[njtransit]

The issue is that most people are not cross-functional thinkers. Those who are not generally fall prey to the “if you have a hammer, every problem is a nail” fallacy. Engineers want to engineer, PMs want to add features, managers want to “manage”, etc.

[llmthrow102]

You don't need everyone on every team to be a cross-functional thinker, but you need the people who are working cross-functionally to actually think about the big picture and realize they're optimizing for company success and not some arbitrary, often ambiguous goal like "good engineering".

Those people that are in the decision-making process need to then communicate the result of the decision with their team, and be able to justify the decision.

[njtransit]

But the people in cross-functional roles are still being drawn from a probability distribution in which most people are unable to think cross-functionally.