Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash.
The Big Picture
It’s a System
2025 was a challenging year, but not a hopeless one. As with my reflections from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020), I start with the big picture because we don’t live in a vacuum. The world is a system where everything affects everything else.
Instability
In many ways, 2025 felt like watching a sequel you didn’t want to see. The rise of fascism and authoritarianism, deepening polarization, racism, waves of misinformation, and our collective inaction on climate change made it harder to imagine where we’re heading.
I found myself returning to three questions throughout the year:
- Why are so many people silent about these developments?
- Where are the leaders who bring hope rather than division?
- Why aren’t there more women in positions of leadership?
I don’t have any answers, but I’ll keep going.
The Global Russian Threat
Russia’s genocide against Ukraine and Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza continued to test my faith in humanity. Russia is waking each day to plan new ways to terrorize and destabilize other nations, while the European leaders remain largely passive, sleepwalking, and watching the terror unfold.
What I Can Change
I return to what I can actually change: myself. My approach has been to learn more about what matters to me, to stand firmly in my values and principles, and to hope that my thoughts and actions might resonate with others, too.
My 2025
Agile
Reports of Agile’s death remain greatly exaggerated. Perhaps it has retreated back to the mountains, regrouping? I haven’t seen anything better emerge to replace it. If anything, agile leadership is needed more than ever.
What concerns me is the declining demand for roles dedicated to team development and ways of working: Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, delivery enablers. If continuous improvement isn’t optional, who’s driving it forward now?
The market feels unstable, roles are evolving, new ones are emerging. I choose to see this as an opportunity rather than a threat.
AI
People keep asking when the AI bubble will burst. Meanwhile, I use ChatGPT and Claude daily—mostly for writing assistance, brainstorming, and working through both professional and personal topics.
AI assistants are valuable tools, not teammates you can fully trust. We haven’t seen the full implications of this field yet, including its environmental impact.
Work
December 2025 brought an ending: my three-and-a-half-year consulting engagement at Trygg-Hansa concluded due to strategic restructuring.
After years of building relationships, developing distributed multicultural teams, and creating impact, it ended—not because of failure, but because of forces beyond my control. That’s the nature of consulting, but it doesn’t make it easier.
Despite the uncertainty, 2025 was professionally rich. I facilitated workshops and sessions to develop team capabilities across diverse topics:
- Psychological safety (using Amy C. Edmondson’s research and survey tools)
- The five dysfunctions of a team
- Agile ways of working and scaled agile approaches
- Lean software development and identifying the seven wastes
- Resource vs. flow optimization and the efficiency paradox
- The Kanban method and workflow visualization
- Flow metrics, queues, and Little’s Law
- Lifecycle methods and continuous delivery
- Feedback, feedforward, and communication practices
- Skills development and learning cultures
- Slicing work into sprint-sized value increments
- Experimenting with diverse retrospective formats
Some moments stood out: meeting almost the entire team physically in Malmö for team days (though we missed connecting with our offshore colleagues in person), online sessions with Woody Zuill and Gil Broza exploring software teaming and collaboration, and walk-and-talks with former colleagues that reminded me why I do this work.
A big thank you to all my great colleagues! 🙏
Books
Reading remained my anchor: I read (or listened to) 52 books this year. A few that shaped my thinking:
- Software Teaming by Woody Zuill
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
- How Not To Die by Michael Greger
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum
- On Freedom by Timothy Snyder
The books I read in 2025. See my 2025 reading challenge on Goodreads.
Writing
I published 16 articles this year on this website, sharing copies to Medium, LinkedIn and other social media. Topics ranged from feedback practices to collaboration, capability development, team growth, and continuous improvement. Writing helps me process.
Exercise and Wellbeing
Me, Elisabetta, Simonetta, and Manuel (guide) at the Western Breithorn summit (4164m) in Italy on July 31, 2025, at 12:20. Photo by Aki Kärkkäinen.
