Results Chains

1. Conservation Coaches Network Coach Training Results Chains Testing the logic of your strategies

2. What Is The Question? Results Chains IF …. THEN (!)

3. What Is The Question? Results Chains • What is the logic of your intervention(s)?

4. Results Chains What is a Results Chain? A tool for documenting a team’s “theory of change,”describing how a strategy will lead to conservation success

5. Key Points to Introduce this Step Results Chains • Results Oriented • “If-then” Logic Must Stand Up • Make Assumptions and Incentives Explicit • Alternatives are OK • Peer Review is Critical

6. Results Chains One Way to Develop a Results Chain • Construct an initial results chain • Complete the links in the results chain • Verify that your results chain meets criteria of a good results chain • Add activities to show how your specific actions (activities) will contribute to achieving your results

7. Critical Questions to Ask the Team Results Chains • Are there leaps in logic? • Are there hidden assumptions? • Are other strategies needed to support the focal strategy? • Is the right expertise present in the room?

8. Common Issues & Recommendations Results Chains • Left to Right or Right to Left? • Right to Left may be better for a new strategy – to ensure that the objectives are met • Left to Right may better for a familiar strategy where the focus is on how it will get done • Either way can work – let the group decide how it would like to proceed

9. Common Issues & Recommendations Results Chains • The chain does not reach the desired result • If a results chain has helped the team determine that a given strategy will probably not achieve the desired results, you have saved the team considerable time, effort, and resources – a planning success!

10. Common Issues & Recommendations Results Chains • Complicated, interdependent results chains • Develop the full results chain in sections, with clear intermediate results and showing where other parts of the strategies support the achievement of results • Very complex results chains may be useful for the team to lay out how the strategy should work. For communication purposes, consider a much simpler chain that contains only the key results

11. Common Issues & Recommendations Results Chains • Create a high-level meta-chain that shows how all of the pieces of a complex strategy fit together In addition to this… Have this available…

12. Helpful Hints Results Chains • Results chains are not implementation diagrams, but the inclusion of clearly distinguished activities and results will make the chain less theoretical and more practical. This will improve the flow of the diagram and can be turned into a workplan. • When you get stuck, ask “what would you do next?” and “if you implement that activity well, what will be the result?” • Once you have a solid draft of your chain, read through it in an “if…then” manner to check your logic. This will help you identify gaps and leaps of faith.

13. Helpful Hints Results Chains • Usually European coaches like to start a chain with the relevant pieces of the conceptual model, • In other cases or if the group gets stuck, you can use the Retrofitting strategy (start from a Strategy already in place or preferred by some reason and create the RC from it). • However you tackle it, refer back to the conceptual model to ensure that the relevant factors are being addressed.

14. Helpful Hints Results Chains • After activities and results are done • Can add the most important objectives to the results • Can add staff and other expenses, due dates to the activities • When the chain is complete, this is another opportunity to look for new stakeholders and to discuss their motivations

15. What Is The Question? Results Chains IF …. THEN (!)