"We cannot ask you to be more honest unless we become better at hearing things we don't want to know," she said. "We have not been good enough at that. It will take time to prove that we're changing, and I don't expect a speech to do the proving."
Isaiah stood at the side of the auditorium rather than on the stage. He watched employees listen with expressions ranging from suspicion to exhaustion, and he considered those responses reasonable. Ownership could change in a morning, but trust could not. A person who had endured years of dismissive management had no obligation to become optimistic because the logo on the shareholder register was different.
When Margaret invited questions, the first three were about job security, salaries, and whether the review would be used as an excuse to close departments. She answered each as concretely as the information allowed, acknowledging uncertainty where she could not promise an outcome. The fourth question came from a young researcher who asked whether the new executive team would actually review ideas submitted outside the formal leadership program. Margaret looked toward Isaiah, and he signaled for her to answer in her own words.
"Yes," she said, "but we need a better process than simply promising access. We're establishing documented review criteria, response deadlines, and an appeal route when proposals are dismissed without explanation. The first version will be published next month, and you'll have a chance to criticize it."
After the meeting, Victoria's team began interviewing employees from departments where the turnover had been highest. They used independent interviewers, protected confidential disclosures, and reviewed written records against recollections rather than assuming every account was complete. The process uncovered managers who had tried to raise concerns, others who had actively discouraged them, and some who genuinely believed that favoring familiar people was the same thing as recognizing talent. The pattern was broader than Charles, which made it more difficult to correct and more important to examine.
In the second week, Isaiah asked to speak with Aisha Grant, the analyst whose warnings Philip had preserved. Aisha was now working for a competitor, leading a small risk analytics team and earning more than Meridian had ever offered her. When Isaiah's office contacted her, she declined the first invitation. She had not forgotten how the company treated her, and she was not interested in being displayed as evidence of the new owner's generosity.
Isaiah sent a second message through counsel, explaining that he wanted her assessment of the problems she had documented and would pay for her time under a standard independent consulting arrangement. The message promised no publicity, asked for no public endorsement, and made clear she was free to decline. Aisha agreed to a forty-five-minute conversation, partly because she wanted to know whether the data she had spent so much time gathering had finally become useful.