Most professionals are asking the wrong question about AI. They are focused on how to stay relevant in their current role. The real shift is not about protecting a role, but rather about redefining where value is created as work itself changes.

AI is not just changing how work gets done. It is changing what leadership actually means.

For years, leadership has been tied to output.

AI is now better at all of that.

AI can generate interfaces in minutes that look polished and complete. That speed feels like progress. It feels like clarity, like we are closer to the answer. But we are often not.

The biggest shift in product development right now is not just how teams work, but where the value in the work actually lives.

For many years, product organizations were built around large groups divided by discipline: UX, product management, engineering, and research operated as separate functions with clearly defined responsibilities.

UX teams are entering a period of structural change. As AI accelerates production, the cost of building software falls and organizations increasingly reorganize around customer outcomes rather than product outputs. The result is a new operating model …

Business models are shifting, roles are evolving, and strategies that felt solid just months ago are being rewritten. Transformation at this scale creates extraordinary opportunity, but it also generates noise, ambiguity, and emotional volatility.

As leaders, we stand at the center of that tension.

For years, enterprise software got a free pass on aesthetics. It was enough if it worked, was secure, or complied with regulations. It did not need to feel intuitive. It certainly did not need to feel beautiful.

It feels like a new AI tool shows up every day. My team and I are constantly evaluating something new, experimenting briefly, and then moving on as the next platform or capability appears. The pace is exciting, but it can also feel overwhelming.

If you read the headlines right now, you’d think enterprise software is on borrowed time. Every week there’s another post declaring some version of “SaaS is dead” or “AI just killed software as we know it.” LLMs are improving at an incredible pace. AI startups are moving fast. Markets are nervous. And the prevailing story goes something like this: traditional SaaS is broken, AI will replace it, and incumbents are about to be wiped out.

I don’t buy that story.

The future of UX teams is not defined by AI tools, but by how well they shape intent, judgment, and organizational learning.

Design teams need to build a culture of experimentation and learning immediately. Not later. Here’s why.

For much of the last decade, design leadership was defined by vision.

Design leaders identified the right problems to solve, envisioned better outcomes for customers, and articulated those outcomes in a way the organization could align around.

We have been asked recently to explore how AI might drive productivity across UX. On its own, that is a reasonable question. Productivity is how organizations talk about progress.

As the year comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the ideas I kept returning to in my writing, and what they reveal about the moment design finds itself in now.

For years, design teams have relied on user personas to understand the people behind the interface. These personas helped us define motivations, needs, frustrations, and the everyday realities people face. However, the environment we design for has fundamentally changed.

Designers are hired to bring new thinking into organizations, and then punished, or resisted, when they actually do it. It’s a tension built into the role. Companies say they want innovation, transformation, and new possibilities, yet often reject the very ambiguity and exploration required to create them.

Design is standing at a crossroads, one unlike any we’ve faced before. For decades, we’ve been the makers of products and shapers of experiences. But now, as intelligence becomes ambient and creation becomes automated …

Leadership has never been about control. At its best, it’s always been about connection and coherence. The greatest leaders have never ruled through command …

Design used to be the means by which we made things beautiful and functional. In the age of AI, it’s how we make things, and organizations, intentional.