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ECO is committed to helping individuals and organizations find innovative and productive ways to communicate more effectively, work and plan together, and develop shared visions of the future adaptable to changing circumstances. Integral to ECO’s work are the fundamental skills of facilitation, communications, conflict management, and the ability to envision future opportunities. All of our associates are skilled facilitators and communicators. Built into every project is a commitment to foster self-sufficiency for our clients in the basic skills of communication and collaboration that promote sustainability and implement the best ideas from your business or community.
Facilitation - Communication Strategies - Conflict Management, Mediation, and Consensus Building - Visioning and Scenario Planning - Story and Dialogue - Assessments and Evaluations
FACILITATION
Facilitation assistance has long been a hallmark of ECO’s ability to increase our clients’ effectiveness. We facilitate dialogue, discussion and debate over complex organizational, community and environmental issues. We use innovative and proven small- and large-scale facilitation techniques to enhance effectiveness at meetings, workshops and retreats, teleconferences, or wherever people gather. Our supporting services include meeting design, developing public-private partnerships, interviewing, formulating collaborative processes and providing experiential learning opportunities. As a third party, we know when and how to ask appropriate and often tough questions to provide you with critical perspectives, skills and knowledge often not available through internal sources.
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COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
One of the most significant, yet elusive problems within any organization or community is how to communicate effectively - both internally and with external colleagues and stakeholders. Knowing how to communicate your message can often be as important as the information being communicated. ECO helps you evaluate potential problems in your organization’s communications, define best practices and develop approaches that will achieve and maintain effective communications. ECO also provides customized communications strategies and training that are supported by technological advances, behavioral, cognitive, learning and communication models, verbal and non-verbal communications, and honed listening skills. On projects where formal training is not a part of our services, we continue to model these skills for our clients by incorporating them into our ongoing interactions. We have developed an expertise in several fields of communications, including Strategic Communications, Communications Planning, Emergency Management and Risk Communications. We also offer support in all communications modalities, including print, internet and social media.
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CONFLICT MANAGEMENT, MEDIATION, AND CONSENSUS BUILDING
Conflict is a natural occurrence in all aspects of life, and managing conflict can be particularly difficult in situations that affect peoples’ livelihoods and beliefs. ECO uses a variety of techniques to bridge apparent and real differences, build common understanding and develop solutions that benefit all parties. ECO staff are specifically trained in mediation and a broad range of alternative dispute resolution methodologies. ECO’s experience with organization, management and staffing issues; scientific, technical and administrative policies; and planning, natural resource and regulatory issues allows us to develop and implement effective strategies for creating conversations that lead to collaborative solutions.
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VISIONING AND SCENARIO PLANNING
Your business, agency or community ambitions cannot succeed without focus - knowing what you want to achieve and having a plan for how to achieve it. ECO helps groups and individuals hone in on their vision of the future, develop realistic goals and objectives, and build strategies to attain them. Scenario planning helps you to not only envision what factors may come into play in the future, but also to identify key drivers at play and be able to see the patterns that emerge. Combined with ECO’s other Fundamental Services, visioning and scenario planning will help you to access a broad range of innovative ideas and give you the insight you need to achieve success.
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STORY AND DIALOGUE
Innovation requires finding ways to communicate effectively among leaders, managers, staff, stakeholders, shareholders and customers. Productive conversations entail effective listening, understanding, openness, inclusion and respect. ECO is experienced in using dialogue to promote the critical sharing of information so important to innovative thinking. We use a dynamic balance of dialogue, where careful listening and suspension of judgments and assumptions make sure ideas are heard, and dialectic, where disparate perspectives can stimulate creativity and new ways of seeing. Within this framework, ECO helps to elicit the compelling technical, cultural, and personal stories that hold critical knowledge and information and provide a repository for institutional memory. This merging of dialogue and story is a powerful framework through which you can truly see and feel the Nature of Innovation within your organization.
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ASSESSMENTS AND EVALUATIONS
ECO is adept at administering or developing a wide range of assessment methodologies, surveys, interview strategies, monitoring plans and evaluations, to help you understand current environmental, community or organizational landscapes, or to evaluate progress towards pre-identified goals. ECO associates are certified in a number of assessment tools. Our ability to help you go from a place of inquiry and curiosity to understanding and knowledge provides added value to your project. Our assessments and evaluation techniques provide a neutral, non-judgmental environment for optimizing growth and learning, creating new opportunities for community and organizational innovation.
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