Lessons From Pivoting Industries After Decades In One Sector

Can the fundamentals of strong leadership transfer across industries, or does deep specialization lead to a career ceiling? A 2024 TestGorilla survey of over 1,000 employers and 1,100 employees found that 94% of skills-based employers “agree that skills-based hiring is more predictive of on-the-job success than resumes.” Essentially, our ability to lead and build teams matters far more than our years of industry-specific knowledge.

Purpose needs to drive the decision.  The conventional advice for executives considering an industry change focuses on compensation and scope.  It should be the purpose that carries you through the transition period. When you’re learning a new industry and building new relationships while still delivering results, the work itself has to mean something to you, or the difficulty will outpace the novelty and ambition you felt when you first took on the challenge.

Your credibility doesn’t automatically transfer over.  According to the author, something he hadn’t expected about changing industries was how completely he had to rebuild his professional credibility. After 27 years in telecom, he was known. Whether people had worked with him directly or not, most understood what he stood for and what he’d accomplished. He walked into his new role assuming that his positive intent would be obvious, that people would see his drive and trust his approach the same way his teams had for decades.  For the first months, he was wrong. Every engagement with his team and his peers was being evaluated, as if he was a blank slate with no history within the organization or industry. He learned that expertise in a previous industry doesn’t buy you credibility in a new one. You have to earn it from zero.  The experience taught him that the leaders who succeed in these transitions are the ones willing to be vulnerable enough to say, “I don’t know.”  According to the author, he started asking questions constantly and admitting what he didn’t understand, and he let people see that he was there to learn before he was there to change things. That vulnerability, which can feel counterintuitive at the executive level, is what builds the two-way trust that makes everything else possible.

Fundamental leadership skills are valuable—no matter the sector.  According to the author, there’s a pattern he has seen among leaders who spend an entire career in one company or one sector. They can be brilliant at what they do, and the company might be a Fortune 100, but when they step outside that environment, their experience can be seen as narrow. They’ve operated within one set of industry norms and one regulatory framework. The value they bring, while likely significant, is just harder to translate.   But according to the author, having led in two different regulated industries with two different Fortune 100 organizations has given him something he is proud of: proof that his leadership, operational and transformational skills are transferable, that what he brings to a business is about how he builds teams and drive results, and that those fundamentals work across sectors. This kind of cross-industry experience also broadens what you can contribute in board service and senior leadership conversations where perspective across multiple industries is highly valued.