35: When the Spark Fades: How Design Leaders Rediscover Their Mission

“Designers have a dual responsibility: to the people who use their products and to the organizations they serve. Balancing those isn’t easy—but it’s where leadership lives.” — Jared Spool

Every design leader I’ve ever met got into this field for the same reason: to improve the world.

There has always been a spark, whether the thrill of solving problems, the art of creating something beautiful and functional, or the belief that design could drive meaningful change. Design carries a deep sense of purpose—a quiet commitment to making things better than they were before.

Fast forward 20 years into a corporate design career, and that spark is barely flickering for many. Sometimes, it’s gone. I’ve lost count of how many brilliant, once-idealistic design leaders now quietly ask themselves: Why am I still doing this?

You became a leader because you cared, not just about great design, but about the people who create it. But here’s the hard truth: when your team feels disengaged, it does not reflect their failure. It’s a reflection of the system. And you’re stuck in the middle—burned out, yet still expected to keep the machine running.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

For leaders, it’s rarely one dramatic moment. It’s slow—so slow you hardly notice it happening. One day, you’re staring at yet another resourcing doc or roadmap slide, thinking, Is this what leadership is supposed to feel like?

You’ve traded creative momentum for meeting fatigue, the purpose of the process for the grind of stakeholder alignment, and the joy of mentoring for the grind of stakeholder alignment. You spend more time justifying headcount than championing bold ideas.

Your team looks to you for clarity and inspiration, but your calendar is a wall of reviews, check-ins, and last-minute fire drills. You’re still solving problems—just not the ones that made you fall in love with design.

The Corporate Machine

Leadership in design can be seductive. You get the title, the influence, the seat at the table. You gain access to strategic conversations, budget decisions, and the chance to shape outcomes at scale.

But that seat often comes with invisible guardrails. You spend more time defending roles, managing politics, and translating the value of design into business language. User needs quietly take a backseat to stakeholder demands. Innovation becomes risk mitigation.

Slowly, the language shifts. You stop asking, “Will this make someone’s life better?” and start saying, “This supports our quarterly OKRs.”

It’s no wonder so many design leaders wonder: What happened to the work that mattered?

The Calling Is Still There—Just Buried

Walking away isn’t always an option. Maybe you’ve got a mortgage, kids, or a hard-earned sense of stability. Maybe, despite everything, you still believe change is possible from the inside.

Here’s the good news: the desire to make things better doesn’t disappear. It just gets quieter.

So what do we do?

We remember. We recommit. And we lead differently.

Here are five ways to reignite your spark—and help your team find theirs.

  • Reclaim the Work That Matters
    Corporate design thrives on distractions that feel urgent but aren’t always important. Help your team protect space for deep, meaningful work.

    • Encourage team members to allocate 10% of their time to exploratory projects or quick wins that matter to them. These self-directed efforts foster ownership, creativity, and renewed energy. Whether it’s a tool that improves efficiency or a redesign no one asked for, passion projects often lead to breakthroughs. As a leader, protect this time and celebrate what emerges from it.

    • Reframe briefs during critiques or reviews: Ask, “How might we humanize this requirement?” Business asks can be met with empathy. A slight language shift or flow adjustment can turn compliance into care, and help your team see themselves as experience shapers, not just request responders.

    • Teach them to look beyond surface metrics like engagement. Clicks and time-on-page are indicators, not outcomes. Guide your team to ask: Are we building clarity? Confidence? Trust? That shift changes the design conversation from outputs to impact.

    • Establish a Shadow Network of Allies
      Isolation leads to burnout. Collaboration fuels resilience. Help designers build supportive micro-communities.

    • Pair juniors with seniors for informal mentorship. Learning flows in both directions when you create space for shadowing, feedback, and casual co-working. These small connections compound into confidence, growth, and team cohesion.

    • Normalize sharing frustration constructively. Complex systems create real tension. Use retros, 1:1s, or team huddles to turn frustration into reflection—and then into forward momentum. Ask: What’s in our control? What can we try next?

    • Ask provocative, human-centered questions. Shift the tone of meetings by modeling questions like, “What would this look like if we prioritized people over profits?” When you center people, you spark better collaboration and more grounded decisions.

  • Redefine “Impact” on Your Terms
    Not every win is a redesign. Sometimes it’s a moment of care.

    • Celebrate the details that humanize the experience. A kind error message. A graceful empty state. These are not edge cases—they’re emotional touchpoints. When you elevate them, you show your team that care matters just as much as craft.

    • Be the user’s voice in cross-functional rooms—and let your team see you do it. When business pressure drowns out human needs, bring the user back into the room. Share a story, a quote, a moment of friction. Advocacy is contagious.

    • Broaden the definition of success. Metrics should measure more than speed. Ask your team: Did we reduce effort? Did we build trust? Partner with a product to define meaningful progress.

  • Safeguard the Creative Core
    Burnout thrives when creativity dies. Protect the spark, especially beyond the roadmap.

    • Keep a “why” file—and encourage your team to do the same. Save user quotes, moments that mattered, and work you’re proud of. Reflecting on purpose isn’t soft—it’s sustaining.

    • Talk about creative outlets beyond the job. Share your passions, and make it okay for others to do the same. Creativity is a muscle—and it doesn’t only live in Figma.

    • Create deep work time across the triad. If you can influence how time is structured, make heads-down time the norm. No meetings. No Slack. Better ideas follow when design, product, and engineering align on focus.

  • Champion Purpose-Driven Decision Making
    Process matters—but people matter more. Model leadership that reflects both.

    • Demonstrate the “yes, and.” Align with business goals and elevate human needs. Show how these aren’t in conflict—they’re two sides of a stronger solution.

    • Coach translation between empathy and impact. Designers speak in human terms, while businesses speak in results. Help your team speak both fluently and build bridges across functions.

    • Help them pick the right battles. Not every detail is worth the fight, but some choices shape trust, safety, and inclusion. Give your team the judgment and confidence to know when to push and how to do it well.

    Change doesn’t require rebellion. It requires resolve—and a clear-eyed belief in what better can look like.


The Unspoken Truth

You don’t have to quit to reclaim your purpose—but you do have to stop waiting for permission to care.

The most meaningful thing a corporate design leader can do isn’t to resist for resistance’s sake. It’s to stay rooted in empathy, to lead with intention, and to put people at the center of every decision.

Real change doesn’t come from a process alone. It happens when enough people inside the system lead with understanding, compassion, and integrity, reminding their organizations why design exists in the first place:

To improve lives.

You don’t need to be a rebel to lead with purpose. You need to be consistent. Intentional. Human.

Help your team reconnect with why they chose this field. Give them the tools, the space, and the permission to design like it still matters.

Because it does.

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36: Beyond the Dashboard: A Design Leader’s Framework for Meaningful Metrics

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34: Change your team retros to account for impact