New professional related blog posts

I'm making a concerted effort to populate my new, work-related blog.  Really I am.  Even though it's been three months and I have a grand total of six posts.


Have a look - some perspectives on corruption in Kenya and a note I posted on the India Development Blog, my organization's unofficial (and very popular) blog for researcher opinions, on entrepreneurship (original post here).

New website launch!

It's not perfect, it definitely has some kinks to be worked out... but I think it's safe to say our new website is a big improvement over the past one.  


We're trying out a fancy new interactive web design where each researcher is a real time content creator, so that the site is (in the words of our director) an "open kitchen" to showcase the research and work initiatives we have going on in progress, rather than just our polished completed products.  They're supposed to be writing a blurb to explain this philosophy, but haven't gotten around to it yet.


If nothing else, what's exciting is that I can direct you to much more in-depth, interesting pieces of content:
Main site homepage (complete with new URL): http://www.ifmr-cdf.in/
My programme group (restructuring and new group description coming soon... hopefully along with improved URL, this one is gross): http://ifmr-cdf.in/pg/groups/1223/strategy-advisory-group&type=Program%20area∫=1223
My profile!  View all the interesting, or not so interesting, stuff I've been working on over the past year, plus wire posts and bookmarks and all sorts of other junk: http://ifmr-cdf.in/pg/profile/jsprague


Watch for updates and improved site capability coming up soon!  I hope...

Look at me, I'm so professional

I finally decided I wanted to write some blogs that were actually work/life/career related, but didn't want to compromise my ability to bash people and concepts at will, tell embarrassing stories about my life, and be generally unprofessional.  So I created a new blog:


http://overturningboulders.blogspot.com/


Check it out, and follow if you're actually interested in my work.  If you're just interested in my shenanigans in India, keep reading this one.

CDF in the news

I don’t work on this project, but 10 points if this article helps you understand the term “economic governance.” If you weren’t confused about what my organization does before, you probably are now.

Speaking of governance, I’m pretty excited to have ordered a copy of It's Our Turn to Eat, which is only available in the UK and apparently is too hot for Kenya. I wonder if it’ll make it through Indian postal screening, because you know, Kenya is the only country with a corruption problem.

Two work updates

1.) After initiating contact with the IT guy a mere two and a half months ago, a description of my program is finally up on my centre's website! http://ifmr.ac.in/cdf/strategy_advisory_group.htm

Please note that reading this is unlikely to actually help you obtain a better understanding of what I do... but one can always try.

2.) Our organization, and its many affiliates, are recruiting like crazy. There are a number of job descriptions up on our site, but there are lots of others available that aren't listed as well. There are jobs available in everything from environment to digital marketing to tourism to finance.

The most recent of these is that my group is starting to recruit to double our team (from 3 to 6), so I am now personally looking for people. If you, or anyone you know, are interested in moving to India for a year or two to work at a very exciting, sometimes disorganized, never boring development research & consulting organization, please let me know! The biggest advantages of working here, in my opinion, are that you have a lot of freedom to develop and mold your own projects, and that we have access to some of the most influential academic, government, corporate, and public sector names and organizations out there (in India and the US).

I'm hoping the financial crisis and subsequent unemployment will help me in my recruitment endeavor. ;) Job descriptions coming soon.

A bit of environmental conservationism

As you might know, the human race has been remarkable in its ability to rapidly and effectively work together to destroy the Earth. Maybe there's something we could learn here about the proliferation of activities and habits among the masses, but I digress...

In India, of course, environmental sustainability is a major concern in every development effort. In an effort to take it seriously, I am conceding to a rare promotion of a word of mouth grassroots project.

Check out http://www.onehundredmonths.org/, and sign up if you are so inclined. I think it's an interesting opportunity to raise awareness among our collective social consciousness, and find ways to reduce our personal carbon footprints. We all know climate change is "bad" and conservation is "good", but how often do we actually do something about it in our daily routines?

Ok, enough preaching from me.

One banana two banana three banana four...

For those of you interested in microfinance: there's an interesting debate going on about the use of microloans on the India Development Blog that my organization produces. I'm not sure where my loyalties lie on this issue, but I sure do like this quote:

"I've never seen what we would call a rich, developed economy which consists of millions of women sitting around selling bananas." - Malcolm Harper

Some PR for you

Check out this WSJ article and audio clip about the ICICI Foundation that I'm consulting for. Nachiket, the interviewee, is the guy to whom all my work is ultimately responsible. Pretty interesting stuff, if you're into this sort of thing.

