It's real," Damen said. "I mean, there's no version of this where it gets walked back when it becomes inconvenient." Damian looked at him steadily. I didn't build what I built over 14 months to create systems that get walked back when they become inconvenient. If I wanted convenient, I would have done this differently. Marcus nodded slowly.
I've been in this building for 22 years, Marcus said. I've filed 11 complaints. Not one response, not one acknowledgement, not even an email that said, "We received your concern." He looked at his hands. I kept filing them because I couldn't stop seeing things that needed to be said. But I'll tell you by complaint 910 111.
You start to wonder if the point is the filing or just the not being silent. The point Damian said was that you didn't stop. Marcus looked at him. 11 Complaints over 4 years. Damian said every one of them correctly identifying a real problem.
Every one of them ignored. And you still filed the 11th. He paused. That's not a small thing. That's the thing that tells you who someone actually is.
The announcement went to 17,000 employees simultaneously. In an email that Damen had written himself and then had his communications team review and then had rewritten to remove three phrases that felt like corporate language rather than plain truth. The final version said in its essential middle paragraph, "We are rebuilding this company on a foundation that recognizes every person in it, not by role or title or what someone appears to own when they walk in the door, but by the work they do, the integrity they carry, and the standard to which they hold themselves and each other. That is not a value statement. It is a description of what we are going to do starting now in ways that are specific and measurable and visible.
The response from employees came in over the next 6 hours in the form of 2,400 individual reply emails. His communications director called him slightly stunned. They're writing back, she said, not form responses. People are writing actual. Some of these are paragraphs.
Some of them are pages. Damian listened. One woman in logistics, his communications director said, "She's been with the company 11 years." She wrote, "I'm reading this directly." She wrote, "For the first time in 11 years, I feel like someone in this building sees us not as headcount, as people who chose to be here and who deserve to know that the choice is honored." He listened to her, read two more. Then he said, "Keep them. All of them.
Print them if you have to. They're the document that tells us what we're actually building." She was quiet for a second. What do you want me to do with the media requests? She said, "The lobby story is still tell them I'll give one interview." He said, "One, the outlet, the timing, the format I'll choose. And the question I will not answer is how it felt because that's not the story.