About Us
We are a collaboration consultancy that helps organizations tap their full potential and guides multi-stakeholder groups to alignment. Learn more about our services.
Our Principles
Practical Tools
Translate a “win-win” attitude into specific practices
We engage with all stakeholders in a decision and guide them to transform either/or gridlocks into creative problem-solving.
Bridge power divides to enable leadership at all levels
We improve cohesion and resourcefulness throughout an organization by sharing practices that encourage everyone’s active participation, expression of dissent, and full ownership of outcome.
Invite learning and responsibility through collaborative feedback
We offer a framework for providing feedback that allows both managers and employees to see their impact and take responsibility for their team’s success.
Systemic Solutions
Align all actions with shared purpose and values
We work with organizations and teams to operationalize their core principles and create accountability to purpose rather than to a person.
Clarify decision-making
We dispel confusion and stress by helping to delineate who makes which decisions, with whose input, telling whom, and using which process.
Streamline the flow of information and resources
We share tools that allow information and resources to move from where they are to where they are needed in support of organizational goals.
Challenge as Opportunity
Nurture a culture of flexibility and resilience
We promote adaptability to changing conditions by focusing on the needs and values that underlie current strategies.
Empower everyone to resolve their own conflicts
We equip each person with tools to identify the heart of any conflict and propose solutions that speak to all parties’ needs.
Commit to a culture of continuous improvement
We help individuals and teams identify the roots of conflict and breakdowns and learn how to transcend them.
Our Vision, Purpose, and Mission
Vision: A world full of groups and organizations whose collaborative culture and awareness of shared purpose infuses everything they do. Their grounding in purpose drives them to align practices with values, prioritize effectiveness and resource-efficiency, and stretch to reach decisions that serve their mission. Their collaborative way of working means they co-create outcomes that attend to what’s important for everyone involved.
Purpose: Help make this vision a reality as part of a growing movement toward a more collaborative society.
Mission: Shed light on the causes of collaboration challenges – at the systems level, the group level, the interpersonal level, and the individual level – and provide practical tools to enable collaborative, efficient, purpose-centered action.
Our Staff
Miki Kashtan
Roxy Manning
Lisa Rothman
Newt Bailey
David Chilcott
Aimee Ryan
Vérène Nicolas
Uma Lo
Lisa Montana
Mariam Zaineb Gafforio
Lynda Smith
Our Parent Organization
The Center for Efficient Collaboration is a project of the Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) community. Nonviolent Communication, or NVC, is a set of practices that apply the principles of Gandhian nonviolence to everyday life, supporting people and organizations in expressing love, truth, and courage. NGL is committed to a vision of a world where everyone matters, and is home to a number of projects and activities designed to move in that direction.
We founded the Center for Efficient Collaboration because of a deep conviction that supporting collaboration within organizations is a key leverage point for the kind of change we want to see in the world. At the crossroads that our civilization currently faces, we want to help organizations steward our collective resources well, and help the individuals within them make their highest contribution to the whole.