The Data Doesn't Lie: Lateral Moves Are a Leadership Superpower
Let me start with something that might feel counterintuitive, especially if you've been grinding toward that next promotion with laser focus. Research on C-suite career trajectories consistently shows that executives who reach the top—CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and their peers—have significantly more lateral moves in their career histories than managers who plateau at the director or VP level. Not fewer. More.
Read that again.
The people sitting at the top of organizations didn't get there by climbing a straight ladder. They got there by zigzagging. They got there by saying yes to moves that didn't come with a title bump or a significant salary increase. They got there because they understood something that most ambitious professionals miss entirely: your leadership ceiling is determined by the breadth of your perspective, not just the depth of your expertise.
And breadth? Breadth is built laterally.
If you're serious about reaching the C-suite—or even just becoming the kind of leader who can run a team, a division, or an enterprise with genuine competence—this article is for you. We're going to talk about why lateral moves matter more than almost any other career decision you'll make, how to execute them strategically, and how to reframe the story you're telling yourself about what "progress" actually looks like.
The 70-20-10 Rule and Why Your Next Course Won't Save You
There's a well-established framework in leadership development research called the 70-20-10 rule. The numbers break down like this: 70% of meaningful professional development comes from challenging on-the-job assignments, 20% comes from mentoring and developmental relationships, and 10% comes from formal learning—courses, certifications, reading, and training programs.
I'm not dismissing that 10%. I've written books. I believe deeply in the power of learning from the page. But I want you to sit with what that breakdown is really telling you.
Ninety percent of your development as a leader happens through experience and relationships—not classrooms. And the most powerful experiences? They're the ones that put you in unfamiliar territory, where your existing expertise doesn't fully protect you, where you have to think differently, build new relationships, and develop new muscles. That's exactly what a well-executed lateral move does.
A lateral move is, by design, a challenging assignment. It drops you into a new function, a new team, a new set of problems. It forces you to rebuild credibility, learn a new language, and develop new networks. Done right, it is the single most efficient leadership development tool available to you—and it doesn't cost you a dime in tuition.
What My Own Lateral Moves Taught Me
I'll be honest with you: I didn't always understand this. Early in my career, I was as guilty as anyone of equating progress with upward movement. Title, salary, scope—that was the scorecard I was using. And for a while, it worked. I was moving up, and I felt good about it.
But there came a point where I realized that my perspective was narrow in ways I couldn't fully see yet. I understood my function deeply. I was competent, even excellent, within my lane. But when conversations turned to enterprise-wide strategy, to cross-functional dynamics, to the way different parts of an organization create and destroy value together, I was working from theory rather than experience. I was extrapolating rather than knowing.
The lateral moves I made—stepping into roles that pulled me out of my comfort zone and into unfamiliar parts of the business—changed everything. Each move expanded not just my knowledge base, but my network, my empathy, my ability to see around corners. When I moved into spaces that were adjacent to but different from my core expertise, I started to understand how the whole machine worked, not just the gear I'd been turning. That systems-level understanding became foundational to everything I've built since—my work as a DEI strategist, my role as a COO, and the frameworks I've developed in my books.
I didn't just grow through those moves. I became a fundamentally different—and better—leader because of them.
The Connection to Enterprise Thinking
In New-School Leadership: Making a Difference in the 21st Century, I lay out a 10-component LEADERSHIP model—a framework for what it actually takes to lead effectively in the modern era. One of those components is Enterprise Thinking: the ability to see beyond your immediate team or function and understand how the organization operates as a whole system.
Here's what I know to be true: you cannot develop Enterprise Thinking from inside a single function. You can read about it. You can study org charts. You can sit in cross-functional meetings. But until you've actually lived inside different parts of the business—until you've felt the pressure that the finance team feels at quarter-end, or understood the customer intimacy that drives a great sales culture, or wrestled with the operational complexity that keeps a supply chain moving—you're seeing the enterprise from one angle only.
Lateral moves are the curriculum for Enterprise Thinking. There is no substitute.
The leaders I've observed who develop the most sophisticated, systems-level perspective are almost always the ones who've worked across multiple functions. They understand trade-offs intuitively. They can translate across organizational languages. They build trust faster with diverse stakeholders because those stakeholders feel understood. That's not a soft skill. That's a strategic competitive advantage.
The Network and Brand Multiplier Effect
In Make It Happen: 12 Steps to Reimagining Success and Creating the Career of Your Dreams, Step 8 is about building powerful networks and Step 10 is about understanding and managing your personal brand. I want to connect both of those directly to the lateral move conversation, because most professionals miss this dimension entirely.
When you stay in one function for your entire career, your network—however strong—is fundamentally siloed. You know the people in your world. You have credibility with people who already speak your language. But your influence is limited to that sphere.
Every lateral move you make is a network expansion event. You're not just learning a new function; you're building relationships with an entirely new set of leaders, influencers, and decision-makers. Those relationships compound over time. The finance leader you worked alongside during your lateral into the CFO's organization becomes a champion for you a decade later when you're being considered for a P&L role. The sales VP who watched you succeed in an unfamiliar environment becomes a reference that opens doors you didn't even know existed.
And your personal brand? Lateral moves are one of the most powerful brand-building tools available to you. They signal something important to the organization: this person is curious, adaptable, and committed to growth over comfort. That's the brand of someone who gets considered for the biggest roles. That's the brand of someone who gets tapped for the stretch assignment, the special project, the seat at the table.
Different functions equal different networks, and different networks equal exponentially broader perspective and opportunity. The math is simple. The execution requires courage.
