Design has been trying to get a seat at the table for as long as I can remember.
I’ve heard the phrase at every level, in every kind of organisation. Junior designers frustrated that nobody listens to them.
Heads of design making the case to the C-suite. Consultancies pitching the value of design thinking to boards that have heard the pitch before and remain unconvinced. The language varies. The aspiration is consistent.
I’ve started to think the framing is the problem.
Seats at tables are given by the people already sitting there. Waiting for an invitation, or making a case for why you deserve one, positions design as a supplicant. You’re asking for access to a space you don’t currently occupy.
That’s a structurally weak position, and it produces a particular kind of design leadership energy that I find difficult to work with. Slightly defensive. Constantly justifying. Measuring influence by proximity to power rather than by what the work actually delivers.
The organisations where design has genuine strategic influence are almost never the ones where a charismatic design leader successfully argued their way into the room.
They’re the ones where design proved, repeatedly and specifically, that it could see things other functions couldn’t and turn that visibility into better decisions. The influence came from the work. The seat followed.
This distinction matters because it changes what you spend your time on.
If you’re focused on getting the seat, you spend your time on the politics of access. Building relationships upward.
Presenting in the right forums. Making sure the right people know what design is doing. These things aren’t wrong. But when they’re the primary strategy, design becomes very good at talking about its value and less focused on actually delivering it.
If you’re focused on demonstrating value through the work, you spend your time on the quality of the thinking. The research that reframes the problem. The prototype that shows stakeholders something they couldn’t have imagined from a requirements document. The strategic recommendation that turns out to be right. You build a track record rather than a political position.
Track records are harder to dismiss than presentations.
There’s also something worth naming about the nature of the table itself. Not all tables are worth sitting at. Some of them are where decisions get ratified rather than made. Sitting there gives you visibility and the feeling of influence without the substance of it. The actual decision happened in a smaller room, earlier, between fewer people.
I’ve spent time in organisations where design had what looked from the outside like significant seniority. Big titles. Reporting lines to the CEO. Representation in leadership meetings. And the design work was still, in practice, being handed a brief after the strategy was set. The seat was decorative.
Real influence over a product or a business direction is quieter than a title suggests and messier than an org chart shows. It comes from being the person whose perspective gets sought before the meeting, not just heard during it. From building enough trust that your read on a user problem or a product direction carries weight without needing to be argued for at length.
Getting there isn’t about the seat. It’s about consistent, specific, credible contributions that make the people making decisions better at making them.
I’m not dismissing the structural barriers. In some organisations, design is locked out of strategic conversations by culture, by history, by leadership that genuinely doesn’t understand what design can offer. Those barriers are real. Access without credibility is just presence. It doesn’t move anything.
The version of this I find more useful is: build something worth listening to, and then make sure you’re in rooms where people listen. The credibility has to come first.
When design earns its place in strategic conversations, it tends to stay there. When it’s invited in as a courtesy or a culture signal, it tends to be the first thing removed when priorities shift.
Stop asking for the seat. Go build something the table needs.
