Since I entered the cotton industry, I’ve spent nearly 200 days a year traveling to farms, mills, factories, brand headquarters, and trade meetings around the world.
Many people don’t realize how global a single garment’s journey can be. Cotton can move through farms, gins, mills, factories, brands, and retailers across half a dozen countries before it reaches a closet. Each stop is shaped by different regulations and cultures, plus incentives, so a decision made in one part of the chain can ripple through the rest.
The first time I visited a cotton farm, I realized how incomplete my understanding was. Speaking directly with producers and seeing their operations firsthand challenged assumptions I had internalized from a distance.
This lesson stayed with me: When we form opinions without speaking to the people doing the work, we miss the complexity of their decisions and the depth of their investment in the outcome. In an economy where supply chains, customers, and competitors extend far beyond your home market, a global mindset is table stakes.
YOU CAN’T OUT-EXPERT A ROOM YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND
It’s tempting for leaders to walk into every meeting as the person with the answers. Experience on both the brand and manufacturing sides of this industry has taught me the opposite works better: Assume the market in front of you operates differently than the one you know, because it usually does.
Every part of a global supply chain has its own rhythm for building trust and making decisions. A retailer, a grower, a manufacturer, and a brand may all be part of the same conversation while operating from very different realities. Understanding those differences requires more than expertise in your own part of the business. It requires taking the time to understand how other people experience the same decision.
Being there in person adds context that a meeting alone can’t always provide. You see the operation and the realities being discussed.
The leaders who do best in these rooms ask the second and third question instead of stopping at the first. Having those conversations in person gives those questions greater context. You can see how people work and better understand the challenges behind their answers. That firsthand perspective can reveal things that may not come through in a presentation or conversation alone.
PROXIMITY CREATES PERSPECTIVE
Sustainability priorities, consumer expectations, and market conditions are all shifting, but not at the same speed or in the same direction everywhere. A trend line in a report can tell you that something is changing, but not why it matters more in one place than another.
Traveling throughout the cotton supply chain has given me a firsthand view of how those changes are experienced at different points in the value chain. A grower is thinking about weather and crop yield. A manufacturer is thinking about labor and productivity. A brand is thinking about the consumer several steps removed from both. These realities are true at once, but none is fully visible from a distance.
Travel is often one of the first expenses cut when budgets tighten. What leaders may overlook is that sending people into the field can materially improve the quality and speed of business decisions. A few days of face-to-face conversations can accomplish what might otherwise take weeks of emails and meetings. More importantly, being there allows decision-makers to see how choices made at headquarters affect the people responsible for carrying them out.
Early in my career on the brand supply chain side, our teams regularly traveled with buying and merchandising colleagues. As budgets tightened, those trips increasingly were limited to production teams, who were then expected to bring their insights back to the corporate office. But secondhand insight rarely has the same impact as firsthand experience.
It is easy to request a last-minute change while looking at a presentation or spreadsheet. It feels very different after standing on a factory floor and understanding what that change requires—or recognizing what a canceled order means for the people whose livelihoods depend on producing it.
Later, when I had greater control over budgets, I deliberately used part of my allocation to ensure that merchants and buyers could travel alongside their production colleagues. The effect was remarkable. Even one trip changed how people approached future decisions. They made better-informed choices that accounted for the people on the other side. They also recognized when a perceived short-term benefit could create a much greater long-term risk.
RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE INFRASTRUCTURE
After nearly three decades of working across industries and markets, I have come to see relationships as one of the most valuable assets a leader can build.
Often in business, relationships are viewed as transactional. I’ve learned that success in long-term relationships can’t operate this way. Travel has allowed me to build relationships across countries and industries. Those relationships create opportunities to learn, collaborate, and solve problems together. One introduction often leads to another, connecting people who may otherwise never have crossed paths.
The most effective leaders create connections between others. They introduce people with complementary expertise, connect ideas to opportunities, and help partnerships develop across regions and sectors.
No single company controls the cotton supply chain from seed to shelf. This means that progress depends on people who don’t report to each other finding reasons to trust one another. That kind of trust is built by showing up—repeatedly, in person, with the only agenda being to understand. Travel has reinforced that lesson for me again and again.
A GLOBAL MINDSET IS A LEADERSHIP SKILL
As business becomes increasingly global, leadership must bring people together across different experiences and cultures, introducing new ways of thinking. My advice to all leaders is to remain curious and invest in meaningful relationships. Create connections that extend far beyond a single meeting or market.
Liz Hershfield is executive director of COTTON USA and co-director of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol.
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