Watching sparrows, you’ll see that every few seconds they dart in a different direction. They spot an opportunity and move towards it. They spot a danger and move away. This small bird has mastered something simple but alien to many big corporations: the ability to change course without calling a lengthy committee meeting.

In my view, there are hidden costs to companies that plan as if the world were mechanical. In drawing up elaborate strategies, and then spending years trying to execute them, they risk circumstances changing and rendering plans obsolete. We can debate if the world has ever been reliably predictable, but at times of rapidly accelerating change, it makes sense to imitate the sparrow’s strategic agility.

Agility over Perfection

The World Economic Forum’s Resilience Consortium said that “shocks – whether environmental, economic, geopolitical, or health-related – are only increasing in frequency and severity.” As a result, I believe the businesses that succeed are more likely to be those that prioritize agile, iterative business strategies over those that are made in silos and defined by long-cycle planning.

One of the key elements to this approach is the ability to make rapid decisions. In many cases, seeking perfection means moving too late. Organizations need frameworks that empower employees to act quickly and change course when necessary.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Inc., cited a “one-way door, two-way door” decision-making framework in an annual letter to shareholders, which is a relevant idea in this context. One-way doors are the big, hard-to-reverse decisions. Two-way doors are the smaller choices you can more easily undo.

By categorizing decisions in this way, leaders can avoid analysis paralysis and focus their energy where it matters most. The beauty of this approach is that it frees people to act. Instead of spending months analysing whether to walk through a particular door, you simply try it and see what happens. If it doesn’t work out, you turn around and walk back.

Learning from Nature’s Design

Back to the sparrow. It evolved its speed and agility as a response to the pressures of the natural world around it. As both prey and predator, the sparrow must move fast to survive. Similarly, the natural environment for corporations has changed from one of relative stability to one that rewards pouncing on opportunities before competitors and dodging risks. The fittest, as in those that evolve to fit themselves to these conditions, will likely be the ones that survive.