Personality can be voiced, even in the dryest of files, if one only remembers to turn on the style.

With apologies to Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban

An interim company report - a blizzard of numbers, arcane accountancy conventions, brutalist financial formats, esoteric statutory declarations, every last comma risk-assessed out of (or into) existence by a battery of solemn lawyers - is the last place you’d expect to find charm.

Your typical interim report is a style desert, a character void, a personality wasteland.

So the recent Games Workshop (Warhammer) interim report is exceptional.

It’s had a lot of attention because the numbers are impressive. And also because of its honest, creative-friendly, and commercially tepid appraisal of so-called generative AI.

In great shape

It wasn’t the numbers that impressed me, it was the quirks. They’re at least as revealing as the official narrative. At face value it’s a corporate success story. But the text is peppered with folksy phrases, which hint at the culture behind the commerce. And reading between the lines is more interesting than reading about the bottom line. The first sentence of the CEO’s commentary contains a strong hint of what’s to come:

Games Workshop and the Warhammer hobby are in great shape.

Kevin Rountree, CEO, Games Workshop Half-yearly Report, 13th January 2026

“Write as you speak” is banal advice straight out of Central Casting for brand guidelines. But this opening line is what it sounds like when someone does it well, for effect; “in great shape” is what you’d say to a room full of friendly faces. It’s confidence wrapped in familiarity. It’s relaxed but unequivocal. The body language of these words will settle any stakeholder. A simple phrase sets the tone.

The context helps. Familiarity is incongruous in a financial report; “in great shape” jumps out of that first sentence. This CEO is conspicuously at ease in a setting where we’d expect him to stand to attention. He’s taken us by surprise. We’re all ears.

Pretty much drama free

The broader context is also important. Hype is hyper-inflated. Everyone’s gushing about crushing it. Modesty is dead. (See how easy it is to slip into that mode!) We’re not used to understatement so it catches us off guard.

Our operational plan was delivered exceptionally well, pretty much drama free, but as always not free from its challenges. All tactical problems to solve… life’s never dull.

Kevin Rountree, CEO, Games Workshop Half-yearly Report, 13th January 2026

Once again, Rountree’s nonchalance is reassuring. He cares but he’s not concerned. Of course there were challenges and of course we dealt with them. No biggie. What’s next?

Regular readers will know that I have a soft spot for Captain Jack Sparrow. In the passage above, Rountree reminds me of this exchange:

Gibbs: Not quite according to plan…

Jack Sparrow: Complications arose, ensued, were overcome.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

We had great fun

We had great fun signing off on a new capital project to open a Warhammer World format location in North America.

Kevin Rountree, CEO, Games Workshop Half-yearly Report, 13th January 2026

Rountree is an accountant by training. He was CFO before he became CEO. Rare is the accountant who talks about spending money as if it’s a bit of a laugh.

You can see from the numbers that Games Workshop is printing money, but Rountree’s insouciant manner is making me wonder what it’s like to work there. I’m getting candour, transparency, and flat structure vibes. Culture and values come from the top, as I observed in my last newsletter, so it’s reasonable to make inferences about the Games Workshop culture from Mr Rountree’s choice of words.

Rountree’s informality is a giveaway. It’s a tell. In a game of poker your tells are visual and unconscious - touching your earlobe or fiddling with your chips - and they reveal things that you’d prefer to keep hidden. But you can use verbal tells on purpose to reveal things that land more effectively when they’re implied rather than said out loud. That’s the power of style.

What’s acceptable and what’s not

Rountree doesn’t mince his words. He charms when he’s familiar. But he chills when he’s direct. This is what he says about protecting culture:

We often get asked how we maintain our culture as we grow. It’s a constant area of focus: teaching new members of the international team what’s acceptable and what’s not at Games Workshop and occasionally giving feedback to a few existing team members of our very low tolerance for poor behaviour.

Kevin Rountree, CEO, Games Workshop Half-yearly Report, 13th January 2026

Yikes. Understatement again. Previously he used understatement to reassure. Here he uses it to be resolute: “occasionally giving feedback” is so understated, yet so unflinching, that it works as a euphemism. Rountree is a graduate of the Caffrey’s school of leadership: Strong words softly spoken. It’s a powerful tension.

Sometimes you want the consequences

Tensions and contrasts are on my mind. I just finished reading Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth. It’s an excellent reference for style nerds; chock full of examples from sources like the King James Bible, and style meisters such as Lincoln, Churchill, Twain, Melville, Dickens, and Shakespeare. Farnsworth focuses on writers from the past because, in his view, they were just better at this stuff. However, it does mean that they’re nearly all white men.

Farnsworth is more concerned with the effects of style than its rules. He’s fond of what he calls violations:

A lapse from a supposed rule of style isn’t an offense against nature. It’s just a choice with consequences, and sometimes you want the consequences.

Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Style

Farnsworth argues that style comes from artful contrasts. Like electricity, style is generated from polarity. In this respect, the conscious stylist has many options:

…rhetorical power can be created by various sorts of oppositions - by the relationship, usually one of friction or contrast, between two things. The two things might be plain and fancy words, long and short sentences, hard and soft syllables, high or rich substance and low or simple style (or vice versa), the concrete and the abstract, the passive and the active, the dignified and the coarse, detachment from the audience and engagement with it. Other polarities can produce rhetorical current too…

Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Style

The style of the Games Workshop half-yearly report comes from exploiting the polarity between high substance and low style, between a heavy subject and jaunty delivery.

Rountree, it seems, is a natural. He’s clear on the consequences he’s after, and he knows how to get them.

You may not like him, reader. But you can’t deny: Rountree’s got style.

With apologies to Kingsley Shacklebolt, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

I emailed Mr Rountree to ask him a few questions. I hadn’t heard back by the time I published this.

If I remember correctly, Will Humphrey shared the Games Workshop interim report on LinkedIn, but I can’t find the original post. Thanks Will if I’m right.