2024 was a weird year. I don’t really know what to make of it. We’re onto something new. In my previous years’ reflections (see 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020), I started with the context. This time I’ll keep that big picture section shorter, and focus more on my actions and takeaways. The post concludes with some plans for 2025.
The Big Picture
Horror show
Current reality feels like watching a horror show: our inaction on climate change, Russia’s genocide against Ukraine, Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the return of Trump and the rise of American fascism, normalising the far right in many countries, and so on. We’re in the era of authoritarian leaders, bullies and dictators challenging and threatening Western democracies (including from within, such as in Hungary and elsewhere—see How Democracies Die).
Russian threat
I’m particularly disappointed with certain spineless Western leaders’ level of response to the global threat of Ruscism. As I’ve said before: fascist Russia won’t stop unless they’re stopped by force. Russia is at war with the West, and as long as the majority of Russians are passive about politics, have imperialist hallucinations and continue living in the past, it will only get worse. Europe needs to stop sleepwalking, help Ukraine win the war, and be prepared for confrontation with Russia.
And yes, it’s Russia’s Putin (think Nazi Germany), not Putin’s Russia. After Putin’s fall, there will be another tsar like him, unless the country breaks up. Until then, what we can expect from the “Russian World” (Russkiy mir) is more lies, propaganda, destruction, paranoia, sabotage, war and terrorism. Human life has no value in Russia. Since we don’t want endless meatwave assaults at NATO’s eastern border, the discussion on landmines has resurfaced in Finland.
Death and destruction, Russian-style, in Europe in 2024. Photo by Dmytro Tolokonov on Unsplash.
The good news
However, despite all the negative events in 2024, many good things have also happened. They’re just not often seen in the news media. We need hope, and above all, action (or you might call it karma). Status quo and business as usual are not good enough. Changing our habits is not easy; it requires leadership, grit, and discipline.
My 2024
Is Agile undead?
Agile is dead
posts continued to pop up also in 2024. It’s a trend that refuses to die (pun intended). It reminds me of the “year of the Linux desktop” discussion—It’ll take a while 😉. Here’s an interesting recent one: Agile Is Undead... A Synthesis, and here’s my take on it from January 2024: Uncovering Agile.
Improving the way we work effectively together will always matter. What you want to call it is less important (unless you want to package and sell it).
AI
While I haven’t personally fully jumped on the AI bandwagon yet, I’ve used ChatGPT regularly during 2024. I use it as a “personal assistant” for suggestions, research, ideas, generating content, and so on. There’s a lot to learn and relearn here. AI is a game changer.
Consulting work
I continued working—mostly remotely—as consultant Scrum Master at the insurance company Trygg-Hansa. For organisational reasons, I changed to another distributed agile team, in a new policy area. The team also grew, as we welcomed new members during the year. Great team, great colleagues!
As part of team development, we set up a Team Working Agreement, performed a Market of Skills workshop (see Lyssa Adkins’ book Coaching Agile Teams), established a Team Canvas, and worked on our OKRs for 2024.
As Kanban and Agile practitioner, I also found myself arranging sessions with the team on common coaching topics such as these:
- Limiting WIP
- Flow vs. resource efficiency
- Lean
- Little’s Law
- Having slack
- Powerful questions
- Psychological safety
- Strategies for learning
- Values and principles
- Habit loop
- Pull vs. push
- The Johari window
The goal of all these activities was not only to increase inclusion and effectiveness, but also to shorten the time to market. We made some progress, and will continue our journey together 🙂
Consulting companies merge
One Agency, the consultant company I’ve worked for the past five years, merged with Nordicstation and Polar Cape, to form Nion: a new European IT Consulting company. We celebrated the birth of this new international company with a local presence
at Lake Maggiore in Italy in October. It was awesome to meet so many new colleagues! We currently have offices in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Oslo, Skopje, Bitola, and Sofia.
Me and some of my new Nion colleagues at Lake Maggiore in Italy, October 6, 2024.
