Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move

This seminal Nature paper demonstrated how temporary, information-based leadership emerges in animal groups without permanent hierarchies. Using golden shiners, researchers showed that a small number of 'informed' individuals can guide an entire group to a goal, even when most group members have no knowledge of where to go.

The key insight is that leadership is informational, not positional: individuals with better information temporarily influence neighbors, and this influence decays when the information becomes irrelevant. Groups also exhibit democratic decision-making - when informed individuals have conflicting preferences, the group follows the majority.

For organizations, this suggests enabling temporary leadership based on expertise rather than relying solely on hierarchical authority. Incident commanders, tech leads, and project owners can coordinate effectively through temporary influence rather than permanent position.