Austin Govella has just updated his manifesto for user experience design.  There’s a lot in it to like, but the last point really resonates with me:

Create better organizations to enable better design.

Your design activities don’t change. Change how you work with your team. Change how you work, so your goal is always a better organization instead of a better product. Change how you accomplish the design, so that you are always improving your team’s design literacy.

I think that everyone in user experience at least occasionally struggles with working with people who don’t understand design and how design makes better products.  I think that Austin is right that it’s our job to help make our organization better.  Just as we in user experience need to understand our technology and our users so that we can make a better design, we also have to share our knowledge about user experience and design and our users and how our technology fits into our users’ lives to help everyone in the organization do a better job of making products to meet people’s needs.