Our consulting practice is focused on

• Anticipating conflict in time to avert it

• Designing better ways to manage conflict when it's unavoidable

• Reducing the costs of conflict

• Team-building and evaluation.

Major organizations routinely miss opportunities and "leave money on the table" by failing to anticipate conflicts which, with advice from the right source at the right time, could have been foreseen. The resulting problems then become expensive and time-consuming to unravel later. (Our article on this appeared in Alternatives, June 2007)

• Often the failure to stay ahead of conflict occurs because some of those involved are wary of admitting there's a conflict.

• Getting everyone to address essential but uncomfortable issues demands real credibility in a consultant.

• Designing workable methods for anticipating conflict before it arises, or for handling streams of cases, is a specialized skill.

• The more complex situations are beyond the capacity of any one individual, and demand the ability to manage a team of highly qualified specialists.

• Convenor's consultants are among the most experienced anywhere at these critically important roles.

We have regularly been retained by clients who are themselves among the most expert and sophisticated providers, funders, and research and teaching groups in the conflict management field. Examples will be gladly supplied on request.

Our consulting practice draws from our long-standing leadership in sophisticated research and development work in our field. For examples, please see the Research & Development page, and the many pages below it. These pages include detailed reports on some of our public, industrywide-scale consulting work over more than a decade. These efforts have developed our proficiency in the design, recruitment and management of the highly diverse teams of experts typically needed for the most complex assignments. Several such teams are listed at the Colleagues page. A few less public projects are outlined in brief at Four Examples.

Related: training in sophisticated negotiation, tailored and focused to your group's particular needs and based particularly on the new findings in The Negotiator's Fieldbook.