Chapter 2
Chapter Two: In Which the Initiative is Aligned
From: Preethi Nair-MacPherson To: Margot Ellery-Booth Sent: February 10, 11:03 AM
is there actually a project now
— P
From: Margot Ellery-Booth To: Preethi Nair-MacPherson Sent: February 10, 11:14 AM
Preethi —
There is a project. There has been an all-hands meeting, a kickoff, and a scope document. There is also a converted storage cupboard on the third floor that appears to be our primary working space, which I will explain below. For now: yes, there is a project. Gerald has named it. Gerald has given it a slide. Gerald has described it as a "genuine inflection point," which I have added to the glossary.
I will provide the full account in the following order: the all-hands, the assignment, the kickoff relocation, the cupboard, the scope document, and the two-word reply that I have been thinking about since seven-fourteen this morning.
— M.E-B
I should begin with the all-hands, since that is where the project officially began, and I should note that Gerald's all-hands meetings had, over the eight years of my tenure at Pemberton & Associates, achieved a certain reliable quality: they began at nine, they ran until whenever Gerald felt that sufficient alignment had been achieved, and they contained, on average, three facts, a moderate quantity of aspiration, and at least one slide with a colour gradient that had no evident relationship to the content it was illustrating. I had attended thirty-one of them. I have no record of any action item from any of them ever being implemented exactly as described.
The February all-hands, which Gerald convened four days after the email incident — and which I attended with the composure of a woman who has already spoken to Gerald privately and received his philosophically full-stomached forgiveness — was a masterwork of the form.
"The National Infrastructure Alignment Initiative," Gerald said, from the front of the room, beside a slide that read NIAI in large letters above what appeared to be a stock photograph of a bridge, "represents a genuine inflection point for Pemberton & Associates in terms of our value-delivery ecosystem."
I wrote down inflection point and value-delivery ecosystem in my notebook, which I keep for all-hands meetings and which has, over the years, become an inadvertent glossary of phrases that sound like they mean something and do not. I have considered, on several occasions, submitting it as a reference document to the relevant committee if there were ever a relevant committee, which at Pemberton & Associates there is not.
"The NIAI is about more than infrastructure," Gerald continued. "It's about people. It's about process. It's about the synergistic convergence of stakeholder bandwidth around a shared — and I want to emphasize the word shared here — a shared deliverable horizon."
Preethi, to my left, wrote something on her notepad and angled it slightly toward me. It read: shared deliverable horizon (4 words, 0 content). I did not look at her, because looking at Preethi during an all-hands when Preethi has written something is the surest path to a loss of composure I have identified in eight years of professional practice. She has very precise handwriting and a very particular economy of annotation that I have come to think of as a form of applied wit.
Gerald said several more things. I wrote them down. At some point he introduced the concept of "cross-functional synergy realization," which I assessed as a development from his previous framework, in which synergy had merely been a property rather than an event. I noted this. I noted it twice, in fact, because I thought I might be misremembering, and I was not misremembering.
At the back of the room, Desmond Okafor-Tremblay was present, which I noticed in the abstract way you notice people at an all-hands before you have a reason to notice them specifically. He was taking no notes. He was listening with the quality of attention I had observed, briefly, in my office four days ago — the quality of someone who is cataloguing rather than recording, building an internal model rather than a written one. I observed this for approximately four seconds and then looked back at Gerald, who had moved to a new slide and was in the process of introducing what he called a "stakeholder ecosystem map," which was a diagram that appeared to have been constructed in PowerPoint using the SmartArt function, which is the PowerPoint feature most likely to produce a diagram that is structurally impressive and informationally empty.
After the all-hands, Gerald asked me to stay behind.
He said: "Margot, I've been thinking about the NIAI analytical architecture, and I genuinely feel like you're the right person to lead the policy development piece. Strong instincts, rigorous methodology — I've always said it."
I said: "That's kind of you, Gerald."
He said: "I'm also thinking of pairing you with Desmond on the operational framework. He's got a really interesting approach to systems thinking, and I think the two of you would be a genuinely synergistic unit."
