- Identify Candidate Strategies. Articulate potential strategies to meet your goals, using insights gained in the situation analysis to consider both known and novel strategies and to seek strategies that lead to systemic change.
- Construct Results Chains. Articulate the logic for why proposed actions will change an undesired state to a desired state. Articulate the assumptions necessary for this to happen, and synthesize evidence regarding these assumptions.
- Strategy and Opportunity Mapping. Characterize the potential magnitude of the effect of different candidate strategies, enabling the evaluation of the contribution of each strategy toward stated goals. This allows an estimate of the conservation return on investment (ROI) for each strategy, which can inform the selection of which strategies to implement. Strategy and opportunity mapping also aids the implementation of selected strategies by identifying where each strategy can most effectively touch down in space.
- Select Strategy or Strategies. Identify strategies that, if successfully pursued, at least meet the minimum goal, have relatively good conservation ROI, avoid negative impacts to vulnerable people, and have acceptable levels of financial and reputational risk.
- Share Advances in Knowledge Through Relevant Pathways. Identify the key lessons you have learned in the process of mapping strategies and opportunities, determine who needs or will use that knowledge, then document and disseminate appropriately.