomes.

I agree that design is shaped by business incentives, organizational politics, technology constraints, and human behavior. Focusing only on design techniques ignores the forces that actually determine whether good work survives or makes an impact.

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Your post reminded me of something I wrote about design influence almost ten years ago.

Experienced designers talk about “everything else” because that is where the real leverage is. They care about:

  • how decisions get made
  • who has authority
  • what tradeoffs are being accepted
  • what consequences design creates over time

Design becomes a means… rather than the topic itself.

Let’s jump into the discussion

I do not read your argument as saying design no longer matters. I read it as saying design maturity looks like understanding the larger system around the work. When designers stop obsessing over design, it often means they are taking responsibility for outcomes, not just outputs.

Here’s the question I want to open up: how do designers and product owners actually make that shift?

Let’s dig into design influence with Mehekk Bassi, a featured Helio author who writes about leading through design.

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Excited to dig into this with you, Mehekk. Here’s my first question: when designers stop focusing on tools and process, what is the first step that earns them influence to drive outcomes inside complex organizations?

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This is where we need to zoom out a bit, and think about the overall goal of a product - is it to retain users? Is it to increase engagement or is it to make more people sign up? When that goal is clear (and unanimously agreeable) with every team member, processes or tools don’t matter at that stage.

What does matter is - how your discipline can make that goal achievable. How do you ensure that your designs are doing that invisible job, without even discussing your Figma files at scale. Without showing the screens or visuals. That’s when conversations matter, and how you represent your team in a company setting. When everyone is meeting (virtually or in a room), does design ‘challenge’ the narrative? Or they just nod to everything being said? That alone, becomes a differentiator enough.

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Ok…your talking about something that is a tough area for most designers… discipline. Being open in a process and also being structured to deliver requires practice.

I’ve seen this even on our own team. When we wait until the last minute to pull creative ideas together, we lose sight of the business goal we were trying to move.

Is this the responsibility of a design leader, or should it be foundational to every designer?

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Now that totally depends upon the team structure, and how the team is functioning within. If the team’s vocal head is the design leader, and rest all discussions happen within the design meetings, then yes, it’s the leader that should be the voice of the team, and if it is a startup, with one or two designers, then everyone needs to be vocal.

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Ok. So let’s dive into this area, if design wants more influence, it needs to tackle dealing with these topics you highlight…business incentives and organizational politics.

Many designers believe great outputs will overcome these obstacles. I’d argue it’s one of the biggest areas for designers to learn in the coming years, thanks to AI.

How should Designers think about these areas?

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Great outputs are only limited to your Figma files, until there is a go-ahead from the org to actually move those designs to implementation. And in larger companies that becomes more complicated, that’s why we don’t often see as shiny and new designs with legacy companies that have over 1000 or 10k employees. Because the challenges that those teams are navigating, are at a different scale.

More designs get shelved and trashed, than implemented and this is the truth for many teams across the world. Your great output, may just be great on paper, not implementation. And the moment designers accept this, they will start seeing their own work in a different light.

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Yes. I’d argue 80% of work goes nowhere. Which is part of the design process.

It’s also the area that destroys design influence when non-designers are invited into a chaotic Figma design file. It’s like inviting people into your hoarding house.

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How do you think designers should deal with being transparent in their process and also drive an agenda?

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@mehekk_bassi such a great write, thanks for being here! :slight_smile:

My question stems from an ops perspective. When great ideas get killed internally, what’s usually the real reason for that… power, incentives, timing, etc?

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That’s undeniably true.

Well, about being transparent and driving agenda - both of these can be done together. You don’t need to hide something in order to prove your value. If design communicates their agenda clearly from day 1, there would be far less friction. We need to stop saying ‘yes’ to things at once, and learn the art of saying ‘no’

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It could be either one or the mix of all, that’s really subjective. Mostly it is economical, because large companies have investors to impress, that’s why we see bad products, layoffs and overall inhumane practices across the world even in companies where design ‘reportedly has a seat at the table’.

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I agree with this… but if the design process is about coming up with 50 ideas to find one good one, how does a design team tell a stakeholder they don’t have time for another idea? It’s sorta a contradiction in the eyes of the business.

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Prioritization is the key here. There are startups that move at the scale of light. As a designer, this is where your expertise lies, to identify the good ideas from the bad ones, and the great ideas from the good ones! :wink: and I feel this is where AI can also be leveraged to eliminate what won’t work!

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Totally makes sense. I’m curious too, with all that being said, do you think AI will amplify those same economic pressures, ie, pushing companies even further toward short-term optics over long-term product and human outcomes?

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Oh, so true. To prioritize your time and understand how to create more influence.

Which leads to, how are you prioritizing your time as a design or product leader? While business impact should be the end goal, many design leaders don’t understand how decisions are made.

At Glare, we’re trying to show teams how their design can influence workflows that are already in place.

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Where should designers prioritize their time to gain more influence? I think this is difficult for many right now. How do they allocate time to these activities?

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I think there is no straightforward answer to that :sweat_smile: because time prioritization is very subjective. Some teams might spend more time on polishing visuals and some may spend more time on thinking about all product aspects. At the end, it depends on what your team is focused on, and what your goals are.

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For some time - yes. In the long run - no.

It’s very temporary right now because a lot of companies still haven’t been able to figure out the exact value that AI will add to their teams. For now it will be very chaotic and messy with layoffs everywhere, but with time, when the dust settles down, companies will have to re-hire and add more human workforce. We are already seeing how annoyed customers are becoming with AI chatbots! The companies who eventually hire humans, will win.

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Love this @mehekk_bassi. Thank you for joining me today, and I encourage others to jump with questions. Love that you are pushing leads in this area.

Last question… do you have any people or resources you’d recommend for learning more about design influence?

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Not specifically books on design influence but there are two books that designers must read - 7 Rules of Power and Sales Bible. Both of these books will make you think out of box, and at a structural/organizational level, that will further change the way you think about design in general.

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Fantastic, light-weight read @mehekk_bassi

Love that you dropped these, I think these would be important for everyone to read that wants any sort of buy-in and traction within their orgs.

It’s also really cool to see how AI is shifting where people need to be on a hierarchical structure. Designers, Engineers, Leaders, PMs should all be able to connect on a business level.

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