I considered this. Desmond Okafor-Tremblay, IT and Operations Lead, had been at the firm for six weeks. In those six weeks, he had fixed the email system, updated the server filing structure, resolved three ongoing calendar conflicts that had been causing double-bookings since the previous March, and — as I had recently discovered, through the mechanism of the kitchenette becoming slightly more functional — quietly replaced the terrible instant coffee in the third-floor kitchenette with a cafetière and a bag of something that actually tasted like coffee. He had done all of this without making an announcement or sending a summary email or asking anyone to acknowledge that it had been done, which was so different from the way I approach operational improvements that I was not entirely sure how to categorize it. Operational improvements, in my experience, are documented. They are communicated. They are tracked in a shared log. The silent approach is either very confident or very indifferent, and from the four minutes in my office I had enough data to rule out indifferent.
I said: "That sounds fine."
Gerald said: "Great. I'll set up the kickoff."
He said this with the beaming ease of a man who has had a good idea and has already mentally moved on to the next one. I said: "Thank you, Gerald," and gathered my notebook, and thought about three calendar conflicts resolved since March and a cafetière that had appeared in the kitchenette without announcement or fanfare, and I walked back to my office and opened the NIAI brief for the fourth time.
The kickoff, which Gerald scheduled for the following Tuesday at two o'clock, was set in the second-floor boardroom. The second-floor boardroom is the firm's best meeting space — a projector that works, a whiteboard that has never fully dried out but is at least functional, and a table that seats eight, which for a firm of our size is approximately six more seats than any meeting actually requires. It is also, reliably, the most contested room in the building, a fact I have accepted as one of the cosmological constants of working at Pemberton & Associates, alongside the broken coffee machine on the first floor and the intermittent heating on the second.
At one fifty-eight, I arrived at the boardroom to find Brigitte Fontaine-Walsh setting up a series of small plates on the table, each containing a different type of artisanal cracker.
Brigitte looked at me. She looked at the crackers. She said, in the measured tone of a woman who has seen a great deal and categorized all of it: "Catering tasting. Two o'clock."
I said: "I have a meeting booked here at two."
Brigitte said: "So does the catering coordinator."
There was a brief interval during which I assessed the situation, found it suboptimal, and began identifying adjacent spaces. The adjacent spaces on the second floor were: a small room used primarily for filing that contained three cabinets and a chair, and the corridor.
At two-oh-three, Desmond appeared in the doorway, looked at the crackers, looked at Brigitte, and said: "I believe there may be a double-booking."
Brigitte said: "There is." She said it in the tone of a woman who knows exactly how double-bookings happen and has opinions about the calendar system that she will share upon request and not otherwise.
Desmond said: "I wonder if I might suggest the room on the third floor."
I said: "The third floor has a meeting room?"
He said: "It has a room."
He said this with such complete composure that I was already following him up the stairs before I had processed the distinction between a meeting room and a room.
The room, I discovered upon ascending the stairs, was a converted storage cupboard approximately three metres by four, containing a table that had clearly been retrieved from somewhere with more ambition than inventory, two chairs that did not match, a small window that looked out onto a heating unit, and a persistent smell of toner that I suspected was either structural or the ghost of a photocopier that had not been seen since 2017. On the wall, someone had, at some point, stuck a motivational poster that read EXCELLENCE IS A HABIT, and which had since unstuck itself in the upper left corner and now read CELLENCE IS A HABIT, which I found, in an abstract way, more honest.
I put my notebook on the table. I sat down. I said: "This is where we're working?"
Desmond set his laptop on the table. He said: "I've confirmed the room with Brigitte. It's not double-booked." He paused. "It has not previously been bookable. I have added it to the system."
I looked at the room. The heating unit outside the window clicked. I said: "There was a brief period in my career when I imagined that eight years of experience would result in a better office."
Desmond said: "The second-floor boardroom will be available Thursdays from three." He opened his laptop. "Shall we begin?"
We began.
Gerald's brief was two pages, which I had read three times and which contained, upon each reading, approximately the same quantity of usable information: the project was about infrastructure policy alignment, the client was a Deputy Minister at Infrastructure Canada, the deliverable was a framework document of unspecified length and format, and the timeline was Q3, which Gerald used as a deadline in the way that some people use "soon" — technically meaningful, functionally a general direction.
I had my seventeen-point analysis of the brief on my laptop. I had organized it into three thematic clusters: scope and definition, analytical methodology, and deliverable structure. Each cluster had a header, subpoints, and, in two cases, a supplementary note addressing potential objections to my own analysis, which I included because I find it useful to argue with myself in writing before being obliged to argue with others in person.
Desmond read his copy of the brief. He read it in the focused, unhurried way he appeared to do most things, which is to say without visible reaction and without the pen-tapping or small sighs that accompany concentrated reading in most people I have worked with. He finished. He set it on the table. There was a pause of perhaps four seconds.
