Organizations are like ecosystems — complex, interconnected, and constantly evolving. Yet, many businesses design their structures and strategies in ways that fail to account for the most important element: the customer experience. Too often, product teams are shaped around internal hierarchies rather than the holistic journey of the user. The result? Fragmented focus, inconsistent design execution, and frustrated customers. To thrive in today’s competitive landscape, organizations need to embrace an experience-led approach.

Melvin Conway’s famous observation says it best: “Organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” This “Conway’s Law” reality becomes painfully obvious when customer journeys span multiple product teams, creating disjointed experiences. It’s like asking passengers to switch trains every few miles, with no guarantee the tracks will even connect.

The missed promise of decentralized product teams

Consider the one-designer-to-one-product-team model, a relic of agile transformations. It persists in many organizations, but it’s fundamentally flawed. Today’s designers are expected to master an overwhelming array of sub-disciplines — information architecture, interaction design, generative research, visual design, and even front-end technologies. That’s like asking one person to play every instrument in an orchestra, while also writing the sheet music and managing the concert hall. The result isn’t harmony — it’s exhaustion and mediocrity.

But what if we flipped the script? What if organizations were structured around the customer experience, rather than internal silos? Imagine teams that followed the customer journey from start to finish, creating a seamless, delightful experience at every touchpoint. That’s the promise of an experience-led model.

This shift isn’t just about delighting customers; it’s about survival. Features that once impressed users are now table stakes. Companies leading the way — from emerging startups to industry giants — are those that look beyond the product they provide and prioritize seamless, end-to-end experiences. Products are no longer standalone offerings; they’re part of larger services. To deliver on this promise, businesses must adopt new operating models and mindsets. It’s no longer enough to ask, “What’s on our product roadmap?” We must ask, “What value are we delivering for our customers, and how do all the pieces fit together?”

Unlocking design's full potential

In sales-led or product-led organizations, designers often only considered in the execution phase. Even today, design my be seen only as aesthetics and styling. “Make it pop” is the phrase we all too often hear. But design’s potential extends far beyond UX or UI. The same design principles that shape great products can aid transforming entire enterprises. Every function, from marketing to engineering and sales can adopt design thinking to create value.

The signs of a misaligned organization are easy to spot: Reorganizations fail to deliver meaningful results. Teams operate in silos, leading to duplication or missed opportunities. Features function well individually but fall apart in the broader customer journey. Designers feel stuck, demotivated, and overextended. Feedback from users is treated as isolated fixes rather than holistic insights. Retention and conversion rates start to slide, in spite of delivering user requested features. And perhaps most tellingly, there’s no clear path to achieving the company’s vision.

Centralized Partnership

The foundational piece of an experience-led model is “Centralized Partnership”, a term coined by Peter Merholz, author of the book Org Design of Design Orgs. Centralized Partnership is a design team structure ensuring connections to the different product or business teams.

As a designer, Peter Merholz aim was always to deliver great user experiences. Doing his design job “right” wasn’t enough though.

In one of his talks he explains his line of thoughts that let him to this new model:

What I came to realize is that in order to deliver great user experiences, we need to get the organization right. We need to spend a lot of time thinking about people and their relationships within the design team, and then their relationships with other teams. How you shape people and their relationships is necessary in order to get great experiences out into the world.