Hokay. So here’s the Earth…

Many people from college know that my senior year roommates and I were huge fans of the End of the World flash video. Thanks to Alexa, we even have t-shirts to prove it. These girls will be glad to know that the theme of that skit has now been incorporated into my real life.

You’ll have to see my previous blog post for the full and cumbersome explanation of my job here, but suffice it to say that my work has gotten a little larger than life recently. I am basically in charge of assessing the strategic direction of a large-scale foundation that is trying to solve all of India’s development problems. They have a lot of vision and momentum and enthusiasm, but not necessarily a clear idea of where they want to go or how to go about getting there. (Which is my job to figure out, with my vast 1.5 years of experience in the development industry.)

This leads to a lot of almost comically high-level discussions about how to do things like “alleviate poverty” and “achieve economic growth”. My boss and I actually started a conversation today with, “Okay, so here’s the world. This is where it is now, and this is where we want it to be. So we need to figure out the steps in between.”

This was said with the utmost of seriousness and business-minded logic.

And yet all I could think of was an animated globe floating across a screen, Swiss army knives being thrust into the Chinese flag, and kangaroos standing in blizzards. (If you don’t get it, watch the video.)

WTF, mate?

Out of the bush, back to The Office

After a week of work, I have come to the following conclusions: a) everyone is really smart here, b) intelligence does not equate to organization or efficiency.

Sometimes in the whirlwind of high-speed internet, high profile publications, visionary strategy meetings and prestigious awards, it takes a moment to remember that I am still in a developing country. The Board of Directors of the foundation I am tasked with evaluating is a short list of some of the most accomplished businesspeople in India - Forbes Asia businessmen of the year, Fortune's most powerful women in business, Yale world fellows, chairpeople of prestigious bank boards. Staff at the institute have articles published and are considered area experts in almost all of the major national media sources.

Fortunately, that "developing country" reminder still appears frequently. I am supposed to be issued a laptop, but am borrowing my boss' personal computer for the foreseeable future because of a mix-up in the IT department. I am currently stationed at the desk of someone who is in the field for the week because there are no open workstations; the group was scheduled to move into a bigger office today. But, there was a miscommunication and the size of the new office was apparently measured by some metric other than "workstations", so it is unclear when we will move or when I will get a desk of my own. The power tends to go out once or twice towards the end of the day, and the phone lines are inconsistent enough that you often have to contact the operator in order to call out, instead of dialing directly.

There's no doubt this is a step up from the office environment in Kenya, but it's certainly not Boston. And again I am reminded of how precisely this experience is a cross between my two previous jobs.

You're going WHERE? You're doing WHAT?

A reiteration of my last post in my previous (Kenya) blog, explaining in far too much detail what I will be doing in India.

So, I'm moving to India. What I’m going to be doing there is about the most confusing thing I’ve ever had to explain in casual conversation. Recently when most strangers ask me, “so what will you be doing in India?” they quickly regret that they asked. The short answer is “business development consulting.” The medium-length answer is “a business strategy evaluation for a foundation that is investing in rural enterprise development.” I can’t imagine anyone would want the long answer, but since I have for some reason been asked for it multiple times, I have laid it out below. Read on at your own risk.

I’ve taken a job with the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), a business school located in Chennai (southeast corner of the country). I’ll be working for the Center for Development Finance (CDF), one of several action-research centers at the school focused on improving living standards in India, alleviating poverty, creating a middle class, etc. – all those things that give you that “feel good” feeling.

Unrelatedly, a foundation was established in October with the goal of increasing “access to markets” (namely, financial services) to rural low-income households – that whole creation of a middle class thing. They are operating on a skeletal organizational structure and are in need a lot of intellectual capital from similar organizations in the area, and they sought out CDF.

So, in response to this need for strategic services, CDF has just started a new program called the – are you ready for this? – Strategy & Implementation Evaluation Research Unit (SIERU). It will basically be a consulting group tasked with evaluating the philosophical/academic strategies and the implementation plans of its clients. The foundation will be its first client, and it is hoping to attract more in the future as there seems to be high demand for this type of service.

This is where I, finally, come in. The SIERU unit will be co-run by two managers: one on the academic strategy evaluation side (a guy who already has an MBA and just graduated from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard), and one on the business strategy/implementation evaluation side (yours truly). Am I qualified for this, you ask? Not in the least. Am I totally intimidated? Yes indeed.

So that’s it in a very, very large nutshell. I am extremely excited about this career opportunity, and the chance to move to India and join the bandwagon of capitalizing on the potential of such an amazing country.