3 ideas
Decisions framed as 'whether or not' to do one thing silently exclude every alternative, and Nutt's study of organisational decisions found such binary choices failed far more often than those weighing at least two options. The fix is to ask 'what else could we do?' and to run the vanishing-options test: imagine the current choice were forbidden and see what you would do instead.
Rather than relying only on predictions about whether an option will work, the book recommends 'ooching': running a cheap, small-scale real-world test before committing fully. Evidence from such a trial can be more reliable than expert forecasts or internal deliberation, and it offers a check on the confirmation bias that tends to shape analysis done in the abstract.
People drift in the status quo because nothing signals a moment to decide. A tripwire, such as a deadline, a budget limit or a preset metric, forces a fresh decision at a chosen point. Van Halen's brown-M&M contract clause worked as a tripwire: finding brown M&Ms showed the venue hadn't read the safety-critical rider and triggered a full inspection.