[reckoner99]

My immediate reaction is to notice that this method is actually closely mirrors Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle, a go-to tool for McKinsey consultants for the last 40 years or so. One way to build so-called Pyramids is to go bottom up: gather raw facts, aggregate them into themes, themes align into arguments, and only then does the polished narrative (or the key idea) emerge. As far as I can tell, McPhee recommends a very similar approach.