Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers [Brossura]

The authors deserve credit for pulling the content of this book together and organizing it in a way that is inviting and intuitive to read and browse. It's all about using games to help groups of people think about and address business challenges in creative ways. Although it has 8 chapters, Gamestorming really divides into two major sections: (1) an introductory set of chapters that define what games are, their key characteristics and skills for effective play and (2) an expansive collection of about 90 games, each with rules and strategy explained in one to three pages of text. The book concludes with a short example of how to put games to practical use.

PROS: Gamestorming is an engaging, one-of-a-kind resource for using games in business settings. The introduction and early chapters are well geared to those without much gaming background and do a good job explaining how games can be used to help groups define problems, clarify thinking, generate ideas and ID next steps. There is even a small section with simple drawing tips for illustrating ideas...a nice addition. The diverse selection of games, which appropriately fills more than three-quarters of the book, is applicable to a range of situations. Think of it like a collection of "recipes" for games, which good facilitators can follow exactly or adapt to their own needs. Purely as an idea book for business games, it would rate at least a "4" but there are a few things that make it less useful than it probably could be for some audiences.

CONS: The book is ambitiously written for "the novice and the experienced practitioner alike," but appealing to everyone can be tough. Novice facilitators will like the intro but may find the later sections somewhat lite on game strategy. It's just hard in a few paragraphs to fully explain each game's flow or give newcomers much in the way of tips or trouble shooting to make a confident go of it. A beefed-up focus on "how to" might have been better for this group (those looking for a primer on facilitation may want to check out Kaner's "Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making"). By contrast, seasoned facilitators might want more nuance in other areas, like how to organize the rich info games generate for later use, so it isn't reduced to a bunch of meaningless sound bites -- a challenge with any brainstorming session. Finally, to round out its practical application, a few more examples or links showing how games can be used to solve real-life problems would help (see Daniel Hoang's Amazon review of Gamestorming, for several good online links).

For several weeks, I've been combing my bookshelves for activities to incorporate into my LIM College class on social media marketing. I wanted games to drive home the information in unconventional, interactive ways. I went to my theatre books, my business books, and my books filled with writing exercises. Nothing seemed quite right. And then I found Gamestorming. It felt like a gift out of the sky. My anxiety about the class diminished a bit more with every page.

Gamestorming details games that engage groups, both large and small, in learning and discovery. They work in corporations and in schools, and I'd like to add that they are a valuable tool for navigating just about any decision and complication in life. I found myself noting in nearly every margin how to use each game. The clear, concise description, depictions, and plan for each took a great deal of thought and care from the authors.

The metaphor of life as a game is well worked over. The trouble with the game of life is that there are no rules. You don't make them and neither does anyone else. They change from moment to moment, and the rule that seemed to work today may never be useful again. We are forced in every situation to think on our feet. Gamestorming gives us more confidence and empowers us to take our futures in our own hands.

In their book, Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo have researched and codified a number of strategies to help people generate new ideas, work through them, and act on them. But in making this book, the authors have done more than create a valuable reference of approaches for idea generation and decision-making: they've also begun to create a shared language that we can all make use of.

Rather than going into the games cold, they begin by placing them in the context of a larger framework, allowing the reader to better understand how each game could best suit their situations and mix and match with each other.

Those who've read Gang of Four patterns in the programming world, have dabbled with various design pattern libraries, or are familiar with other collections taking the approach of Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" may find the format recognizable. As they never mention a pattern approach, I'm not sure if the authors intended it that way, but the book is structured in a very similar fashion: naming each game, explaining the basic layout of how it works, and when to apply it.

As with the other pattern-related books, the authors do not claim to know it all, and in fact expect others to discover more patterns -- in this case, the games -- and for the ones they mention to be refined over time. Also similar to the pattern-based approaches, they encourage the reader to use the ones they feel will best fit together for what they need to accomplish, rather than use them in very prescriptive ways.

In naming each game and using a pattern-like structure to explain them, it not only makes it easy to read each individual game, but also helps codify them -- packaging them up into a shorthand that people came refer to and apply quickly with shared understanding.

The authors mention using the games in 'knowledge work' situations, but I feel that it is really applicable to any industry. The things that they are really talking about address real LEADERSHIP, rather than industrial-age, control-focused management approaches that apply less and less to even manufacturing industries today. (I find a lot of ideas in the book reflecting the organizational learning approaches advocated by Senge and Mintzberg.)

You'll find the likely-used-too-often SWOT method in this book, and probably many more that you're already familiar with. But like me, I bet you'll read a few more that you'll be thinking about applying in a future meeting, project, or even when you're stuck for ideas working on your own.

Read the first 75 pages to start, and look through the rest of the games as you can, and keep it nearby as reference for your next strategy session.