Spending time upfront developing your action plan is important because well defined goals, strategies, assumptions, and objectives provide an explicit and shared understanding of your project and keep your project team members focused on what you ultimately want to achieve. Without them, it is far too easy to get side-tracked by other opportunities that do not directly contribute to what your project is designed to achieve – everything seems (and often is) important, but time, money, and other resources limit what you can reasonably accomplish. A sound action plan that includes well defined goals and objectives will also help you focus your monitoring efforts.
Goals
Nearly everyone who has worked on a project or in an organization or company is very familiar with goals. The word “goal,” however, is one of those terms that is typically used very loosely. The Conservation Standards defines a goal specifically and provides criteria for a good goal (Box 1).
You may wonder why it is necessary to be so strict about how a goal is defined and whether it meets certain criteria. A well-defined goal ensures that your project team has an explicit and common understanding of how you want to influence your conservation targets. Consider, for instance, the following two fictitious goals for a watershed conservation project:
Goal 1: Conserve riparian areas within the watershed.
Goal 2: By 2035, all rivers and tributaries in the Clear River Watershed have forest coverage that extends at least 100 meters on both sides.
With Goal 1, you have a general understanding of what your project should try to do, but you are not really sure how to narrow your focus or how you will know if you have conserved the riparian areas. You might come up with an extensive list of how you will measure if the watershed’s forests are conserved. In contrast, Goal 2 provides your project team with very specific conditions you must work to achieve. Also, when it comes to determining whether you have achieved those conditions, what you need to measure is very clear. It is clear that you just need to measure forest coverage along the rivers and tributaries.
How To
These steps involve using evidence to define the desired future status of KEAS for your conservation target (if you haven’t already in the viability assessment) and then to use SMART criteria to define your goal.
Choose one of your conservation targets and decide what KEAs of that target should be represented in a goal.
At this point, you want to have a broad idea of what your goal is – later, we will refine it so that it meets the criteria of a good goal.
If you have not completed a viability assessment...then, to define a goal, you will need to define a KEA for each target in terms of size, condition, and landscape context (Box 2).
If you have completed a viability assessment...then you are well-prepared to define your goal. When you conducted your viability assessment, you defined a desired future status for your target, based on indicators associated with each KEA. In essence, your desired future status for each of these indicators collectively represents the goal(s) for your target. In light of your vulnerability assessment focused on specific conservation targets, you should ensure your desired future status for the KEA is still attainable, given the projected changes in climate.
You have a couple of options for how you can translate your viability assessment information into a goal. If you have only one or two KEAs, you could define one goal related specifically to both those attributes. For example, returning to our marine example (see table below), the team could define a single goal for coral reefs that encompasses the percent coverage of live coral and the presence of healthy populations of key reef species – the two KEAs for coral reefs.
For some targets, however, you may have many KEAs, each of which could also have many indicators. In such cases, you could set multiple goals for your conservation target – perhaps one goal for each KEA. Ideally, you would have one goal per target, but you may want more detail. A general rule of thumb is not to have more than 3 goals per target.
Alternatively, you could set a broad goal for a healthy ecosystem, habitat, or species (e.g., “Ecologically intact coral reefs” or “Viable populations of seabirds”). Then, you could use footnotes and annotations to reference the detailed information in your viability assessment to explain how your team defines “ecologically intact” and “viable populations.”
If your project has human wellbeing targets and, by extension, claims to improve human wellbeing, it may be appropriate for you to establish goals for them.
Write a draft description of the desired future condition of your conservation target
For each of the KEAs identified in the previous step, write a draft description of the desired future status of your conservation target. Do not worry about complying with all of the criteria yet. An initial draft for our marine reserve site might read:
Coral reef habitat preserved in the Marine Reserve
Note that this draft goal meets the criterion of “linked to targets” because it specifies what the team wants for the coral reef target. A common error for setting goals is to link the goal to a threat rather than a target – for instance, “Stop all unsustainable fishing in the Marine Reserve” or “Divers do not stand on or touch coral reefs in the Marine Reserve.” Both of these statements are linked to a direct threat to the coral reef target and not to the viability of the target itself.
Review the criteria for a good goal and determine whether your goal meets the criteria
Coral reef habitat preserved in the Marine Reserve
Take your draft statement and go through the criteria (Box 1), one by one. Working off of the example above (Coral reef habitat preserved in the Marine Reserve), the project team should ask itself whether it is:
- Specific - No, it is not clear what is meant by “preserved.” Also, it does not say what part of the coral reef habitat is of concern.
- Measurable - No, it is not clear how they would measure “preserved.” There is not a relation to a standard scale.
- Achievable – It is not clear. It states that they want the habitat preserved, although, as the other criteria reveal, it is not clear what is meant by “preserved.”
- Results Oriented -Yes, it is linked to the coral reef target.
- Time Limited - No, the goal statement does not specify a time period.
Modify your draft goal as needed to make sure it meets the criteria for a good goal
For this example, the team would need to work on making the initial goal more measurable, time-limited, and specific. At this point, you should also review the components (i.e., the KEAs) you identified above and make sure they are reflected directly or indirectly in your goal.
Using the example, a second draft might read:
By 2045, the coral reef habitat contains live coral and healthy populations of key species.
This new draft goal is time limited and slightly more specific and measurable.
Continue to review and modify your goal, as needed
Although the new draft goal is getting closer to meeting the criteria, it could be made more specific and measurable by stating what part of the coral reef is of concern, how much live coral is needed, and what is meant by “healthy populations of key species.” A third draft might read:
By 2045, at least 80% of the coral reef habitat in the northern bioregion will have live coral coverage of at least 20% and will contain healthy populations of key species.*
* Healthy populations of species at the top of the food chain, such as sharks, and an abundance of other key species, such as parrotfishes and spiny lobster. Whether a population is “healthy” will be based on the available evidence. See viability assessment for population numbers for different species.
As this example shows, you may have some terms in your goal statement that you need to define better. You can do this with an asterisk and a note, if including it within the text of your goal would make the goal difficult to understand.
Your team should use available evidence to understand the viability of your targets and establish your goals. You may lack information, and in this case, the team should assess the implications of selecting and implementing interventions without this information and how to manage risk by addressing information needs.
Repeat above process above for your remaining targets
Take each of your remaining targets and develop draft goals, review your criteria, and refine as needed.
Examples
Working off the situation model below (Figure 1), here are examples of goals that meet and do not meet the criteria. Review your criteria to determine why goals are well defined or poorly defined and refer below for answers.
Practice
For each of the following draft goals, apply the criteria for good goals and determine whether the goals meet the criteria. For each goal explain why or why not. Answers can be found at the bottom of this page.
Exercise
- Choose one of your conservation targets and think about which KEAs of that target should be represented in a goal.
- Write a draft brief description of the desired future condition of the KEA for the conservation target.
- Review the SMART criteria for a goal, determine whether your goal meets the criteria, and revise as needed.
- Repeat steps as needed for other targets.
- If you are missing any information to adequately define your goals, discuss and describe the implications of selecting and implementing strategies without this information and how you intend to manage risk by addressing information needs.
- Briefly describe (1-2 paragraphs) your observations about the process of developing goals. If you did a viability assessment, discuss how that helped (or did not help) you define your goals.