How I’d like to contribute to solving our climate crisis

Hi, I’m Mike.

After a wild and tumultuous year+ during which I welcomed my first child, dealt (dealing) with some family health challenges, and somehow still had fun delivering client projects, I'm officially launching my first job search in 10 years. This post is about what I'm hoping to focus on and how you might be able to help me out.

It's clear to me there is no matter more pressing than reversing our changing climate.

While I've lived an ever-more-sustainable lifestyle for decades, the impact of my individual actions feels limited. As a new chapter in my life begins, it's important to me that my work aligns with my beliefs—and more importantly, that I'm actually able to measure the impact of my work, which is something I've struggled to do over my 5+ years of self-employment. For these reasons and more, I'm working to shift the focus of my full-time work to be in some way connected to climate, racial, and economic justice.

The rest of this post is about me, my work, and how I'd like to contribute.

If you can think of someone I should connect with, or any opportunities pop into your mind, I would greatly appreciate introductions, conversations, and any guidance you can provide.

To start again: Hi! My name is Mike and I help people accelerate progress by working better together.

My work involves guiding people to discover better approaches to their challenges by making sense of complexity, identifying clear paths forward, and implementing better solutions.

As a strategy consultant, experience designer, and thought partner, I facilitate the design and creation of systems, services, and experiences that build capacity, improve operations, and increase impact. After more than five years as an independent strategist on top of five more in tech and creative agencies, I’m now looking to shift my focus to climate action.

How I’d like to address our climate crisis

My objective is to find ways of accelerating the creation and deployment of climate solutions that have significant impact such as direct air capture and regenerative systems. I’m also exploring opportunities to support the sustainability initiatives of organizations as they work to transition to regenerative and circular ways of operating. To do this, I’ve been searching for where I might fit best within the ecosystem of those taking climate action:

• I want to see national policy changed in favor of climate solutions, but I am not a policy expert.
• I want to see regenerative farming practices implemented around the world, but I am not an agriculture expert.
• and I’d like to see unimaginable levels of carbon pulled from the atmosphere and prevented in the first place, but I am not really an expert here, either.

So where is my expertise?

I'm an expert at helping people find and implement better ways of doing what they do.

How I approach my work

Over the past five years I’ve embedded within more than a dozen teams to help define, design, and deliver new and better experiences. Working with so many organizations has provided extensive experience helping people work together more effectively to make better decisions, accelerate progress, and improve outcomes. While the context and content always differ, the outcomes are the same: clarity as individuals, alignment as executives, and progress as teams. Examples include:

• Coaching creative teams as they transition to new and more effective ways of working
• Helping leaders make better decisions by designing and prototyping data-informed systems
• Improving new patient drop-off rates by redesigning treatment onboarding programs

Through all this work I’ve found that helping people see things differently and gain deep understandings of the context and ecosystems they’re working within produces better thinking, more actionable insights, and meaningful progress towards what matters most.

It’s this energy, expertise, and experience I’d like to offer you as you work to create a better future.

I can help your teams perform at their best so we accelerate our pace towards achieving the most important mission of our lifetimes: reversing the damage to our planet from centuries of civilization growth.

My name is Mike Tannenbaum and I’d like to help you achieve your mission.

It would be a pleasure to chat with you if you think there might be collaborative opportunities worthy of exploration. You can reach out and/or learn more at any of the links below.

Thanks so much for your time! I appreciate any support you can offer.

Mike Tannenbaum | May 2020

mike@tnnbm.com | @theroyaltbomb | miketannenbaum.com

Written with ♥ from Philadelphia, PA, USA