Book Reviews: Collaboration & Team Communication
Published on February 16, 2025
Everyday Innovator: 4 Powerful Habits to Cultivate Team Creativity
Christian Byrge. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: BIS Publishers. 2023. 213 pages.
Index Terms—team creativity, innovative ideas, problem solving, visionary thinking, persuasive presentation.
Reviewed by—Joanne DeVoir, Information Development Manager, Minitab LLC.
Everyday Innovator: 4 Powerful Habits to Cultivate Team Creativity provides practical guidance for how to enhance creativity to generate innovative ideas and to solve problems. This book is the result of Christian Byrge’s 15 years of specializing in business creativity and collaborating to find ways to boost creativity and innovation in the workplace. He devotes a chapter to each habit and provides step-by-step guidance using relatable examples and probing questions.
Exploring new grounds is the first habit with a focus on problem solving and standards. Byrge encourages readers to entertain outrageous ideas and to consider all perspectives. Break down the big problem into smaller sub-problems and involve coworkers, friends, and experts. “Creativity is a chance process” (p. 71), where you often need to iterate many times to find the best innovative solution.
The second habit is imagining new ideas. To do so, you must break out of your typical pattern of thinking. Byrge gives tips and examples for how to combine existing but distinct ideas in new ways. The proposed four steps for idea production are individual ideation, small group brainstorming, elaboration of quality of the idea, and evaluation of the idea. Iterate through steps 1–3 before moving onto step 4.
Visionary thinking is the third creative habit. Byrge describes this habit as fostering an open, curious mind. The key to this habit is to postpone decision making about a new idea and take the time to carefully consider positive and negative consequences.
The final habit is persuasive idea presentation. Byrge humorously describes this habit as “the difference between being considered a weirdo or a genius” (p. 136). This chapter gives helpful tips on how to talk about the value of your idea in a compelling way and emphasizes your idea’s originality, desirability, and feasibility.
Byrge devotes a chapter to how to kickstart your creative journey. He provides practical advice on how to document your ideas, set aside time for creativity in your calendar, foster a creative team culture, enhance your creative confidence, and practice creativity on a regular basis.
For an author who has years of experience and passion, I was disappointed that Everyday Innovator does not include a list of references to other publications or presentations. Byrge says that he “read more than a thousand publications on creativity” (p. 5), yet he cites none of them.
Throughout the book, key phrases and sentences are highlighted in yellow to mimic the use of highlighting text by hand. Some readers may find this highlighted content helpful, but I found it distracting. The highlighting is overused in some cases and underused elsewhere. As a reader, I prefer to rely on my own highlighting and note taking to identify the content that is most relevant to me.
Despite a few shortcomings, I learned several useful strategies from Everyday Innovator on how to become more creative in my daily work and to promote creativity.
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The Seven Games of Leadership: Navigating the Inner Journey of Leaders
Paolo Gallo. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing. 2023. 272 pages, including index.
Index Terms—leadership, introspection, contextual intelligence, ethical decision-making, sustainable success.
Reviewed by— Muhammad Rifqi Zulkarnain, Student, Universitas Gadjah Mada, supported by Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan (LPDP), Indonesia.
The Seven Games of Leadership: Navigating the Inner Journey of Leaders provides an extensive framework for personal and professional advancement through seven designated leadership strategies. This methodical approach underscores the significance of introspection, self-awareness, and contextual intelligence in achieving enduring success, defined as the ongoing process of realizing one’s authentic self. The book advocates for embracing challenges, fostering gratitude, and prioritizing rest to optimize performance.
Paolo Gallo redefines success as an ongoing journey that facilitates continuous growth and adaptation, fostering resilience and adaptability amidst the complexities of contemporary society. He accentuates the importance of comprehending and interlinking various global megatrends, such as climate change, demographics, diversity, inequality, geopolitics, technology, labor markets, and information, to facilitate decision-making aligned with long-term sustainability and ethical considerations. Gallo underscores the significance of data-driven decision-making, delineating between data, information, and wisdom. He encourages introspection by scrutinizing both successes and failures to identify recurring errors and areas for enhancement, aiding leaders in comprehending their strengths and weaknesses to make judicious decisions and lead with integrity. Moreover, Gallo uses diverse methodologies, including Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, to pinpoint and leverage leaders’ distinct cognitive strengths, thus contributing to their ability to effectively navigate the complexities of the modern world. Additionally, he integrates practical exercises, such as using a paper ruler to visualize life expectancy and prioritize time management, to underscore the importance of gratitude and recognizing others’ contributions in fostering a constructive organizational environment and enhancing interpersonal relationships within teams. These methodologies not only enhance leaders’ cognitive abilities but also equip them with practical tools to thrive in today’s challenging landscape.
