Gamestorming

Foreword

In the early 1960s, the celebrated children’s author Peggy Parrish introduced us to Amelia Bedelia, an overly literal housekeeper. Among other things, Amelia makes a sponge cake with real sponges, replants weeds when told to “weed the garden”, and hits the road with a stick when she’s told that the family is going to “hit the road” when leaving for a camping trip. My children squeal with laughter when they read about her comical adventures.

I often find myself laughing along with my children, until I think of the Amelia Bedelias I’ve met at work. Suddenly, the mistakes that people make while trying to perform their jobs aren’t so funny. Mistakes that stem from a lack of clarity about the goals and objectives of a project or the failure to consider the ramifications of making a process change in a complex system. Mistakes created from teams who haven’t given themselves the freedom to explore alternatives, or from teams who haven’t invested the time to choose thoughtfully from the alternatives they’ve invented or discovered.

Although the loss of productivity caused by these kinds of mistakes is considerable, these mistakes result in more than that. They generate frustration among the team as work must be redone. They result in unnecessary meetings, because once the mistakes are realized, yet another meeting must be called to figure out what to do. The mistakes clog up our email inboxes, because instead of being comfortable in knowing whom I must email about what, I instead just cc: or, even more insidiously, bcc:, everyone.

These mistakes can be prevented through the use of the games described in this book.

Yes, games.

As Dave, Sunni, and James so thoughtfully explain, serious games help organizations solve complex problems through collaborative play. Drawing from their rich and varied experiences and backing it up with theory, Dave, Sunni, and James start with an overview of why these games help organizations become markedly more effective. Armed with this understanding, they then share with us a broad catalog of games that teams can use to solve a variety of complex problems.

As a designer of such games, I am especially impressed that Dave, Sunni, and James have included a wide variety of games, drawn from their experience and the collected experience of many others in our field. The result is that they have written a “Monday Morning Ready” book: you can read this enjoyable book in a single weekend and put the ideas to work when you start work on Monday morning.

Keep your copy of this book handy, though. While you’ll likely start with just one or two of the games included here, chances are good that you’re going to quickly return to this book, or the website www.gogamestorm.com, to see what new games Dave, Sunni, and James (with the help of their dedicated community) have found to help you realize your goals.

—Luke Hohmann

Founder and CEO

The Innovation Games® Company