In the real world, of course, we don’t often consider one hundred or even twenty candidates. In fact, in many cases, we consider only one. According to research from the Center for Creative Leadership, this happens in nearly a quarter of executive appointments, and a study cited in Chip and Dan Heath’s book Decisive! How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, confirms that such decision making is rife in business.2 Paul Nutt, a former Ohio State University professor who spent thirty years carefully analyzing 168 major corporate decisions, found that a full 71 percent were made after the executives responsible for them considered only a single alter- native. Each choice was a binary one: whether or not to acquire that company, launch that product, enter that market, hire that