Sapient C.E.O. Alan Herrick knows what it’s like to take a risky career step—that unexpected strategic move that eventually propels you forward. Before moving to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting company, currently worth about $890 million, Herrick had been toiling away at P.S.E.&G., a New Jersey utility. “It was a big leap,” says Herrick. “I didn’t know my ass from my elbow about consulting when I joined Sapient.” Maybe not. But what Herrick did bring with him was the diverse skill set he had honed in P.S.E.&G.’s finance, technology, and operations areas. After arriving at Sapient, he spent nearly 12 years working in three different business units before taking the top spot in 2006. He also amped up Sapient’s European business and helped launch the company’s outsourcing division in India.

Herrick’s career history isn’t just varied; it’s an example of the new road to the top. In the past, ascending one ladder within one division at a single company was the way to go. Tomorrow’s routes are less straight and not nearly as narrow. C.E.O. hopefuls must increasingly move more like knights on a chessboard: one step to the side and two forward. According to “Route to the Top,” a 2005 study by international executive-search firm Spencer Stuart, only nine percent of today’s chief executives in the S&P 100 have spent their entire career in one division, versus 25 percent in 2000.

Indeed, Herrick is just one of a growing number of C.E.O.’s who have benefited from career paths that span not only multiple functions but different industries. For instance, Jim McNerney followed stops at Proctor & Gamble, McKinsey & Company, and a long stretch at G.E. with C.E.O. posts at 3M and now Boeing. Then there’s Archer Daniels Midland’s C.E.O., Patricia Woertz, who moved through marketing, finance, strategic planning, and international divisions at Chevron before landing at A.D.M. to lead its agribusiness.

C.E.O. candidates are going to have to “proactively manage a multitude of different experiences,” says Jim Citrin, a Stuart Spencer consultant. “If you want to get ahead, don’t think vertically, think horizontally—or like a pyramid,” he says. “Sometimes a lateral move is actually a prerequisite for a big step forward.” Often, an ambitious ascent will include moves through areas such as international business units, technology, and human resources. “We’ll see C.E.O.’s come up from different routes,” says John Challenger, chief of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an international outplacement consulting firm. “Traditionally, it’s finance, sales, marketing, or operations. In the future, C.E.O.’s will come from more diverse backgrounds.”

But there’s a parallel phenomenon occurring as well. Departmental silos, once so common in corporate America, are crumbling. The flattening of old organizational boundaries means a huge shift in the way people work. “Companies are looking for ways to break down rigidities by creating people who work across boundaries,” explains Challenger. Instead of managing six or seven subordinates within a single unit, executive responsibilities are beginning to cut across entire company divisions.

Future chief execs will also be spending time on another burgeoning corporate enterprise: temporary teams targeted at developing projects and solving problems. For large firms, such teams provide the ability to change direction quickly and respond to the fast-paced demands of the new global economy, giving corporations the kind of adroitness found in start-ups. For the ambitious executive, teams offer “a great opportunity and more responsibility faster,” according to W. Earl Sasser, co-chair of the program for leadership development at Harvard Business School. Through working with such units, Sasser adds, “future leaders will have had a lot more experience in other functions, other cultures, and with other kinds of folks.”