Construct an initial results chain for each strategy based on your conceptual model or situation analysis diagram.

A results chain is a dia­gram that depicts the assumed causal link­age between an inter­ven­tion and desired impacts through a series of expect­ed inter­me­di­ate results (Foun­da­tions of Suc­cess 2009, Mar­gulis et al. 2013). We rec­om­mend start­ing results chains (on the left) with a state­ment of the unde­sir­able state you wish to alter, and end­ing them (on the right) with a state­ment of the desir­able state you wish to achieve. The descrip­tion of the unde­sir­able state can be a state­ment of a key chal­lenge iden­ti­fied in pre­vi­ous steps. The results chain should set you up to assess whether a giv­en strat­e­gy will like­ly achieve the min­i­mum goal, so ele­ments on the right lead­ing to the desired state should reflect ele­ments of your min­i­mum goal state­ment. Includ­ing lan­guage defin­ing the unde­sir­able and desir­able states also helps ensure results chains rep­re­sent causal log­ic from con­ser­va­tion action all the way to out­come, rather than stop­ping short at imple­men­ta­tion of actions or inter­me­di­ate outcomes.

The exam­ple shown here demon­strates how the links in a sit­u­a­tion analy­sis can be mod­i­fied and expand­ed upon to show the change expect­ed by the imple­men­ta­tion of a strategy.