From Ownership to Influence: Rethinking UX Leadership

UX Leadership By Design

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In this episode of UX Leadership by Design, Mark Baldino is joined by veteran UX strategist Paul Boag to explore what’s holding design organizations back—and how to fix it. With over 30 years of experience across sectors, Paul shares why small, underfunded UX teams must stop trying to “own” design and instead empower others through training, standards, and strategic leadership. From breaking down the four pillars of a strong UX practice to candid takes on titles, culture change, stakeholder influence, and democratizing design, this conversation is packed with perspective and practical advice.

Key Takeaways

• Design isn’t yours to own: UX teams need to stop trying to control everything and instead focus on enabling others across the organization to improve user experience.
• Democratizing UX scales your impact: A Center of Excellence (CoE) model empowers non-designers to participate in UX while design leaders maintain standards and guidance.
• Perfection is the enemy of progress: You can’t scale UX by insisting on pixel-perfect quality. Impact at scale comes from breadth, not control.
• Influence comes from empathy: We do user research for customers, but not for stakeholders. Understand your colleagues like users to gain traction.
• Start with working policies: You may not be able to enforce org-wide UX standards—but you can set boundaries for how you work effectively.
• Design leaders must become culture hackers: Changing design maturity in an organization means shifting how teams think, work, and value UX over time.

Chapters

• 00:00 – Introductions and background
• 05:45 – Designer Is the Problem Word
• 08:36 – UX Teams Are Too Small to Own Everything
• 10:58 – Democratizing UX at Oxford
• 13:09 – Letting Go of Pixel Perfection
• 17:02 – 4 Pillars of UX Leadership
• 23:51 – From Working Policies to Org-wide Standards
• 26:57 – Tailor UX Messaging to Stakeholders
• 29:49 – Culture Hacking Through UX
• 32:26 – Resources & Where to Find Paul

Resources & Links

• Connect with Paul Boag on LinkedIn
• Paul’s Website
• Paul’s Awesome Podcast (Latest episode covers his Oxford University case study)

• Connect with Mark on LinkedIn
• Fuzzy Math - B2B & Enterprise UX Design Consultancy