He said: "I wonder if we might begin by establishing what the project is not."
I looked up from my thematic clusters.
He said: "The brief describes what the project should achieve. It does not describe what the project is. Those are different questions. If we agree first on what it is not — what we will not be producing, what falls outside our scope, what we are not responsible for — we have a container, and the content is easier to define."
I looked at this for a moment. I had written seventeen points about what the brief contained. It had not occurred to me to define the project by its edges rather than its centre. I was not, in general, someone who failed to find the useful approach, and yet here was a useful approach I had not found, offered by someone who had been in the building for six weeks and had read the brief once.
I wrote it down.
I said: "That is the most useful thing anyone has said about this project."
Desmond said: "That is a low bar. The project has existed for four days."
I said: "Nonetheless."
He said, with the expression that was not quite a smile but occupied the territory adjacent to one: "Nonetheless."
We worked for two hours in the toner-scented cupboard room. The work had the quality that good working sessions have when both people arrive already knowing what they think and spend the time comparing notes rather than establishing positions. He asked precise questions. I gave precise answers. He built from the answers outward rather than inward, which is the opposite of my tendency — I build inward, from the general principle toward the specific application; he built outward, from the specific constraint toward the structure it required. The resulting scope document was one page, which is what a scope document should be, and contained three clear exclusions, two defined deliverables, and a timeline that was not Q3 but rather a sequence of specific dates that might, if followed, result in something being ready by Q3. It was the most functional output I had produced on any project in recent memory.
By the end of it, the toner smell had become simply the smell of the room rather than the smell of the room as a problem.
I went home and wrote a recap email. It was eleven points, which I considered restrained under the circumstances. I covered the scope document, the exclusions, the timeline, the two points I wanted to revisit in the next session, and a note about the need to establish a shared drive structure before the document volume became unwieldy. I sent it at eleven forty-seven.
His reply arrived at seven-fourteen the following morning.
Noted. — D.O-T.
I read this twice. I considered the possibility that it was dismissive — that "noted" meant "received and filed, do not send eleven-point emails at midnight." I considered the alternative possibility that it was efficient — that "noted" meant "this is correct and I have no additions, which is the highest form of agreement available to someone who agrees." I considered a third possibility, which was that "noted" was a word that contained both meanings simultaneously and that the ambiguity was deliberate, which would be a very particular kind of precise communication and which I was not yet in a position to assess.
I flagged the email for follow-up. I made tea. I thought, briefly and without any particular conclusion, about a man who used a period after his initials, which is not something most people do, and which suggested a relationship with punctuation that was either very formal or very considered or both.
From: Preethi Nair-MacPherson To: Margot Ellery-Booth Sent: February 11, 9:23 AM
how was the kickoff
— P
From: Margot Ellery-Booth To: Preethi Nair-MacPherson Sent: February 11, 9:31 AM
Preethi —
The kickoff was relocated from the boardroom to a converted storage cupboard on the third floor, due to a catering tasting that had been double-booked into our slot, about which Brigitte was unapologetic.
The cupboard is approximately the size of the alcove outside Gerald's office. It smells of toner. The window faces a heating unit. There is a motivational poster that has partially detached from the wall and currently reads CELLENCE IS A HABIT, which I maintain is more accurate. These are the conditions in which the NIAI will apparently be developed.
Desmond said something interesting about scope definition methodology. I have added it to my notes. We produced a functional scope document in two hours, which is considerably more than I expected given the quality of the brief.
His reply to my recap email was two words. I am undecided on whether this is dismissive or efficient. I have been considering it since seven-fourteen this morning.
— M.E-B
From: Preethi Nair-MacPherson To: Margot Ellery-Booth Sent: February 11, 9:34 AM
"said something interesting" and "considering it since 7:14am" in the same email
what was the interesting thing
— P
From: Margot Ellery-Booth To: Preethi Nair-MacPherson Sent: February 11, 9:38 AM
It was about scope definition methodology. It was professionally interesting. The approach was to define the project by what it is not rather than what it is, which establishes a container before filling it with content. I have been applying this to my own analytical practice and I find it structurally sound.
— M.E-B
From: Preethi Nair-MacPherson To: Margot Ellery-Booth Sent: February 11, 9:39 AM
ok
— P
The shared drive was organized on the Wednesday of the following week.