These activities kept me grounded when everything else felt uncertain:
- Walked over 3200 kilometers (averaging nine kilometers daily, tracked via Google Fit)
- Ski touring and skiing in the Italian Alps in April
- Climbed my sixth and seventh 4000-meter peaks in the Alps while trekking in Cervinia in August
- Tried bouldering for the first time with colleagues from Nion
- Explored new corners of Portugal around Sesimbra in September: Lagoa de Albufeira, Aldeia do Meco, and Alfarim
- Spent time in Finnish Lapland
- Created and published seven video edits on my my YouTube channel (remember to subscribe 🙂)
I continued my pescatarian diet and long-standing mindfulness practice, both of which feel less like disciplines now and more like how I naturally live.
I started using the Monash FODMAP app for detailed food guidance, and added the 7-Minute Workout to my routine.
Music
On December 4, 2025, I finally saw Radiohead live at Royal Arena in Copenhagen. Getting tickets felt like winning the lottery. The show reminded me why I’ve loved them for decades, even if the sound mix was horrible!
I also saw the “Becoming Led Zeppelin” documentary in February, which was interesting, if not ground-breaking.
Returning to my first love, music, I bought the Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD audio interface and began transferring gigs and rehearsal recordings from analog cassettes to digital format. For those who don’t know my origin story: I started my career as a drummer.
Working with my old Yamaha QY10 sequencer and software like Reaper, Finale (discontinued), MuseScore, and Audacity has been fun.
I’m currently selling my old Gretsch drum kit—not because I’ve lost love for it, but because it deserves to be played, and my life has moved in different directions.
Radiohead live at Royal Arena in Copenhagen, on Dec 4, 2025. Photo by Aki Kärkkäinen.
Family
For several years now, I’ve been caring for my elderly parents, both of whom suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Both turned 90 in 2025. I’m already my mother’s legal guardian, and I’m in the process of officially becoming my father’s guardian as well.
After a lengthy administrative process and six months of them living separately, they finally moved back together in March 2025—into a new nursing home, in a new city.
This reality shapes my life. It requires flexibility in my work arrangements, regular visits, constant administrative tasks, and an emotional toll that’s hard to quantify. Watching your parents slowly disappear while their bodies remain is its own kind of grief.
What I've Learned
But here’s what I’ve learned: work is what you do, not where you are. Flexibility isn’t a perk; it’s essential for anyone balancing professional contribution with human responsibility and connection. Recent years have taught me that effective work and family care can coexist when organizations choose trust and flexibility over control and presenteeism.
As for friendships, I’ve intentionally reconnected with old friends and acquaintances this year. Those conversations reminded me who I’ve been and who I’m becoming.
Looking Toward 2026
Here’s what I’m committing to and why:
- Professionally: Find remote or hybrid work as Delivery Lead, Agile Team Leader, Team Coach, Scrum Master, Product Owner, or similar—roles that build on my experience developing distributed multicultural teams. Flexibility is essential to the future of work, and for balancing work life with family responsibilities. I’m open to both consulting and permanent roles in a sustainable, trust-based work culture.
- Family responsibilities: Prepare my parents’ apartment—my childhood home—for sale and manage the process from start to finish. Continue handling guardianship duties with the attention they deserve.
- Physical goals: Climb my eighth 4,000-meter peak in the Alps by autumn, walk eight kilometers daily, and maintain 2-3 weekly workouts balancing strength and cardio.
- Intellectual life: Read at least one book weekly, write 10 articles, and continue producing photo and video content. These practices keep me thinking, processing, and contributing.
- Core intention: Be useful to others, recognizing that my skills, experience, and perspective have value when shared.
💡 So here’s my hope for 2026: make empathy a choice we make repeatedly, especially when it’s difficult.
Thanks for reading. Wishing you a meaningful 2026! ✨
Slava Ukraini! 🌻 🇪🇺