The Lateral Move Framework: How to Do This Strategically
A lateral move made impulsively or without strategic intent can absolutely stall a career. So let me give you a framework for thinking about this with discipline.
1. Identify the Gap in Your Perspective
Start with honest self-assessment. What part of the business do you genuinely not understand? Finance? Operations? Sales? Product? International markets? Customer experience? The answer to that question points toward your next lateral. You're not moving sideways randomly—you're moving toward the gap in your enterprise knowledge. That gap, once filled, becomes a differentiator.
2. Choose Laterals That Expand Your Network
Not all lateral moves are created equal from a relationship standpoint. Wherever possible, move toward teams and functions that are led by high-influence leaders—people who are respected across the organization, who have access to senior decision-makers, and who invest in the development of their people. Proximity to great leaders accelerates your development in ways that no assignment alone can replicate. This is the 20% of the 70-20-10 rule working in your favor.
3. Stay 18–24 Months
This is the sweet spot. Long enough to deliver real value, build genuine credibility, and learn the function deeply. Short enough that you're still operating with the hunger and curiosity of someone who knows they don't know everything yet. If you stay too long, the lateral becomes your new lane. If you leave too soon, you haven't earned the learning or the relationships.
4. Document What You Learned
This step is critical and almost universally skipped. At the end of each lateral move, you should be able to articulate explicitly what you added to your leadership toolkit. What do you understand now that you didn't before? What can you do now that you couldn't before? Who do you know now that you didn't before? This isn't just journaling—it's the raw material for your next interview, your next performance conversation, and your next career narrative.
5. Position for a Vertical Move After
Laterals are most powerful when they're part of a sequence, not a permanent state. The strategic play is: lateral to fill a gap, deliver value, build relationships, develop new capability—then vertical into a role that leverages the full breadth of your experience. That vertical move, when it comes after a well-executed lateral, is a fundamentally different kind of promotion. You're not just moving up. You're moving up with a wider foundation.
High-Value Lateral Moves by Career Stage
The right lateral move looks different depending on where you are in your career. Here's how I think about it across four stages:
Early Career (3–5 Years In)
This is the time to move from your core function to an adjacent one. Engineering to product. Marketing to sales. Operations to finance. You're still building your foundational credibility, and a lateral at this stage expands your perspective before you've calcified into a single-function identity. The cost of the move is low; the upside is enormous.
Mid-Career (7–10 Years In)
At this stage, the highest-value laterals involve geography, customer segment, or business unit. Move to a market that operates differently than the one you know. Get close to a customer segment you've never served. Join a business unit with a different P&L dynamic, a different competitive environment, a different culture. You're building enterprise fluency at scale.
Senior Career (10+ Years In)
This is the moment to move into a business line you don't know, or into a staff function like strategy, people & culture, or enterprise operations. Senior leaders who've only ever lived in line roles often lack the organizational design and people strategy literacy that C-suite roles demand. And senior leaders who've only ever been in staff roles often lack the operational credibility that earns trust from the business. A lateral at this stage closes that gap deliberately.
Executive Track
If you're serious about the C-suite, two lateral experiences are close to non-negotiable: an international or global role that forces you to lead across cultural and geographic complexity, and either P&L management experience if you've been staff-side or significant customer-facing experience if you've been primarily internal. These aren't nice-to-haves. For most organizations, they're table stakes for the biggest seats.
Addressing the Psychological Resistance
I want to name something directly, because I've had this conversation with hundreds of professionals over the years: lateral moves feel like not progressing. They feel like standing still while your peers move up. They feel like a demotion in slow motion. That feeling is real, and it's worth taking seriously.
But here's what I need you to understand: that feeling is based on a mental model of career success that is fundamentally outdated. The ladder metaphor—straight up, rung by rung—was never really accurate, and in today's complex, matrixed, rapidly changing organizations, it's actively misleading.
The narrative you need to build—and practice saying out loud, to yourself and to others—is this: "I'm broadening my perspective so I can lead at a broader level." That's not spin. That's strategy. And when you say it with conviction, backed by data and backed by a clear plan, it lands differently than an apology for not moving up.
The risk of a lateral move that stalls a career is real, but it's almost always a positioning problem, not a move problem. Laterals stall careers when they're made without strategic intent, when the professional doesn't deliver real value in the new role, or when they're not followed by a clear plan to leverage the new capability. Avoid those traps and the lateral becomes an accelerant, not a detour.
Vertical moves, by contrast, are right when you've already built sufficient breadth and the organization needs you to go deep in a specific area of leadership accountability. The key is sequencing—knowing when to go wide and when to go deep, and making those decisions intentionally rather than reactively.
The Permission You've Been Waiting For
In Where Is Your Why?, I talk about the importance of building your personal plan of attack around a clear sense of purpose and direction. That framework applies here in a specific way: if your direction is the C-suite, if your why includes leading at the highest level, then lateral moves aren't optional. They are the prerequisite.
The executives who make it to the top aren't the ones who climbed fastest. They're the ones who climbed smartest. They're the ones who were willing to look like they were standing still for a season in order to build the foundation for something much bigger. They're the ones who understood that leadership capacity is built in the uncomfortable spaces, not the comfortable ones.
So here's the permission you may have been waiting for: it's okay to move sideways. In fact, if you're serious about where you want to go, it's more than okay. It's essential.
Your leadership ceiling isn't fixed. But it is determined—by the breadth of your experience, the depth of your networks, the range of your perspective, and the courage of your career decisions. Lateral moves are how you raise it.
Go find your gap. Then go fill it.