Furthermore, contextual intelligence is essential for leaders, enabling them to effectively navigate the complexities of the modern world. It involves understanding and connecting diverse global megatrends, shaping the contemporary context, and allowing leaders to make informed decisions aligned with long-term sustainability and ethical considerations. This intelligence goes beyond reactive responses to immediate challenges, emphasizing continual learning, adaptation, and interdisciplinary approaches to decipher complexity and facilitate effective problem-solving and decision-making. Alike with Senge’ The Fifth Discipline book (1990), he underscores the importance of trust and collaboration in navigating complexity.
The book highlights introspection for personal growth, offering tools for defining success and fostering ethical leadership. It advises on managing life transitions and adapting to change, though its broad scope may overwhelm some readers. Implementing global trends could be challenging, and practical application may need extra support. Nonetheless, its focus on leadership may seem idealistic to those facing pragmatic challenges.
The Seven Games of Leadership is a vital resource for leaders and those aspiring to leadership roles, dedicated to personal growth, ethical leadership, and sustainable success. In brief, it offers a holistic framework for effective leadership by incorporating introspection, contextual intelligence, and ethical decision-making. This multifaceted approach equips leaders with the necessary tools to navigate the complexities of the modern world while upholding integrity and purpose in their leadership journey.
Facilitating Simulations
Elyssebeth E. Leigh and Laurie L. Levesque. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd. 2024. 198 pages, including index.
Index Terms—lean innovation, facilitation, simulation, pedagogy, resistance.
Reviewed by—Gregory Zobel, Associate Professor, Educational Technology, Western Oregon University.
Elyssebeth E. Leigh and Laurie L. Levesque pack Facilitating Simulations with helpful information for new and experienced simulation facilitators. The book’s first three chapters are equivalent in length, balancing the three main chapters: conceptual and theoretical frame; consideration of context; and how to prepare for facilitation. Chapter 4, a 27-page annotated bibliography at the end, is rich and detailed with relevant recent scholarship.
Significant throughout the book are themes of persuasion, overcoming resistance, and supporting engagement with reluctant actors. The authors offer multiple suggestions—with tables for clear reference—on resistance types, be that administrative, learner, or internal to the facilitator. For this guidance, the authors draw on their own facilitation experiences as well as scholarship, theories, strategies, and practical tactics for overcoming resistance. Most helpfully, they offer suggestions on how facilitators can rephrase facilitations, activities, and their importance to diverse audiences and different types of resistance rooted in skepticism, doubt, fear, and unknown (to the facilitator) group power dynamics. Leigh and Levesque provide their guidance for both online and face-to-face simulations. To support this, the authors share potential phrases, sentences, discussion prompts, and evidence types that can help overcome this.
Equally useful, since simulations often turn or appear to turn in unexpected directions, the authors offer suggestions and strategies for facilitators to remain calm, ensure the simulation is on target, and different approaches for mitigating difficult situations. The authors offer one of the most singularly helpful framings of educator/trainer psychology, identification of audiences and variables, and potential solution paths that I’ve seen laid out. Helpfully, this book presents most problem/solution paths in many well-laid out tables.
Facilitating Simulations is an excellent read for technical communicators new to or interested in running, designing, or developing simulations. Experienced facilitators working with less experienced peers should purchase this book because it effectively presents, explains, and reviews developing facilitation skills. For educators, Chapter 1 posits multiple questions, prompts, and engagements with aspects of pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy as well as active learning and complex problem solving. Many helpful suggestions in Chapter 3 on how to deal with resistant or reluctant simulation participations are applicable to other learning environments.
While the price for such a thin book appears high, the authors pack it with tightly written suggestions and quality content. It promises to serve not just as an introduction to facilitating simulations, but also as reliable reference material.