I know it was Wednesday because I remember arriving on Wednesday morning and finding a new folder structure in place where the previous structure had been — a flat, unsorted collection of project documents going back to 2021, organized by a filing convention that Brigitte had once described, with characteristic precision, as "aspirational." The new structure had a logical hierarchy, clear naming conventions, and — this is the part that I noticed last and thought about longest — a separate folder labelled M.E-B Working Drafts in which my current documents were already filed, correctly, by the naming convention he had just established.
He had named the folder after me. He had named it before showing it to me. He had assumed, correctly, that I would want my own working space within the shared structure, and he had created it with my initials, and he had filed my existing documents into it before I arrived, so that my first experience of the new system was to find my things in their correct place, already organized.
I stood at my desk for a moment looking at this.
I thought: this is a professional courtesy.
I thought: this is a very specific professional courtesy.
I went to his office at ten o'clock. He was at his desk. I said: "The shared drive."
He said: "Yes. Is the structure functional for your needs?"
I said: "The structure is excellent." I paused. "The M.E-B folder."
He said: "You produce a significant volume of working documents. It seemed useful to have them separated."
I said: "When did you do this?"
"Last evening," he said. "The server was quieter." A pause. "I hope I have not filed anything incorrectly. I used the document dates as a guide."
I said: "You've filed everything correctly."
He said: "Good." He returned to his screen.
I went back to my office. I opened the shared drive. I looked at the M.E-B Working Drafts folder, which contained seventeen documents organized by date, the most recent at the top, the oldest at the bottom, with names that were clear and consistent.
I thought: he organized my files.
I thought: he organized them last evening, after working hours, alone in the building, because the server was quieter.
I thought: point seven was correct.
I opened the most recent document and got back to work.
The second week established another pattern, which was Desmond's habit of being at his desk before me and after me. I arrive early — seven-thirty, usually, sometimes seven, in the way of people who find that the office at seven has a quality that the office at nine has entirely lost, a specific stillness that allows for certain kinds of thinking that are not possible once the building is populated. I had always assumed I was first in the building. I had been wrong. When I arrived at seven-thirty in the second week, his office light was on and there was a faint smell of tea from the direction of the kitchenette.
I did not investigate this. I went to my desk and started working.
He left after me as well. I know this because I occasionally stayed late — the eleven forty-seven timestamps in the folder were real, not performative — and when I left at eleven or eleven-thirty, walking to the bus stop in the cold, the building's upper windows were sometimes still lit. The second floor. His office.
I noted this in the general way I note things: observationally, without assigning it significance. He was a diligent person. He worked early and late. This was consistent with a thorough approach to operations, which the state of the office — the cafetière, the server, the calendar conflicts that had quietly resolved — already suggested.
I noted it, and I filed it, and I went home and made tea and thought about the scope document and the load-bearing sentence in section three, and the kettle had boiled twice before I noticed I had been thinking about the scope document and also, peripherally, about a light on the second floor of a building on Sparks Street.
There is a specific quality that working partnerships have in their first week, before the rhythm is established, when both people are discovering not just the work but the other person's relationship to the work. Some partnerships never move past this phase. They maintain, indefinitely, the slightly formal quality of people who have not yet determined whether trust is warranted. Other partnerships move through it quickly, too quickly, and arrive at a false intimacy that is not built on anything and collapses under the weight of actual disagreement.
Ours moved through it steadily, which is the pace of people who are not in a hurry and who have noticed, each independently, that the other person is being accurate rather than strategic, which is the thing that makes trust possible.
By the end of the second week, I had made certain observations.
Desmond did not interrupt. This is rarer than it sounds. I have worked with many intelligent people who interrupt, not from rudeness but from the specific impatience of someone whose thinking runs faster than the conversation. He did not do this. He waited for the complete thought, and then he responded to the complete thought rather than to the version of it he had anticipated from the first two sentences. This required a quality of attention that I found, initially, slightly unusual and, subsequently, increasingly valued.
He also asked questions that were not rhetorical. When he said "what do you think?" he meant what do you think, not here is the space in which I will explain what I think. When I answered, he listened and then incorporated the answer into whatever he was building. I could see this happening — could see the adjustment in his thinking when I had said something that shifted his position — and it was, in the specific way of things that work correctly, satisfying to observe.
I made, in the second week, a note in my working journal. The note said: D.O-T. — good methodology. Builds outward. Asks actual questions. Period after initials.
The last observation was not relevant to the methodology. I included it anyway.