The tools of the decision facilitator are all the techniques of the decision sciences, plus information technology and techniques of behavioral decision making. Decision facilitators do their best to adapt the normative theory of decision making to the bounded rationality of managers. Most of the tools of decision facilitators are well described in our textbooks, and I want to focus here only on three perspectives. The common heuristic is to consider computer-generated scenarios, where a business scenario is a sequence of events, especially when imagined, or an account or synopsis of a projected course of action or events. A large variety of inputs are used, many outputs are generated, answering WHAT-IF and sensitivity questions.
Spreadsheets empower millions of managers to carry out WHAT-IF analysis.
Designers of spreadsheets realize this and new spreadsheets provide many powerful expanded tools for scenario management. Most scenario manager generators use decision variables as inputs, and calculate measures of effectiveness, utilities, as outputs. The archetypes of this approach is linear programming and its extensions, and more specifically, goal programming. When decision facilitators advocate this proactive approach, they stimulate management to uncover new opportunities and alternatives before a decision is made. New spreadsheets include such solvers for linear and nonlinear optimization problems to empower managers to use this proactive approach.