Design outside design

I think the new moat for designers is solving problems with design outside design.

Meaning that you have the freedom to identify internal problems and build to solve them no matter the team.

I'd advise you to follow your gut sense (super Rick Ruben-ish, I know) when something bothers you and you know it can be optimised. Even when you don't know concretely how it can be optimised, you can use your trusty AI to research, define and stress-test the problem you're trying to solve.

Sometimes you could end up with a simple AI automation flow, sometimes it could be a full-blown internal tool. All you have to do is to try.

Now, with that said, as in product design, not every tool is going to succeed; actually most of them won't. But that shouldn't stop you from exploring and testing ideas. Build five internal tools. Or twenty. Who cares. If one of them gains adoption and becomes genuinely useful, you've already created a crazy amount of value. For the ones that fail - you're racking up building experience.

Win-win.

Scrap the traditional definition that designers only solve for end users or products. Everybody is a "user" if they touch an interface. Colleagues, sales, finance, engineers, your bosses - all of them are potential users of the solutions you bring.

So I advise you all, to use the opportunity that we live in the age of immense iteration pace - go out, look for problems and try to build solutions and bring value across teams, departments, and entire companies. While having fun doing this.