Not for profit. Mission is honorable but there’s no good way to measure individual contributions to the team. As a result, as others have mentioned in detail, politicking can seem like an unofficial measuring stick. The problem is not unique to IHS and is inherent in most non-profits (and other businesses too), but you should be aware of what non-profit work entails. Aside from a few bad examples of undue and unearned influence, the politicking usually doesn’t cause many problems as far as organizational decision making goes, just petty decisions like who attends a meeting that’s a waste of time anyway.
Constant changes, as mentioned, by others. The new CEO started at about the same time I did and I really liked the direction she took the organization. I didn’t agree with every decision or the way she (more so the Exec Dir & COO) went about enacting them, but on the whole her vision is solid and she’s worth following. Others clearly disagree which raises a related concern but drastic change always has a cost.
Young and idealistic staff: even some folks in their 30’s seem to fit this bill but ideological non-profits attract young, idealistic staff. There’s some literature on this issue (within ideological non profits) and they explain the issue far better than I can, but the result often is a large group of disgruntled 20-somethings who cannot fathom that leadership would make a drastic change to something they’ve worked so hard on. Staff often take these changes as a personal insult to their work and work ethic and fail to see how one CEO or director is simply correcting the mistake of her/his predecessors. Communication breakdowns exacerbate these issues but the IHS staff are passionate and id imagine IHS will always rely on a handful of young idealists to succeed. Based on the recent reviews from my former colleagues, though, it looks like a lot of the children (maybe all of them?) have left IHS recently - it looks to be a better environment now.
Dwarfed by other organizations and the little sister in partnerships. Academics are in hot demand and IHS has been outspent and outcompeted the last decade.
