The Merholz Agenda
Peter Merholz's semi-weekly newsletter on organization design, design leadership, and bringing humanism into the places we work.
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[TMA] Overcome UX/Design Leadership's Learned Helplessness
By Peter Merholz · · View online →
Over the weekend we dropped the latest episode of Finding Our Way, (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) where Jesse and I discuss my 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health research and findings. That conversation, combined with having taught UX/Design Leadership Demystified last week, and some recent coaching discussions with design executives, has coalesced my thinking around how UX/Design leaders need to overcome a learned helplessness acquired over the last 20 years, and meet the current moment.
Yes, there are systemic reasons for UX/Design's challenges
Let me begin by recognizing there are very real reasons why UX/Design struggles relative to other functions in a company. One that has persisted for decades is how UX/Design is under-leveled in relationship to peers. As I said on the podcast:
"Design is one level lower in an org chart than product and engineering, right? So you’ll have a VP of Design, but their peers will be SVPs of product and engineering, or you’ll have a director of design who is working with VPs throughout the organization and that cascades