Design is the rendering of intent – Jared Spool
It's hard to deliver sustainably good design in the presence of leadership that shifts focus (changing it too fast or out of sync with their org's execution capacity). Design's fuels are intent and domain information.
Startups famously pivot, but other structures similarly deal in shifting incentives and priorities. In that context, the best results I can offer come from my own ability to render quickly, and whether I can spec out solutions that are also fast and straightforward to produce.
But also – it speaks to a core issue in an organization. Companies with unfocused leadership generally end up firing their CEOs or burn down trying. Or, with tremendous amounts of money available, some of them successfully structure around making the CEO as useless and inconsequential as possible.
All this to say that design without leadership alignment (or without being a designer in a position of leadership) always feel like it maxes out somewhere around 50% efficacy.