Last week I went on a jag (fun word BTW) about the erosion of influence in the age of AI. In this, I describe the idea of weak power or proximity without power…which we’ve all encountered at some point.

And…I also mentioned that, given that I have lots of thoughts about this, I would turn it into a short series.

So, here you go! In this follow-up to last week’s article/issue, I map out some tactics you can take, as a designer or design leader, to grab hold of your own decision rights, as a way to meaningfully continue to add value (and be seen as adding value).

Read on below…

— Justin Lokitz

Last week, I made the case that influence is what we rely on when we don’t own the call. That framing tends to land a bit uncomfortably, especially for those of us (like me ;-) who’ve built careers on being the person who can align the room, frame the problem, and move things forward without formal authority.

The real problem challenge here is that the environment has changed. Faster cycles and AI-assisted execution have stripped away much of the structural padding that once made influence feel like leverage. What’s left feels like something more exposed and more honest: decisions and the people who own them.

When I step back to see the context and how it’s changed, one thing remains true: If you want to understand where power actually sits inside your organization, don’t look at org charts or titles. Look at decisions, budget allocation, risk thresholds, what ships (and what doesn’t), what gets rolled back when something breaks, and what tradeoffs are accepted when revenue and trust are in tension.

Those are the levers!

In most organizations, design participates in these conversations but does not own them. We provide input, shape options, and advocate for outcomes, but when the moment comes to make the call, someone else decides. That gap is the difference between influence and authority.

So the shift here is operational…and NOT abstract. So…what can you do about this?

In many respects, this is as “simple” as building a stakeholder map for your organization…which is probably something you have done for your customers. Start by mapping the decisions that actually matter in your current work. Pick a product, a system, or an AI initiative your team is involved in and write down the handful of decisions that will determine whether it succeeds or fails. Then identify who owns each one. This is about who decides, and NOT just who contributes to the decisions.

Most design leaders I work with find this exercise clarifying in a way that’s hard to ignore. It makes visible how much of their impact depends on someone else saying yes.

Once you have that map, look for where ownership is weak or undefined. In AI-driven systems, there are always seams like this. Output quality thresholds, escalation protocols when something goes wrong, boundaries around what the system is allowed to do autonomously, and tradeoffs between speed, accuracy, and cost.

These decisions are often messy because they cut across functions, which is exactly why they’re available.

Instead of asking for a bigger seat at the table, pick one of these decisions and take responsibility for it. That means defining how the decision gets made, what inputs matter, and what success looks like in practice. It also means being the person who is accountable when it doesn’t go well.

Recently, I worked with a design leader of a LARGE consumer tech company, who started her career decades ago as an executive assistant, which means she totally understands how to work backchannels. To her, mapping the decisions across a crazy matrixed organization was illuminating. It helped her cut through the noise of multiple meetings with dozens of stakeholders to find the couple of people who really made the decisions. For her, this helped her pare down from weeks of (often frustrating) Zoom meetings to just a couple of personal calls, where she got the gist of why a decision was made and how she could help with the next one.

That last part is where this becomes real. Ownership without consequence is just rebranded influence.

There’s a useful parallel in a recent issue of the latest issue of Lenny’s Newsletter on getting unstuck (creatively). The core idea is that people don’t move forward by thinking harder or refining their perspective. They move by changing their behavior in a way that creates new constraints and new feedback. In other words, action changes position.

To me, the above process is the same move!

Design leaders often try to close the authority gap by sharpening their arguments or improving their storytelling with beautiful slides, mockups, and customer stories. In this new world, all of that awesome, beautiful, crafted work can help at the margins, but it doesn’t change who owns the decision. Taking responsibility does!

Once you claim a decision, attach it to something measurable. If you take on AI output quality, define how it will be evaluated. If you take on user trust, identify the signals that indicate it’s improving or eroding. If you take on escalation, specify what triggers it and how quickly it needs to happen.

Now you’re operating in the language of outcomes rather than in the language of design alone.

From there, make the ownership explicit. Write it down. Align it with your product, engineering, and leadership counterparts. Clarity matters here more than perfection. When everyone knows who owns the decision and how it will be evaluated, authority starts to solidify.

If you’re leading a team, your job is to multiply this. Assign decisions, not just projects. Coach designers to define success in measurable terms and to navigate the tradeoffs that come with ownership. Over time, you’re not just building better designers…you’re building operators, which is the key to their futures as well as yours.

This is the same shift I’ve seen in founders and in leaders who move from large organizations into their own ventures. The work becomes less about shaping direction and more about carrying consequences. When there is no one else to defer to, the distinction between influence and authority disappears.

You don’t need to leave your role to make that shift. You do need to change what you’re willing to own.

No one is going to hand you decision rights. They emerge when you consistently define decisions, tie them to outcomes, and stay accountable when things break. Over time, people begin to rely on you not because you are persuasive, but because you are responsible.

If you’re looking for a place to start, don’t overcomplicate it. Pick one decision that matters in your current work, make it explicit, define how success will be measured…and (most importantly) state, clearly, that you own it. Then follow it through!

That’s where design leadership begins to move from influence to authority in a way that actually sticks.

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