By Brittany Miller, Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain Products, Cargill
For much of the last century, career development followed a predictable path: choose a function, build expertise, and spend an entire career climbing the ladder within that discipline. While deep expertise remains valuable, today’s business environment increasingly rewards leaders who can connect disciplines, understand different perspectives, and bridge organizational silos.
Looking back on my own career journey through operations, engineering, supply chain, business planning, portfolio management, and product management, one lesson stands out: some of the most valuable growth occurs when you step outside your functional comfort zone.
In fact, the times I experienced the most excitement and energy in my career were often when I was learning something completely new. While stepping into an unfamiliar role can be uncomfortable, it is also where some of the greatest professional development occurs.
Early in my career, I worked in manufacturing operations as a production supervisor, production and maintenance superintendent, and project engineer. Success was measured through equipment reliability, production efficiency, safety performance, and cost management. Those experiences taught me how businesses create value at the ground level and gave me tremendous respect for frontline teams.
Many professionals spend their entire careers developing expertise in a single function. There is value in that depth of knowledge. However, staying within one discipline can sometimes create a limited view of how decisions affect the broader organization.
My transition into supply chain planning completely changed my perspective. To be honest, before taking the role, I had very little understanding of what supply chain actually did. Coming from operations, I was focused on manufacturing products safely and efficiently. What I quickly realized was that without supply chain, operations would have no idea what products to make, how much inventory to produce, where products should be stored, or how they would ultimately reach customers.
Instead of focusing on one facility, I began evaluating transportation networks, inventory strategies, customer demand, and enterprise-wide optimization. That experience taught me an important lesson: every function optimizes for different outcomes. Operations focuses on execution and reliability. Supply chain balances service, inventory, and cost. Commercial teams focus on customer needs. Finance emphasizes returns and capital efficiency. The most effective leaders learn to understand all of these perspectives.
Later, while leading integrated business planning initiatives, I learned how critical cross-functional collaboration is to organizational success. Business planning sits at the intersection of operations, supply chain, finance, commercial strategy, and executive leadership. Success depends on aligning competing priorities around a common plan.
The COVID-19 pandemic provided one of the clearest examples of this lesson. Virtually overnight, historical data and planning assumptions became less useful. Commercial teams worked to understand dramatic shifts in customer demand. Supply chain teams adjusted inventory and production strategies. Operations teams redesigned processes to keep employees safe while maintaining production. Finance teams built entirely new forecasts without the benefit of historical trends. No single function could solve those challenges independently. Success required every team working together toward a common objective.
Today, leading digital products and AI-enabled platforms requires an even broader perspective. Product leaders must understand customer needs, technology, business strategy, change management, and operational realities. No single function prepares someone fully for that responsibility.
My years in operations continue to influence how I lead today. I have spent nights troubleshooting equipment failures, standing beside operators and maintenance technicians trying to get pumps, conveyors, and bagging systems running again so production could continue. Those experiences taught me how difficult it is to keep a manufacturing facility operating safely and efficiently. They also taught me empathy.
It is easy for people outside a plant to become frustrated when production targets are missed or supply commitments cannot be met. Having worked in those environments, I understand the challenges teams face and how hard they work every day to deliver results. That perspective has helped me become a better collaborator and leader throughout my career.
The greatest benefit of cross-functional experience is not becoming an expert in everything. Rather, it is developing the ability to connect experts, ask better questions, and make decisions with a broader understanding of consequences and opportunities.
For professionals early in their careers, this does not mean abandoning functional expertise. Strong foundations matter. However, some of the most valuable opportunities may come from lateral moves that expose you to a different part of the business or challenge you to learn a new discipline.
The most rewarding opportunities in my career have come not from staying within a single lane, but from learning how the lanes connect. That broader perspective has made me a stronger leader, a better collaborator, and ultimately a more effective contributor to business success.
