Minnesota's lands and waters are undergoing rapid changes related to population growth, development, climate change, and shifts in outdoor recreation patterns. DNR is adapting its organizational structure and enhancing its performance management system in order to better address these challenging trends.
This Part I: Strategic Directions 
document highlights three key trends that shape DNR's ability to achieve our mission and goals. It describes eight strategic directions we are pursuing to achieve our goals in the context of these trends.
The accompanying Performance and Accountability Report document describes 83 performance indicators and conservation targets DNR uses to measure and communicate progress as we work to achieve our conservation goals.
DNR's performance management system connects mission and goals to budgets and uses performance indicators and targets to measure conservation results.
Identifying trends, charting strategic direction, measuring performance, and making course corrections to improve conservation results are essential to effectively managing programs. DNR's framework for performance management (see figure) illustrates how mission, goals, and trends influence our strategic direction and inform the major objectives built by DNR programs. Program objectives are DNR's fundamental budget unit. Performance measures and conservation targets (outcomes) are created for each program objective and are used to build and present DNR's biennial budget Budgeting for Results.
A Strategic Conservation Agenda, Part I: Strategic Directions is an important new element in DNR's improved performance management system. It more clearly communicates the crosscutting trends that influence natural resource sustainability, and more clearly outlines DNR's strategic directions in a unified approach.
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