The necessary evolution: why yesterday’s design leader won’t survive tomorrow

Let’s start with some uncomfortable truths:

  • Tech companies have laid off thousands of designers in the past 18 months
  • AI tools are already generating UI components, user flows, and entire design systems
  • Design budgets are shrinking while AI investments balloon
  • Many celebrated “design-led” companies have quietly demoted design leadership from the C-suite

The evidence suggests design leadership as we’ve known it is on life support. And yet…

The need for human-centered innovation has never been greater. The complexity of our challenges has never been higher. The potential for design to shape not just products but entire systems has never been more apparent.

The diagnosis isn’t that design leadership is dying - it’s that yesterday’s design leadership model simply cannot survive tomorrow’s realities.

The uncomfortable truth about design leadership today

I’ve led teams from startups to the largest companies in the world. I’ve been in countless executive boardrooms where I was ‘the first designer they’d ever met at this level,’. But the path to leadership wasn’t mapped for designers when I began. This lack of established pathways made me acutely aware of how design leadership has had to improvise and evolve - often painfully - to be relevant in tomorrow’s world.

When I began my career, a design leader needed mastery of craft, team management, and just enough business acumen to negotiate for resources. The rest could be delegated or diffused through carefully constructed processes.

That era is over.

The evolving landscape around us demands an equally profound evolution in how we lead. The evidence is everywhere if we’re willing to see it.

From pixels to purpose: the expanding role

Our tools have transformed dramatically. The UXTools annual survey shows how rapidly our design toolsets have expanded and shifted.

Few other disciplines see such rapid and constant change in the tools that are central to their work. And that was before generative AI entered the chat. Recent data shows 83% of creatives have already experimented with AI tools in their work, fundamentally changing what’s possible, who can do what, and how fast.

As our tools evolve from enablers of execution to partners in creation, the design leader’s role must evolve from craft master to possibility orchestrator.

The human cost we’re not talking about

Meanwhile, below the surface of productivity metrics and delivery schedules, there’s a human cost that’s becoming impossible to ignore.

The McKinsey Health Institute surveyed 15,000 employees across 15 countries, on every continent around the world. And found that over half of employees are not faring well at work, either “stretching” (functioning but overwhelmed by work stressors), “drowning” (underperforming and overwhelmed), or “managing” (functioning poorly but low burnout symptoms). Only 49% are effectively addressing work stressors while growing and developing.

And the primary culprit isn’t workload or complexity - it’s toxic workplace behaviour, which functions as an innovation tax, costing organizations both talent and creativity. McKinsey’s research shows employees who experience high levels of toxic behavior at work are 8x more likely to experience burnout symptoms, and 6x more likely to want to leave the company.

The design leader who can’t create psychological safety while navigating complexity won’t have a team left to lead.

Generation shift: the myths and realities

The most significant workforce transformation since the Industrial Revolution is happening right now: for the first time in history, five generations work side by side, with Gen Z already accounting for almost a third of the global workforce.

But the real story isn’t just the rise of Gen Z - it’s that the diversity of perspectives, expectations, and working styles has never been greater.

What makes people stay at their jobs

New research challenges the simplistic narratives we tell about generational differences. While Gen Z does indeed prioritize purpose and meaning over pure compensation, they still value adequate compensation and workplace flexibility. The difference isn’t what they want but how willing they are to leave when they don’t get it.

As the Deloitte Global Millennial Survey shows, younger generations are significantly less tolerant of toxic workplace behaviors and poor management practices. They expect companies to have a positive impact not just on their careers, but on society.

What this means for design leadership is profound: the command-and-control approaches that might have been tolerated by previous generations simply won’t fly with the new generation of talent. The days of “paying your dues” through grueling hours and thankless tasks are over - not because young designers are lazy, but because they’re wise enough to recognize that there are better ways to work and learn.

The four evolutions every design leader must embrace

One of my favourite saying is, “Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.” For design leadership, we’ve reached that tipping point.

