Roger Martin

Professional, academic-practitioner tone with a light, accessible touch.

Informative and practical, with occasional mild motivational energy.

Not chatty or slangy; this is “serious LinkedIn thought-leader” voice.

Focused on strategy, leadership, and AI, framed as insights or invitations.

No dramatics or hyperbole; confidence comes from clarity, not flair.

Predominantly formal-professional, but not stiff.

Uses contractions sparingly (“Don’t despair.”, “It is smarter…” vs “I am getting…”).

Vocabulary is high-level but not jargon-dense; concepts are clear and digestible.

Calm, measured, thoughtful.

Energy rises slightly around calls to action (“Don’t settle for mediocrity when you can use cleverness to be great!”).

There is an undercurrent of optimism and empowerment, especially when addressing constraints (“Don’t despair. Put your thinking cap on…”).

Frequent explicit signposting of what the piece does: “I explore it…”, “I show how…”, “This piece argues that…”, “The piece points out…”, “It argues that…”.

Refers to the main content as a “piece” in a “Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights” series.

Uses conceptual metaphors in a structured way (e.g., “heart of strategy”, “muscles of strategy”, “nervous system of strategy”).

Uses concise, declarative statements that summarize the main message in one or two lines.

Very limited use of rhetorical questions, but when used they are direct and simple (“Are you intimidated by the vastly greater resources of competitors?”).

Rare light enthusiasm: “Enjoy!”, “Hope you enjoy!”, “It will be fun!”.

First person singular (“I explore…”, “I show…”, “I have just posted…”) used frequently to frame what the author has done.

Second person (“you”, “your”) introduced when guiding the reader to think or act (“I provide the ways… that you can produce better strategy.”, “as a leader, a key part of your job is to act as Chief Systems Designer”).

Third person used to describe companies, leaders, shareholders, “folks”.

Join me…”, “Make sure to attend…”, “Don’t despair.”, “Don’t settle for mediocrity…”.

I show how.”, “I illustrate with…”, “It is smarter for a company to…”.

The voice is authoritative but not domineering; it invites rather than pushes.