A few weeks ago, I went deep into decision-making and governance from the standpoint of design leaders. But honestly, I think there is just too much going on here, especially when it comes to design leadership, AI, and decision-making, to cover in one article. So, I’ve decided to write a 2-3-part series about the end of influence and what we can must do now about it.

In the first part of this series (below), I describe the idea of weak power or proximity without power. This is NOT meant to be a disaster or “whoa is me” piece. Rather, my goal here is to set up what I’ve experienced and what WE can all do about it.

Keep calm and read on…

— Justin Lokitz

Here’s some quick personal history to set up the context for the rest of this series:

What do you see in those 6 bullets? I see a lot of influence going on. In fact, for two decades, I have called myself a design leader who has worn “influence” like a badge of honor.

Like most of you, I have influenced stakeholders, roadmaps, and product directions. In this, influence became the polite word for operating without authority.

For a while, that posture worked wonders! When software was slow to build and expensive to change, whether it was my designer peers or me, the person who could frame the problem, run the workshop, and align the room had real leverage. Craft mattered. Facilitation mattered. Storytelling mattered. Designers could shape outcomes by shaping conversations.

Alas, the ground has shifted!

As I’ve discussed previously, AI has collapsed the cost of execution. Prototypes ship in hours (sometimes minutes). Interfaces generate themselves. Entire feature sets can be stood up by a single motivated builder using tools that did not exist two years ago. What once required months of coordination across product, design, and engineering can now be assembled by one capable product creator with the right stack.

What does this all mean? Well…in almost every respect, execution is no longer scarce. But decision rights are. And…this is where design leadership is being exposed.

In many organizations I advise, design is invited to “the table” early, sometimes by me. Design leaders sit in strategy off-sites where they define vision decks and run blue-sky workshops about the future. They are very present when ambition is being articulated. Like they’ve always been, they are GREAT at co-creating options and influencing direction.

Then the real decisions begin. Budget allocation. Risk tolerance. AI deployment boundaries. Revenue tradeoffs. Escalation thresholds when systems fail.

I am witnessing design leaders being consulted, then sidelined, while the product leadership makes decisions.

Although we used to think of this as influence, I do not think we can define it that way any longer. It is proximity without power.

Influence is what you rely on when you do not own the call. Authority is what you have when you are accountable for the outcome.

That distinction matters more in 2026 than it ever has.

Unlike the UX/UI and service constructs we used to design for, AI systems are not static artifacts. They act. They decide. They scale. They introduce risk at a velocity most organizations are not structurally prepared for. When an AI feature ships and generates bias, someone owns that (is it you?). When it increases revenue but erodes trust, someone made that tradeoff. When an agent takes an action that crosses a legal or ethical boundary, someone is accountable.

If the design leader’s role is to “influence” the conversation but not own the decision, then design is not leading. It is advising…something I have a LOT of in my life (see above). And…advisors do not carry consequences. Operators do.

I have seen this pattern repeatedly inside large enterprises. Design leaders are articulate, thoughtful, and strategic. They sit at the table and present argue strong frameworks. They talk about systems thinking and user experience at scale.

Then the finance person asks about cost, or the lead architect asks about feasibility, or perhaps legal asks about risk exposure. In the end, the product manager or even the CPO calls the final play.

Once again, design adjusts and influences, but it does not decide. That structure was fragile even before AI. Now it is untenable.

The AI era has compressed roles. The old sequence of handoffs between product manager, designer, front-end engineer, and back-end engineer is dissolving. A single product creator can sketch, prompt, build, and deploy. Teams are smaller. Cycles are faster. There are fewer intermediaries.

When roles compress, authority concentrates. There is no room for ceremonial influence. Someone owns the decision. And…if design leadership does not evolve into that role, someone else will.

I saw this shift clearly in my conversation with Maya Elise Joseph-Goteiner. At Google, she operated inside a sophisticated system where design influenced massive roadmaps. The work was visible, complex, and impactful. Influence had reach…until it didn’t.

Then she left to found Velocity Ave, where she moved from influencing strategy inside a large organization to owning outcomes for clients directly. There was no brand safety net. No distributed accountability. Revenue, client trust, and delivery are her responsibility.

The difference is consequence over craft. Inside Google, influence shaped decisions. Inside her own firm, decisions shape survival.

That shift from persuasive partner to accountable operator is the evolution facing design leaders right now. This is not about running better workshops or telling stronger stories. We can all do that! It is about whether you are willing to carry risk.

Many design leaders built careers on facilitation, alignment, and empathy. I am certainly one of those. Those skills matter, but they are not the same as authority. Authority requires ownership of tradeoffs.

If you want power over how AI systems behave, you must co-own the economic and legal consequences of those systems. If you want a voice in how a product allocates resources, you must understand its financial model (something we have been teaching to Design MBAs for 18 years). If you want to define governance, you must accept responsibility when governance fails.

This, my friends, is where the tension sits.

Design culture has often celebrated “influence without authority” as a virtue. It has been framed as collaborative and non-hierarchical. In reality, it has often been a coping mechanism.

When you cannot own revenue, you influence it. When you cannot control the budget, you persuade. When you cannot decide, you workshop. I believe that era is closing.

AI is accelerating decision velocity, and organizations cannot afford ornamental roles. Executives feel this shift even if they cannot yet articulate it. They see the speed. They see the risk. They feel the need for clearer accountability.

What they do not consistently see is design stepping forward and saying: We will own this. Not the pixels. Not just the prototype. The decision and the consequences that go with that decision.

If design wants to reclaim/cement its real power, it must stop defining itself primarily by craft and start defining itself by control over key decisions…which, by the way, is super uncomfortable. It means fewer leaders can hide behind influence metrics. It means the design leader must know the business model as well as the CPO. It means technical fluency is no longer optional. It means governance is not someone else’s job.

It also means something far more interesting: namely, design can become the steward of consequence. So what can we do about this?!

In the next two parts of this series, I will get specific…and more hopeful and tactical!

In Part 2, we will break down the only currency that matters inside modern organizations: decision rights. Input is not power, and veto is not ownership. We will examine who actually owns the call in AI-accelerated teams and how design leaders can map and claim those rights.

In Part 3, we will address the hard reset required to move from influence to authority. We will talk about revenue fluency, risk ownership, and what it takes to govern systems rather than decorate them.

You should know that in no way is this meant to be a critique of design. Rather, it is a challenge to it. In my mind, design and design leadership are more important than ever in the AI era. And…with that, weak design (and design leadership) stands out.

If your role depends on influence, ask yourself a harder question: what decision do I actually own, and what consequences am I willing to absorb?

In 2026, that is the line between being invited to the table and running it. Design, if it chooses to evolve, is capable of running it!

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