The evolution needs to happen across four critical dimensions:

  1. How we create value
  2. How we show up
  3. How we organise
  4. What we focus on

Let’s unpack each one.

Evolution 1: beyond competition, to co-creation

The first shift involves moving from creating value through competitive differentiation to unlocking value through collaborative creation.

The evolving role of design

As one Design Director at a large bank put it in EY Seren’s Leading Design Works report, “The purpose of design is to unlock the creative potential of the organisation.”

McKinsey’s Business Value of Design study found that the highest-performing organizations embedded design in strategic planning processes and gave designers influence over core value-creation functions - not just product. When designers help design the business itself - its processes, ways of working, and business models - the entire business performs better.

Yesterday’s design leader defended territory and fought for a seat at the table. Tomorrow’s design leader doesn’t need a seat because they’re helping build a better table.

Evolution 2: beyond expectations, to wholeness

The second evolution involves how we show up as leaders - moving beyond performance expectations to embracing human wholeness.

Research shows that just four kinds of behavior account for 89% of leadership effectiveness:

  1. Solving problems effectively
  2. Operating with a strong results orientation
  3. Seeking different perspectives
  4. Supporting others

Notice what’s not on the list: technical brilliance, charismatic presentations, or strategic genius. The most effective leaders focus on bringing people together to solve problems that matter.

In an industry obsessed with perfect execution, perhaps the most radical act is prioritising people over perfection.

Evolution 3: beyond command, to collaboration

Traditionally, design teams have been structured like everything else in business: a pyramid. Big dogs at the top barking orders, hungry pups at the bottom fetching pixels and hoping for scraps of recognition. Middle managers in between translating barks into actionable tasks.

This hierarchical structure made sense in a world of relatively stable requirements and technologies. It ensured quality control, maintained brand consistency, and created clear career paths. For decades, it was simply How Things Were Done.

But the pyramid is crumbling under the weight of today’s challenges.

When requirements change weekly, technologies emerge monthly, and business models pivot quarterly, rigid hierarchies become innovation bottlenecks. When teams need to adapt rapidly to shifting contexts, the lag time between front-line discovery and executive decision becomes unsustainable.

I’m a huge proponent of a new, research-backed approach that debunks common myths about how teams operate. Rather than one fixed structure, effective design leaders need to operate across three team archetypes:

Types of team construct

  • Cycling teams: Flexible structures where members maintain significant individual autonomy while contributing to collective success. Perfect for exploration and innovation where the path forward isn’t clear.

  • Relay teams: Sequentially-organised, where success depends on both individual excellence at each stage and precise coordination. Ideal for known processes with clear handoffs.

  • Rowing teams: Highly integrated with success depending on synchronised effort and collective performance. Essential for high-stakes deliveries with tight deadlines.

The mark of tomorrow’s design leader isn’t mastery of a single team model, but the ability to shift between models based on the challenge at hand - sometimes even running different models simultaneously for different workstreams.

Evolution 4: beyond outcomes, to impact

The final evolution transforms what we focus on - moving beyond measuring outputs and individual performance toward cultivating environments where transformative impact can emerge. It’s the shift from ‘What did we deliver?’ to ‘What did we enable?’

The questions we ask ourselves must evolve

Yesterday’s design leader asked:

  • What legacy will I leave?
  • What are my “non-negotiable” expectations of others?
  • Who on my team will complement my skills?
  • What is broken that needs fixing?
  • How will I get the organisation on board with my vision?
  • How will I know if I’m successful?

Tomorrow’s design leader asks:

  • What organisational purpose do I serve?
  • What does my org & team need me to be?
  • What conditions will I need to put in place to maximise my team’s success?
  • How will we respect our past while disrupting our future?
  • How will I engage the organisation in creating our shared vision?
  • How will we know if we’re winning?

The shift is subtle but profound - from individual achievement to collective purpose, from personal vision to shared direction, from fixing what’s broken to building what’s possible.

