Partner With Me
Consulting
I partner deeply and flexibly with nonprofit leadership teams to develop bold strategy and bring it to life in their organizations.
Strategic planning
Establish clear, effective strategy by grappling with your organization’s toughest strategic questions and decisions, through a process that embodies the values of a more just and equitable world.Bringing strategy to life (strategy embodiment processes)
Bring strategy to life in your organization through goal-setting, planning, budgeting, and supportive accountability processes.Reflection, learning, and adaptation (strategy adaptation processes)
Use metrics, measurement, and data not for compliance and control, but to deepen and evolve your strategy over time.Theory of change development
Develop your theory of change as a strategic tool for storytelling and learning.Financial analysis and modeling
Link your financial management to your strategy through customized analysis and financial tools your systems can’t provide.Organization and operating model design
Form follows function. Design an organization that powers your work instead of getting in the way.Strategic research and analysis
Answer critical strategic questions through rigorous research and analysis.
Fractional Executive / Staff Augmentation
In an embedded role, I can move in lockstep with your team to solve problems, establish organizational infrastructure, and build team capacity while we’re at it. I’m a respectful, supportive team member here to uplift your team’s leadership.
Chief Strategy Officer
Whether you’re conducting strategic planning, working to bring strategy to life, or establishing a discipline of reflection, I’ll meet your organization where it’s at to take the next steps in its strategic journey.Chief of Staff
I can add executive-level capacity, molding flexibly into your team to bring executive advisory, key initiative leadership, and multi-functional expertise with a specialty in strategy, finance, project management, and analysis.
Field-Building
My mission is to make the practice of strategy a more useful exercise for mission-driven organizations. However, my consulting and fractional executive work can reach only a very limited set of organizations at a time. So, in addition to my direct partnership, I’m working to remake the practice of strategy in service of social justice and to build the cadre of practitioners putting it to work.
Writing
I’m making the effective practice of nonprofit strategy more accessible to all through provocative and practical writing. Read more here on my website and sign up for my newsletter to receive insights directly to your inbox.Teaching
I’m looking for opportunities to bring this modernized practice of nonprofit strategy to practitioners and students through engaging instructional / capacity building formats!
Syntelos
(sin-teh-loss)
The name Syntelos combines the Greek syn, meaning ‘together,’ and telos, meaning ‘purpose’ to convey the idea of ‘together in purpose.’
‘Together in purpose’ means two things in my consulting.
First, it describes what strategy is ultimately all about—enabling people to work together to achieve a common purpose.
Second, it represents how I engage with nonprofit leadership teams. I avoid the traditional transactional consulting relationship with clients: agree on deliverable, produce deliverable, get paid, move on. I have worked in that model before, and I no longer think it gives nonprofit leaders what they are really looking for.
Nonprofit leaders want meaningful strategic progress via a process they are proud of.
I help them reach this goal through deep partnership in guiding an organization’s strategic journey.
My Purpose
I’m building toward a future in which our economic and governance systems are equitable and just, and in which humans exist in harmony with our planet.
My contribution to this collective journey is to make strategy a more useful exercise for the mission-driven organizations who are actively building that future.
My partnership helps nonprofit organizations make meaningful strategic progress through a process they are proud of.
This is my purpose.
— Nick Takamine