Roger Martin

Roger Martin is a strategy adviser, author and former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. His work seeks to make strategy more useful to practising leaders by treating it as a set of choices under uncertainty rather than an analytical plan that can be proved in advance.

Martin’s best-known strategy contribution, developed with A.G. Lafley in Playing to Win, is the choice cascade connecting aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities and management systems. He also argues for integrative thinking: holding opposing models in productive tension long enough to create a better answer, instead of accepting an unattractive trade-off too quickly. His work on design thinking similarly connects analytical reliability with exploration of what might be possible.

A recurring theme is that conventional planning can become comfortable but strategically empty. Budgets, forecasts and long initiative lists often avoid the central question of how an organisation will create distinctive value. Martin’s frameworks are practical precisely because they force explicit hypotheses. Their limitation is also important: a well-completed cascade does not guarantee that the underlying beliefs are true, so choices must be tested and revised.

OutcomesLab profiles Martin because his work closely matches its theory of strategic coherence. He gives leaders a language for connecting competitive choices to the capabilities and systems required to deliver them. Alongside Lafley, he also demonstrates productive exchange between adviser and operator. His contribution helps OutcomesLab distinguish a genuine strategy from planning—and connect choice, learning and execution without pretending uncertainty can be eliminated.