A recent coaching call brought this home for me.
I’ve been working behind the scenes with a project manager as he facilitates a conservation planning process with his nonprofit organization. He’s smart and doing a great job, but the team kept hitting the same wall: they couldn’t narrow down their strategies.
Even strategies addressing moderate threats stayed in the mix, either because they were organizational favorites or because they represented what the organization had always done.
Suddenly it struck me. The problem wasn’t the planning process. It was that they hadn’t answered a more fundamental question first: What lane are we actually in as an organization?
Without a clear organizational niche — a specific, honest answer to how we accomplish our mission — strategy selection turns into a tug-of-war with a pile of shiny objects. Every idea feels defensible because there’s no organizational filter to run it through.
Here’s what my new sequence will be when coaching an organization that’s creating their own in-house conservation plan—it blends organizational and conservation planning:
- Get clear on your core values
- Confirm your mission (most organizations already have this)
- Define your niche (this converts the mission into a practical filter)
- Then build your conservation plan
When you brainstorm strategies, your niche is a high-level screen. If a strategy falls outside it, that’s not a reason to expand your niche — it’s a signal you’re drifting.
Applying the niche filter will significantly reduce the universe of ideas your team needs to consider, simplifying the planning process and keeping you grounded in what you do best.
Skipping the Niche ID step won’t save much time, but it may cost you years working outside your sweet spot.
One caveat—this process is different for conservation partnerships, which are often formed around a niche (e.g. a single species, a specific watershed). But when a single organization builds its own conservation plan, the niche question is critical — and usually unanswered.
If you have an organizational mission or niche and want some feedback on it, please send it my way and I’d be happy to look it over.
