Its business first, always.

No matter where the designer is on the progression ladder, or whatever role they have in the company, understanding how their company makes money and using it to inform their design decisions, will almost always help you push their work further.

Think of it this way — Most of us are either working or aspiring to work in a capitalistic company. And for the company to exist and pay salaries, it needs to make a bunch of money. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter how fantastic the product user experience is, or how hard the design team worked on it, it will still be out of business.

For most, this means focusing a lot on deeply understanding their company’s business. This might mean building a solid relationship with sales and customer support, and understanding how the company makes revenue and what users pay for. This could also mean deeply understanding the company strategy and aligning the ideas to the strategy execution that is likely in place already. If the designer still wants to go rouge, they absolutely can, but then they loose the right to cry when their ideas get shot down, which most likely would happen.

In my experience, these things are almost never been directly communicated, but championing this space definitely sets the designer apart from the rest. On a softer side, this also helps build both empathy and a strong sense of what works and what doesn’t (product sense), which IMO is far superior and time-saving than a typical discovery or a double diamond process that the books talk about, those are a rant for a different day.