Under the leadership of Administrator Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, UNDP is currently undergoing deep structural changes. 30 percent of the jobs at the organization’s New York Headquarters are to be cut, including positions at the Director level. A drastic reorganization of this kind was long overdue. UNDP’s core strength–its presence and, where successful, coordination of programs and responsibilities at the country level–had increasingly been stifled by a bloated and top-heavy bureaucracy in New York. Attempts to reinvigorate, restructure and, in some cases, reinvent its HQ “Bureaus” as think tanks failed miserably as senior-level expertise brought in from more effective aid agencies such as the World Bank as well as academia got suffocated by internal power politics, intellectual mediocrity and a pervasive culture of careerism and entitlement. Strategic programs were either not implemented fully or administered at a multiple of the costs commonly incurred by leading global non-governmental organizations. Evaluation findings frequently remained embargoed; those that were eventually shared with the public had usually undergone prior reformulation and redaction. It is not surprising, then, that a growing number of governments in recipient countries lost faith in UNDP’s ability to help deliver mutually agreed-upon results. Financially dependent on sustained and predictable support from bilateral donors, UNDP is now paying the price for its persistent lack of effectiveness and its worrisome reluctance to provide the transparency and accountability that, ironically, it propagates globally and also demands from its in-country partners. It remains to be seen whether its internal restructuring succeeds at retaining the organization’s sparse talent within HQ or whether it spirals out of control by turning into a race for securing individual livelihoods that will naturally favor those with the largest personal networks as opposed to those with the best ideas and visions for moving forward.