Build What Comes Next

I keep telling my team we may need to take the Kevin Costner approach: if we build it, they will come.

It sounds a little cheesy, but I think it captures something important about leadership right now. The technology industry is moving incredibly fast. AI is changing how products are built, how teams work, what skills matter, and what entire disciplines may become. Design is right in the middle of that transformation, and the uncomfortable truth is that nobody has the playbook.

There is no established model for what UX should become in an AI-native world. There is no proven operating model, perfect org structure, or step-by-step guide for how design should evolve. If we wait for someone to hand us that answer, we are going to be waiting too long.

Leadership in a moment like this requires something different.

We have to identify the capability our organizations will need next, build the first proof, and let the evidence shape what comes after.

That takes creativity. It also takes risk. Especially inside a large corporation.

Find the gap before it becomes obvious

I think one of the most important things a leader can do right now is look beyond today's backlog and ask a different question: what capability is this organization going to need that it does not have today?

The answer will be different everywhere. It might be a new way of building products, a knowledge system, a research capability, a governance model, or a different relationship between people and technology.

The hard part is that nobody may be asking for it yet. That is where leadership becomes creative work.

You have to understand enough about what is changing in the market, what the technology is becoming capable of, and where your organization is struggling to begin forming a point of view about what should exist next.

You will not have every answer. In fact, if the idea is truly new, you probably should not.

But you can know the problem deeply, understand what the emerging tools make possible, and see a credible path for your team to begin solving it.

Then you have to be willing to drive it.

Invest before the outcome is certain

Once you see the gap, you have to create enough space for your team to explore it.

That can be difficult because every organization already has more work than people. There is always another project, another deadline, another feature someone wants delivered. But if every person on your team is completely consumed by today's delivery work, nobody is building tomorrow's capability.

Leaders have to set aside time for learning, experimenting, and trying new ways of working before there is a guaranteed return.

That means finding people who can see the opportunity with you and giving them the time to pursue it.

Let them learn the tools. Let them challenge the existing process. Let them try something that may fail. Give them enough room to discover what is actually possible rather than simply repeating the way the organization already works.

And be willing to learn alongside them.

You do not need to walk into the room knowing exactly how the solution will work. You need enough vision to establish a direction, enough humility to let that vision evolve, and enough confidence to keep moving while you learn.

A vision pitch is no longer enough

Here is where I think a lot of transformation efforts fall short. You identify a problem, develop a compelling vision, and take it to senior leadership for support. When the idea is genuinely new, a vision alone is rarely enough. You are asking people to invest in something they have never seen work and trust a team to deliver something it has never delivered before.

I think about it like building a startup and pitching investors. A strong pitch does more than describe the opportunity. It explains the problem, shows why current solutions fall short, and demonstrates that some meaningful part of the new idea already works.

The same is true inside a large organization.

A polished prototype can help people see the vision, but you need evidence that it can operate in the real environment. Can it connect to the technology stack? Solve a business problem? Improve speed, quality, consistency, or safety in a way you can demonstrate?

And you are proving something else at the same time. You are proving that your team is the right team to build it. That matters just as much as proving the idea.

Leadership support comes from confidence in both the direction and the people behind it. You want the conversation to shift from “This is an interesting theory” to “I can see this working, and I believe this team knows how to deliver it.”

That is when investment becomes much easier.

Start with the first thing you can prove

When my team is facing something enormous, I often remind them that you cannot eat the elephant in one bite.

Transformation becomes overwhelming when you try to imagine the finished system all at once. A new platform, process, set of skills, and governance model cannot all be built at once. The question is where to start.

Find one part of the vision that addresses a clear business need and is within your team’s ability to test. Form a theory about how it could work differently, then find a few people who see the same opportunity and start building.

The first piece does not need to demonstrate the entire future. It needs to provide enough evidence to justify the next investment. Use what you learn to adjust the theory, and then build the next piece.

Over time, the evidence compounds.

Evidence creates gravity

At first, a new idea may feel theoretical to the rest of the organization. That is when the idea starts to create its own gravity. Each working piece gives more people a reason to engage, more reason to invest, and more opportunity to build.

What began as a small experiment can become a new organizational capability.

The gap I see in UX

For me, the gap I see is around how UX itself needs to evolve in an AI-native world.

I believe the traditional relationship between design systems, design files, development, and governance is no longer enough for where software is heading. So my team has been exploring a different model: a design intelligence platform that moves design knowledge closer to the technology stack, along with a different design and development process and a governance model that helps keep human-centered judgment embedded in what gets built.

That is the opportunity I see in my organization. Yours may look entirely different.

The lesson is to look for a capability your organization will need and ask whether your team has a unique reason to build it. Do you understand the problem deeply? Does it draw on your discipline’s strengths? Can your team see a solution that is not yet obvious to everyone else?

If the answer is yes, that may be your opportunity to create something genuinely new.

Define the transformation before it defines you

There is also a more personal reason I think this matters for leaders and teams. If you wait for the organization to decide how AI should transform your discipline, someone else may define its future entirely through automation, headcount, or efficiency.

If you believe your team can create more value than those measures capture, you have to show what that future could look like. That takes conviction. You are putting your judgment on the line, investing before success is guaranteed, and asking people to learn while they continue delivering the work in front of them.

But I think that is also how real innovation happens.

Some people will not understand the opportunity at first. But as you build evidence of what your team can do, you give the organization another way to see its future. You also give your team a role in defining it.

That is how you start defining the transformation instead of waiting for the transformation to define you.

Are we still UX?

I have been thinking about this a lot in the context of UX. If we begin building design intelligence into the technology stack, shaping how AI participates in product development, and creating systems that allow human-centered design to scale beyond individual designers, are we still UX as we have traditionally defined it?

Maybe not. Maybe that is the point.

Disciplines evolve when the problems around them change. Our job is to understand what the organization needs next and find new ways for our expertise to create value.

Nobody is going to hand us the map. We have to identify the gap, imagine what could fill it, and build enough of that future to make other people believe it too.

That is why I keep coming back to the Kevin Costner approach with my team: if we build it, they will come. Belief gives us the courage to start. Evidence gives others a reason to join us.