Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

July 22, 2026

Welcome to the Workplace Multiplier newsletter. Published Monday to Friday, equipping you to achieve your professional goals faster and without burnout or overwhelm.

What Donna Paulsen knew that the lawyers didn't

Howdy ,

I want to talk about Donna Paulsen from the TV show Suits.

If you've watched the show, you know her arc. She starts as Harvey Specter's assistant…no law degree, can't bill a client, can't sign a motion. By season seven, she's senior partner.

Watch that show through a cold, analytical lens and it stops being charming and starts being instructive.

Pearson Hardman is one of the most elite law firms in New York. In that world, capability is billable hours, legal strategy, winning in court. Donna had none of it.

What she had instead was this: nothing important happened without passing through her first. People didn't go to Donna because they liked her, though they did.

They went to her because she was the path to Harvey. She made herself so embedded in his success that removing her would have cost him more than keeping her.

That's the whole strategy in one line. She didn't wait to be invited into the spaces where decisions form. She made herself the person those decisions couldn't happen without.

You've been assuming proximity is a reward for performance. Do the work, get noticed, get invited. I need you to let that go, because that's not how it works.

Proximity is not a reward.

It's a strategy…and the people ahead of you have been running it while you waited your turn.

So let me share the question I want you sitting with today: where are the informal, unscheduled conversations in your organisation? Not the meeting. The five minutes before the meeting, where leadership actually thinks out loud.

Are you in the room for those? And if you are…is that by accident, or by design?

Because here's the uncomfortable truth. If it's by accident, someone less capable than you is treating it as a design problem. And design beats accident every time.

Your move today

Pick one informal space you've been standing outside of…a pre-meeting huddle, a corridor conversation, a coffee run with the right person. Find one honest, useful reason to be in it this week. Not to perform. To be genuinely useful.

You don't need a law degree to be in the room. You need to stop waiting for a formal invitation to a space that was never going to send you one.

Keep winning at work and in life.

Tola Akinsulire

Your Strategic Workplace Mentor