How is the role of design executives evolving?

This was one of the original questions that’s been central to my mission over the last three years. But leading into our recent Design Executive Council Summit 2025 in Silicon Valley, I’ve started to believe the better question might be:

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What are the biggest business imperatives enterprises face today and tomorrow, and what is the design executive's unique role in addressing them?

What mindsets and practices do design executives need to build—and unlearn—to serve in that capacity?

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This shift may seem subtle, but it changes everything.

It reframes our role not only as stewards of design functions, but as experience executives who use design and other cross-functional disciplines to shape systems, values, and culture. Through my hundreds of conversations with design leaders, it is evident that this a time to reimagine and reshape our roles.

But to evolve into the future, we need the right mindset to help guide this change with purpose.

The Golden Repair Mindset

At this year’s Summit, I brought back my Kintsugi bowl from our 2024 Summit. In Japanese, Kintsugi means “to join with gold.” It’s the art of honoring fractures, reforming what was broken, and creating something stronger and more beautiful. Kintsugi is the symbolism I feel for the state of our roles today. We need to become resilient and adaptable to reformation. The roles of the future are not the roles of today.

Business and society are changing faster than ever. Complexity, disruption, and reinvention have become our constant companions. We can't afford to be held back by old beliefs that no longer serve us. We must un-learn and let go, as much as we learn and acquire. Good design is often about reduction as it is about addition. What about in our leadership practices? Do we examine what we need to unlearn? This feels like a golden opportunity.

The Golden Repair asks us to see repair not as an act of fixing, but as an act of renewal, a chance to rebuild with strength, dignity, and purpose. It’s a call to let go of what no longer serves us: the rigid mental models, the over-reliance on craft as identity, the instinct to define ourselves by discipline rather than by our leadership and impact.

We are collectively breaking and remaking our roles, shifting from the comfort of what design once was to the potential of what experience leadership can be. We’re freeing up space to focus on what truly matters: having a positive, lasting impact on others.

Because design, at its best, isn’t a title, a technique, or a role. Design is a way of being, thinking, and doing - a way of moving through the world with curiosity, intention, and care.

As I’ve reflected on what we heard from our Council Members at the Summit - the patterns, tensions, and opportunities, and I keep returning to one realization:

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Many of the outcomes we aspire to see realized in business won’t be achieved solely through the role of a design leader, but through our evolution into experience executives.

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This is the essence of the Golden Repair Mindset: embracing imperfection, intentionally letting go, and stepping fully into a new role with renewed purpose, dignity, and clarity.

For the love of design,

Gordon Ching

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