Addressing the world’s most pressing challenges — like the climate crisis, income inequality, and the COVID-19 pandemic — increasingly requires collaboration between governments, social impact organizations, and corporations. For instance, delivery and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine requires cooperation between governments, social service organizations, and businesses. 

No policy, social innovation, or technology is likely to single handedly solve our most intractable social issues. David Smith and Jeanine Becker write that too often problems are addressed with “piecemeal and even siloed solutions, and with efforts that aren’t sufficient to address the problems at the scale at which they exist.” The social impact sector must acknowledge the complexity of these challenges and how each requires cross-sector collaboration, resources, and leadership. 

Cross-sector leadership experience is critical to catalyzing systems change. Our past and present experiences influence our worldviews. Where we sit often shapes where we stand. If all your experience is in only one sector, you’re likely to overlook ways that other sectors influence a given system — be it food, housing or climate. To be a systems thinker, you need to address root causes, adapt to complexity, and catalyze large-scale social change. Having knowledge of and experience in only one sector means you likely only deeply understand a piece of a much larger system, thereby limiting your ability to create long-term impact. 

What is cross-sector leadership?

Cross-sector leadership is the ability to work with, understand, and influence the public, social impact, and corporate sectors. Nicholas Lovegrove and Matthew Thomas observe that cross-sector leaders balance competing motives, acquire transferable skills, develop contextual intelligence, build subject matter expertise, cultivate diverse relationships, and are flexible in pursuing emergent opportunities. 

Senator Ratna Omidvar is an excellent example of a cross-sector leader. Prior to being appointed to The Senate of Canada, she was the President of The Maytree Foundation and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University. She has experience serving as a director of numerous non-profits, including The Century Initiative, The Samara Centre for Democracy, and The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Senator Omidvar is far from the only example of a cross-sector leader. Mark Carney, Julia Deans, and Jarret Leaman are other examples of cross-sector Canadian leaders creating substantial social impact. 

What are obstacles to developing cross-sector leadership?

There are also many structural barriers in place preventing cross-sector leadership. Lovegrove and Thomas argue that the sectors offer increasingly divergent compensation, work environments, and incentives. More than ever before, an executive from a major corporation will likely take a very significant pay cut in order to enter the public service. These growing gaps make it more challenging to gain relevant cross-sector expertise. 

The careers of cross-sector leaders are often non-linear and unconventional. It takes courage to depart from one’s comfort zone and begin work in a completely new sector. Doing so often requires learning a new way of thinking, vocabulary, and style of working. For instance, for-profit leaders usually focus on quarterly earnings, whereas public sector leaders may concentrate on social return on investment. Because of this learning curve, switching sectors often involves a temporary reduction of responsibility and influence. Becoming a cross-sector leader is definitely not for the faint of heart. 

How can there be more cross-sector leaders?

Teams responsible for hiring need to be more open-minded about people from other sectors. There are often deep biases towards hiring candidates who worked for very similar organizations. Instead, employers should value the diverse skillsets and expertise that a candidate from another sector can bring. Through removing these barriers, Canada can catalyze the next generation of cross-sector leaders. 

One way to foster cross-sector leadership development is to write inclusive job descriptions for candidates from diverse professional backgrounds. At Venture for Canada, we recently adapted our job descriptions from emphasizing the importance of non-profit work experience to highlighting the importance of entrepreneurial skills, which are transferable across sectors.

There also needs to be more Canadian fellowship programs that help people gain professional experience across various sectors. Programs like Code for Canada, which helps embed digital professionals in government, are a step in the right direction. Moving across sectors is challenging, and cohort-based programs that provide training, connections to employers, and networking opportunities make it easier for individuals to develop cross-sector leadership experience. 

Educational institutions and training programs also need to promote unconventional career paths and the importance of cross-sector leadership. Career development professionals should encourage individuals early in their careers to seek out diverse work experiences. Likewise, more academic institutions should consider dual degree programs, which help prepare graduates to be cross-sector leaders.  

The social impact sector cannot achieve its goals alone. As Smith and Becker write, “solution seekers can choose to focus on a piece of the problem and tackle just that piece, or we can engage multiple stakeholders to craft solutions that are complex enough and possess the various perspectives and resources necessary to adequately address the challenges.”

Developing more cross-sector leaders is essential to overcoming our country’s most intractable challenges. 

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