To: All Meridian Dynamics Team Members From: Brett Halvorsen, Founder & Chief Journey Officer Subject: Our Next Chapter 🌱
Team,
I want to start by saying something I don’t say enough: I’m grateful. Grateful for each of you. Grateful for this moment. Grateful, honestly, for the strength I found within myself to write this email from my lake house.
Today, we are saying goodbye to 1,100 incredible members of the Meridian family. I know that word, “goodbye,” can feel heavy. So I’d like to offer a different word: “journey.”
These colleagues are not being laid off. They are being launched. Launched into a world of possibility, reflection, and a 45-minute window to download personal files before their laptops lock.
Why this is happening
Over the last year, we invested aggressively in growth. We hired boldly. We opened offices with slides between floors. We bought a smaller company whose name none of us can remember. Looking back, I made those decisions, and I take full responsibility, which I’m expressing in the form of this email and a slightly lower bonus.
The market has changed. The future requires us to be lean, focused and, frankly, about 1,100 people lighter.
What I’m asking of you
If you are leaving: I want you to leave with your head held high. Please also leave with your badge, which will stop working at 10:15 a.m.
If you are staying: I’m asking you to hold space for your departed colleagues by absorbing their workload with gratitude. Think of it as a journey within a journey. A sub-journey. We’ll be calling it “Project Lighthouse.”
A personal note
This has been the hardest week of my career. On Tuesday I went for a long run and cried at mile six, which was also a personal best. I share that not to center myself, but because leadership means being vulnerable, and because the run was genuinely very fast.
Our values haven’t changed. We still believe in people. We still believe in bold ideas. We now also believe in severance, in the legal minimum.
Onward, together, mostly,
Brett
P.S. Our quarterly all-hands is still happening Thursday. There will be a DJ.