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Why CEOs Ignore Design Leaders
Design leaders struggle to get CEO attention because they often frame their frustrations as personal grievances rather than understanding executive influence dynamics.
What: The author argues that design leaders fail to engage CEOs by ignoring organizational influence and failing to pivot from ego-driven complaints to curiosity about the business.
Why it matters: Design leaders often lack the cross-functional leverage of product or engineering counterparts because they struggle to map their output to the metrics that matter most to C-level executives.
Original article
CEOs and VPs ignore almost everyone because the entire organization competes for their attention, so feeling overlooked is not specific to design. Designer ego turns that frustration into self-centered complaints that executives hear all day and tune out as static. Curiosity works better: asking who holds influence, how they got it, and what would need to change personally.
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