Day in the Life of an Inspire Fellows Alum: Nick Takamine
After a year as an Inspire Fellow with FHI, an international development NGO working in global health and related areas, Nick joined FHI as a Strategy & Analysis Officer. In this role, he is leading the development of a performance metrics framework for the Business Planning & Strategy Group, building business planning capacity in FHI’s Rwanda and Zambia offices, and supporting FHI’s strategic planning process. Nick also publishes Think: Social Innovation, a blog on social innovation and nonprofit organization design and management.
I recently joined FHI as a Strategy & Analysis Officer and I’m still trying to figure out what my job is. Ok, that’s not quite true; I’m still trying to figure out what it means to be an “officer”. I don’t wear a uniform and I don’t get to carry a firearm…
But title aside (and firearm or not), I am enjoying myself. Here’s what a typical day might look like for me:
7:45 AM – 8:20 AM I commute from DC to Ballston via foot and the Orange Line metro. On the way I tend to review collected content like Twitter feeds and respond to emails on the trusty iPhone. Depending on how I feel, I’ll listen to Social Innovation Conversations, HBR or TED podcasts, or zone out to music.
8:20 AM – 9:00 AM When I get in, I take a bit of time to get organized for the day. I get coffee, respond to emails, review to-dos and plan my work. I’ll dig a little deeper on anything interesting from Twitter and RSS feeds that is related to work, particularly with respect to Rwanda, Zambia or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). My group, Business Planning and Strategy (BPS), builds the capacity of FHI’s country offices to think strategically about the development and sustainability of their portfolios. I will be supporting our Rwanda and Zambia offices in this effort (and will be traveling to Rwanda in January to facilitate a business plan workshop!). BPS also leads the organization’s relationship management system and I will be on the CDC relationship team, helping FHI to be more effective partners with CDC and developing nation governments for work in global health.
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Meeting number one. This might be a call with a country office to discuss a draft business plan they have developed with support from BPS. The business plan describes the country office’s vision for their role in support of that country’s public health and development strategy and describes a plan for fulfilling that role. We do calls with the field in the morning so they are not too late in the day for country staff in Africa and Asia.
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Unless the day is particularly heavy on meetings, I have a decent amount of time to work on one or another of my projects. In a good two-hour chunk like this I might do some work related to my support of FHI’s strategic planning process. This might include planning for how to facilitate the discussions, synthesizing input, and helping to draft the Strategic Plan. We’ll soon be rolling the Plan out, and I have been developing the related presentations and key messaging, as well as tools to help managers work with their staff to connect their work to the new strategic directions.
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM I try to bring my lunch, but about half of the time—ok, most of the time—I end up picking something up from near the office, especially when there’s a lot going on and grocery shopping and cooking get bumped from my priority list. This is dangerous because I am a sucker for a Chipotle burrito or a Potbelly sandwich—not the healthiest of meals. I eat at my desk and do some work or respond to personal emails and take care of miscellaneous to-dos. Occasionally, I’ll attend a brown bag presentation by FHI staff to better understand the programmatic work we do.
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM I try to get some solid work in before having to go to war against the food coma. Another project I might put some time into is the design of work processes for the use of a client relationship management software system. The system has the potential to help FHI capture, store, organize, and ultimately make better decisions with relationship information; but in the end, information management is about people, not technology. I’ll have to help us determine what information we need, which people need to be involved and how, and how information becomes knowledge used to make decisions—and then, secondarily, how the IT system can help.
2:00 PM – 2:15 PM All-out war: coffee run for caffeine infusion and some fresh air.
2:15 PM – 4:00 PM This slot might hold some last minute preparations and an afternoon meeting. I am a member of a working group charged with developing, implementing, and managing a system for measuring and monitoring FHI’s strategic performance. Last year, I helped to define a set of indicators for executive management to review in order to inform strategic decisions, and I led the development and implementation of a dashboard tool and supporting processes. This meeting might be a videoconference with a few working group members from my office in Arlington and executives at headquarters in North Carolina. We are currently revising our Strategic Dashboard based on the recent refresh of strategic priorities.
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM With another block of time free of meetings, I might work on one of my other projects, like the development of an internal white paper that provides guidance for how FHI can engage in public-private partnerships, particularly in-country. This involves research, brainstorming, interviews, deep thinking, and, of course, writing.
5:00 PM My evenings see a mix of activities. I actually find that I work most productively between 6ish and 8ish, so when it’s busy, I can be found in the office. On those days, after a chat in Spanish with the woman who keeps our floor tidy (me falta practica), I might even swim some laps on the way home if I’m feeling ambitious. If it’s not so busy, I’ll try to catch friends at a happy hour or make it home to cook.
My activities vary widely depending on the day, but I’m fortunate that they align so well with what I was looking for in my career transition. In fact, I just pulled out the Inspire Fellows application essay I submitted 18 months ago (!) and I’m astonished by how well my experience has aligned with my goals. The essay began like this:
Although many would not have seen it coming, my recent decision to pursue a career in the non-profit field was deliberate and wholehearted. Indeed, my career track to that point appeared to be heading toward a world of buyouts and bonuses. Those who are close to me, however, knew that I was energized more by the vision of leading a company—of working to build an effective, successful organization—rather than one of orchestrating financial deals…
As it turns out, the two worlds are not, in my eyes, that different after all—at least in the context of my career. When I explain my decision to others, I like to borrow the term “social profit” (as opposed to “non-profit” and in contrast with “for profit”) to describe the sector into which I am transitioning. All along, the basic principle that attracted me to the business world was the challenge of building an organization to achieve a goal. At the bottom line, this goal, for a business, is private wealth. The simple difference for an organization in the third sector is that, instead, the bottom-line goal is social value.
I’m happy to say that I have found what I was looking for in my sector switch: I’m applying my passion to strengthen an organization working for social value, rather than private wealth.