Pros
Rabin Martin has a lot of potential—it attracts intelligent, passionate junior staff, and its senior staff have great connections. The physical office space is very nice.
Cons
The 2 biggest problems at RM are poor management and lack of focus. The Vice Presidents, Managers and Senior Associates have no managerial training or resources. The result is a sorority-like atmosphere full of confusion, drama, and lack of accountability. Senior staff seem to feel anyone can manage, and don’t realize that the lack of training causes low morale in lower level staff. Upper level staff seem disconnected from the work, and have unrealistic expectations of how much time and energy projects demand. Clients are inevitably disappointed because Presidents and VPs over-promise, don’t secure enough funds, don’t allocate enough people to the project, and therefore underdeliver. It’s an embarrassing and frustrating experience for the younger staff. RM has also lost its connection to meaningful public health work. The turn over at RM is rapid (most people stay only 1 to 2 years) because opportunities to work on projects staff feel proud of are very rare. RM now concentrates on recycling the same over-used phrases, poorly designed PowerPoint decks and tired documents to large pharma clients. It is mostly communications and brand-building work. There is very little work with grassroots projects. Additionally, the CEO and upper management have a clear disdain for NGOs, consistently bad-mouth the work they do, and try to steer their clients away from working with many of them. The leadership have an unrealistically high view of the company and the work they turn out. All the while, the junior staff feel over-worked, underappreciated, morally compromised and dissatisfied, with no managers to turn to. There are occasional efforts to improve morale, but they are half-hearted and disingenuine. The result is a revolving door of talent coming and quickly leaving the organization. There is very little maintained skill.