Pros
Junior staff are passionate, smart, friendly, driven, and willing to step outside of their lanes to ensure the job gets done. The org's success could easily be hindered by flailing and fickle senior leadership, but the competence and ethic of junior staff prevents embarrassing public failures.
Cons
To be fair, new org leadership inherited a mess. But, to be frank, they made matters worse.
CEO was woefully (sometimes publicly) underprepared for the role, for the state of the org when she arrived, and for the nature of leading a nonprofit. She frequently and openly berates lower-level employees, is deeply disrespectful of staff time, and obsesses about her personal reputation – to the point of asking staff to lie if asked about employee turnover following a spate of high-level departures.
Feedback is frequently requested by the CEO and other leaders but, when given, it is rarely welcomed. Employees who voice genuine frustrations are summarily dismissed, if not ignored completely. Those who offer criticisms, even when constructive, are sidelined, stripped of responsibility, and sometimes openly maligned by senior leadership.
Pettiness is a currency at ONE, and the head of Human Resources is the central bank, not merely allowing but actively participating in a culture of toxicity. HR and certain members of senior leadership appear to be incapable of appropriately distinguishing between personal and professional matters. As such, an employee’s professional value within ONE is established not by their work ethic and performance but instead by personal, superficial and sometimes unfounded grievances, imposing a kind of tyranny that is appropriate on a children’s playground but is unbecoming anywhere else - particularly among the highest ranks of a storied and once-respected NGO.
Even more distressing? This attitude is not confined within the walls of ONE. External partners in the international development sector have observed and inquired about the open “hostility” (their words) that some members of ONE’s leadership – particularly its executive leader in North America – express toward other sector leaders. A questionable leadership attribute for an org seeking to bolster its relations with government partners and, more direly, potential donors.
ONE has – for several years – been operating without a clear path forward. This is not entirely its fault – no one could have adequately prepared for the global chaos of recent years. But, in a moment where the world needs action and leadership, ONE has abandoned both mission and moral compass, renouncing the (well-intentioned, if sometimes flawed) quest for equality upon which it was founded. For this it can – and must – face judgement.