The new design leader DNA

These four evolutions together represent a fundamental shift in the archetype of design leadership:

From:

  • Manager
  • Planner
  • Professional
  • Director

To:

  • Human
  • Catalyst
  • Visionary
  • Architect

This, simply put, is recognition that yesterday’s design leader - however skilled, however respected - simply won’t survive tomorrow’s challenges.

These four evolutions aren’t separate initiatives. They’re interconnected facets of a coherent leadership approach. How you create value shapes how you show up, which influences how you organize teams, which determines what you focus on.

The design leader who evolves in all four dimensions creates a virtuous cycle where each dimension reinforces the others. For example, when you shift from competitive differentiation to co-creation (value evolution), you naturally need to embrace psychological safety and openness (showing up evolution), which requires more flexible team structures (organization evolution), and drives you to focus on collective purpose rather than individual legacy (focus evolution).

Conversely, getting stuck in one dimension creates drag on the others. A leader might embrace more collaborative team structures but maintain an outdated approach to value creation, limiting the potential impact of organizational changes.

But can this really work?

Let’s be honest - this evolution isn’t easy. Established organizations have built-in resistance to changing leadership models. Current design leaders may lack some of the skills needed for this new paradigm. And the very real pressures of quarterly results can make long-term transformation feel like a luxury.

But evolution doesn’t require revolution. Through my work leading McKinsey’s European design practice and partnering with C-suites across industries, I’ve collected approaches that work even in highly regulated, hierarchical environments. These aren’t theoretical ideals - they’re battle-tested tactics that have delivered measurable results in boardrooms where I was often the first design leader ever present:

  1. Implement 30-day design sprints focused on business processes, not just products Create a cross-functional team with explicit permission to redesign one internal process that frustrates customers. Give them resources, authority, and a 30-day deadline.

  2. Establish fortnightly dialogue sessions between design and strategy/finance teams Schedule structured 60-minute sessions where design leaders and business leaders jointly examine metrics, challenge assumptions, and identify opportunities. Document decisions and revisit progress every 2 weeks.

  3. Create a “team structure pilot” for your next major project Explicitly design one team as a “cycling team,” “relay team,” or “rowing team” - ensuring they have the necesary support and structures needed for each team construct to thrive. Assign similar projects and compare results on speed, quality, and team satisfaction.

  4. Implement the ‘10X vs. 10%’ decision framework For every major initiative, explicitly evaluate both incremental improvements (10%) and transformative approaches (10X). Create a standard template that requires teams to present both paths and their implications. Google uses this approach to prevent modest thinking from becoming the default position.

  5. Develop an “enablement scorecard” alongside your performance metrics Build a measurement system focused on the conditions that enable happy, effective, innovative teams. Track metrics like ‘creative confidence’ (measured through team self-assessments), ‘psychological safety’ (using validated assessment tools), ‘collaboration density’ (frequency of cross-functional work), and ‘learning investment’ (time dedicated to skill development). This system creates visibility and accountability for the organizational characteristics that traditional metrics miss.

Of course, this evolution will look different depending on your context. In-house leaders at product companies might focus first on co-creating business strategy. At an agency, you might prioritize new team structures for client responsiveness. Consultancy leaders might emphasize evolving from director to catalyst. The path varies, but the destination remains the same.

Financial services organizations, for example, might need to emphasize the evolution of focus first - shifting from compliance-driven metrics to possibility-driven questions - while technology companies might need to prioritize the evolution of team structures to unlock existing creative potential.

The ultimate question

The competitive landscape, workplace expectations, and technological capabilities will continue evolving whether we do or not. The only question is whether we’ll evolve deliberately or be forced to change reactively.

As you reflect on your own leadership approach, consider: which aspects of the old model are you holding onto that might be holding you back? And which dimensions of the new model feel most uncomfortable - yet necessary - to embrace?

Because in design leadership, as in design itself, the most powerful question isn’t “Is this good enough?” but rather “What becomes possible if we imagine something better?”

This article is based on talks I gave at Leading Design in October 2024 and the iF Design Conference in April 2025. If you’d like to discuss these ideas further or explore how they might apply to your organisation, connect with me on LinkedIn.