Working the Hybrid Reality!

It is fascinating to evolve and live through the hybrid world of work and life that is the reality for so many of us.??

Over the last four weeks many of us at Microsoft experienced the joys and challenges of working through a large scale and complex series of HYBRID events that spanned across India and the world. "MICROSOFT START & CELEBRATE" events recognized outstanding achievements in the financial year gone by, and energized us for the financial year starting 1st July. The events kicked off in the second week of July with our global leaders coming together across 65+ global locations to run both synchronous and asynchronous events, in-person and virtually, to connect with more than 60,000 people across the globe… and then in India, we followed through the next three weeks to ensure that we could connect in person with everyone in our three big locations, across Mumbai, Bangalore and NCR.?

This experience helped us live through the hybrid reality design principles:?

The hybrid format of our event reflected the choice of our people: nearly everyone wanted to connect in person to celebrate, but many were not comfortable travelling across cities, to attend a very large in-person event. Each one of us have lived through some of the toughest times in our lives over the last 2.5 years, and clearly the lived reality is unique for each one of us. Given that,?inclusion and personal connection is likely to mean different things to each of us.??

For me the last four weeks have been an amazing learning experience of diverse and unique human responses to the dynamic hybrid reality of our world. I have come away charged and energized after meeting almost all of our people in person, across India. These pictures from the events communicate, our shared humanity and love for our mission, more powerfully than words can.?

Sharing three simple, intuitive and significant takeaways that we will continue to work on:?

1. There is nothing that comes close to the power of in person connection… for empathy, for learning, for progress?
2. There is no one right answer or solution to the hybrid reality… it varies for each person or group of people, and needs unique application to each situation, as it evolves over time?
3. Technology is irrevocably intertwined to hybrid reality. We have to continuously innovate and deepen tech intensity to improve the hybrid reality

Many of our customers and partners have been intrigued with this large initiative at scale. As we share our experiences, we are also learning from many such initiatives in our ecosystem. All of us have a tremendous opportunity to learn from each other and shape our unique hybrid reality experiences.??

How is hybrid reality shaping for you? Please do share your hybrid reality experiences that others can learn from.