Managing user experience: managing change.

As managers of user experience and design teams we often find ourselves in environments where it is difficult to position the work of our team members. Their roles are often misunderstood and our adjacent disciplines such as product management and development see their work as unnecessary or in some cases are threatened by them. We find that the culture of the company we are trying to deploy UX resources into isn't ready to accept them and we find that our role becomes more that of a change manager than a user experience manager. We have a vision for what the future processes of the company can look like but we find it hard to communicate that vision and engage our adjacent disciplines. What are effective strategies user experience leaders can use to impact change? How can we leverage current business and engineering trends to move corporate cultures in a direction that support our work? What are the potential traps and pitfalls? What does a culture of design thinking really mean in this context? What is a realistic expectation for an end state?