Turkish Delight

I thought its time I wrote about work, since I seem to have covered everything from food to sports, and general musings about life. The primary reason I am here is to get an insider’s view on the role of a multinational in society. Of course sitting on the 16th floor of a 600 storey company can give you only a limited view to things, but it does give you a fair idea of what is going on and leave the rest to your imagination, observation etc. Coming to what the hell I am doing:

History: Microsoft has believed in philanthropy for a long time, but it decided to focus most of their efforts on the issue of Digital inclusion, an interesting bit of trivia, did you know that Manhattan has more internet connections than the whole of Africa. So this is something Microsoft wants to work on, educating and empowering more people with the use of technology with a focus on the disadvantaged. Their mission is to educate 10 million people in Africa apart from the other millions in other parts of the world, on the use of Information Technology, setup easy access centers in rural areas and see how technology can be innovatively used in daily life of people. They call it the Unlimited Potential .

So what the hell am I dong here? Well they started this program around 1 and a half years back and it is at a nascent stage of development. Initially they would find partners, develop a project and execute. They had neither target nor any impact indicators that they kept in mind. After having beta tested this for the last 1.5 years, learning from mistakes and developed best case practices, they have decided to create a long term plan for the region. It is this process of long term planning that I am working on.

So my work is going to involve translating Microsoft’s Regional vision into various subsidiaries, assist in creating planning templates that will help the subsidiaries plan more objectively keeping in mind their strengths and weaknesses and the socio-economic impact that they can create, giving some direction to the way they plan ( I need some direction on my life plan too) facilitating workshops at regional meetings etc. Of course the 'jhadu pota' comes along with it, the PowerPoint’s, Excel sheets and Word documents. But hey what the hell, that’s what I learnt in AIESEC for 4 years and now, putting in to good use. At a later stage I am told I will also be involved in creating a long term plan for the Region on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

I am excited about traveling to the World bank knowledge forum in Ankara on 'Private sectors engagement with NGOs' and would be interesting to understand the perspective doing the rounds in this part of the world. All in all I think this place is giving me a very good idea of the real time challenges of a multinational in aligning and implementing its vision of social responsibility into reality.

Looking forward to my job as the excitement develops!