Certifications
In 2024 I acquired two new certifications: Agile Kata Pro Foundation and SAFe Scrum Master. I’m aware of the bad rap the certification industry gets, often for a good reason. As for me, I see certifications just as an additional icing on the cake. I constantly study new ways, reflect on new ideas, and try many of them in practice. If you get the opportunity to pass the tests on the side also, why wouldn't you?
Books
In 2024 I read (or listened to) 53 books. Here are some highlights:
- Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed
- Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman
- The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
- Riding the Waves of Culture by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars
- Virtual Teams Across Cultures by Theresa Sigillito Hollema
- Adopting Agile Across Borders by Glaudia Califano and David Spinks
The books I read in 2024. See my 2024 reading challenge on Goodreads.
I have many interests. Here are just three of them, at the time of writing:
- Cross-cultural agile in distributed teams
- Systems thinking and flow in knowledge work
- Knowledge resistance is real in our post-truth societies. This book is high on my list next: Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments.
Articles
My plan was to write one article every month. That didn’t happen, but I managed to write seven posts on my website, including this piece 🙂
Exercise and travel
Me, Claudio and Antonio at the Madonna summit of Gran Paradiso (4058m) in Italy on Aug 2, 2024, at 8:35.
I try to take care of my physical and mental health. Here are some things that gave me energy in 2024:
- Walked (including skiing) 3300+ kilometres (according to Google Fit). That’s more than nine kilometers every day.
- Did ski touring and skied in Italy in April.
- Climbed my fifth 4000-metre peak in the Alps while trekking in the beautiful Gran Paradiso national park in Italy in August.
- Explored some new places in Portugal in September: Coimbra and Figueira da Foz.
- Spent time in Finnish Lapland in August.
- Did a minimum of two workouts each week. I also bought a smartwatch (Garmin Venu Sq 2), to track my sleep, stress, and other patterns.
- Practised mindfulness meditation every day (since 2012). Coming back to the present moment helps in finding the “good news” in and around us.
- Cut down my alcohol consumption.
- Created and published eight video edits on my YouTube channel (remember to subscribe 🙂). I also bought a new action camera: GoPro Hero 10.
- Continued with my Pescatarian diet, and kept the climate crisis and sustainability in mind when making buying decisions. For example, I’m a big fan of Patagonia—a Certified B Corporation.
Culture
Seeing The Smile (a supergroup of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Tom Skinner and Robert Stillman) play in Copenhagen in March was one of the highlights of the year.
Family and well-being
My mother has Alzheimer’s disease, and amidst all the admin work as her guardian, I helped her move to a care home in October. I continued to support my father—who has dementia too—in this new situation. All this emotional baggage, combined with the heavy workload at work, took most of my energy reserves this year, taking a toll on my girlfriend, too. Then in December, my dear uncle passed away 🤍 😢
Loneliness remains an issue, as I’ve moved many times across several European countries. I wrote more about this in my On Happiness post.
My plans for 2025
Here are some plans and activities that I look forward to in 2025.
- Pay more attention to generative AI, incorporating it more into my daily work.
- Learn more about cross-cultural models and their effect on the Agile WoW.
- Help my parents move to the same care home, run errands related to guardianship, and so on.
- Support Ukraine. One way to do this is to be vocal about the Russian evil. Another is to boycott companies that operate in Russia: Marabou, for example.
- Climb my sixth 4000-metre peak in the Alps by Autumn 2025.
- Walk eight kilometres (8000 steps) every day.
- Do 2–3 workouts each week, focusing both on strength and cardio training.
- Read at least one book every week, including more fiction than previously.
- Write 10 articles.
- Experience the Becoming Led Zeppelin premiere: the first official documentary on Led Zeppelin—the best band ever! 🤘
- Produce photo and video content on my social media channels.
- Do what’s in my power to reduce my carbon footprint (no meat, no car, for example). I’m still waiting for politicians to take climate change seriously.
- See if the Okinawa diet can bring some changes to my eating habits, to complement my Pescatarian diet.
- Find a new pet project.
- Reach out to old (or new!) friends who I haven’t talked to in a long time.
- Be useful for others.
Thanks for reading. Here’s hoping for more empathy in 2025! Stay safe and hold the line. Slava Ukraini! 🌻 🇪🇺