I’m starting to realize that the biggest advantage I, personally, will get from my three years in Indonesia is a lot of experience in change management, under some extreme conditions. As I’ve blogged about, twice, I am now in a culture where questioning is not done. It’s not encourage, not praised, not sought for etc. You simply don’t do it.

Again please don’t read that as I think that they are stupid or ignorant - it’s just their culture. There’s a lot of strange things going on in our culture too. Just step outside your own box and you’ll see it.

In fact; that’s what this post is about; stepping out of my box. A simple question that I’ve found very valuable for me to understand “them”.

Getting to the point

First let’s get back to my intro a bit. I think that everything I’ve...

One of the things that I’ve been told that upset me the most during the last couple of years was this sentence:

Please don't question the process

Instead of going angry and rant about the stupidity of that I’d thought about the opposite. Or what I’d want to do. If I ever get to hire people to a company I will tell them, on their first day:

Please question the process. This is only as good as we've got so far. In fact - one of the big reasons you are here is to make us better. You cannot do that without questioning and challenging the current state.

If you ever feel that something could be done better or in another way - please say so.

Please question the process means that we are humble about that we are not the best we will ever be. It also sends a...

I’ve been writing quite a lot of Koa applications, but most of them have been small. Now I’m doing a little bit bigger website. It consists of three parts:

• A public site that is just static html, served with static-now. The site will do API calls back to the server for the content.
• An administration site for administration of the text content of the site. This will be based on my example koa example blog
• An API serving the content from use form the static site.

Absolutely nothing humongous but still big enough that you need to think about application structure a little bit.

That’s when I came to think about koa-mount. In this post I wanted to show you what I’ve learned about this powerful little middleware, at the heart of Koa thinking.

Last autumn I met one of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto in real life. At the Agile Singapore conference.

I didn’t think much about that until he (James Grenning) mentioned it in the beginning of one of his talk. He told some anecdotes about that meet-up. In honestly so would I if I was at that weekend in Snowbird.

There I was. Also a speaker at this conference half-around the world. Working with management for the Salvation Army in Indonesia, being invited to the conference since I’ve written a book on Kanban.

The last 10 years of my career has been involving agile in one way or the other on a daily basis. And evolving me for the better, mostly daily.

You know where this is going: I just had to thank him.

In a previous post, I explored the concept of a world without WHY in Indonesian culture. Reflecting on my experiences in Indonesia, I delved into the challenge of motivating individuals in a culture that often lacks a clear sense of purpose. Building upon those insights, I aim to share practical strategies for motivating individuals within this context.

Before we proceed, it’s essential to acknowledge the following:

• My observations are based on close to 1.5 years spent in Indonesia, interacting with various individuals.
• Indonesia is a diverse country, with significant disparities in wealth, education, geography, and culture.

While I may make generalizations, they are rooted in my personal experiences. Any shortcomings or inaccuracies in my observations stem from this context.

However, studying Indonesian culture has provided valuable insights into my own culture. Many phenomena observed here mirror aspects of Swedish culture, albeit to a lesser extent.

Let’s delve...

I’ve been diving into io.js recently for reasons that will soon become clear. In doing so, I’ve used my favorite Node version manager, Node Version Manager, to handle different versions of Node.js and io.js.

Switching between versions is straightforward, but occasionally I end up running code on a version of Node/io.js that the code doesn’t support. For instance, running EcmaScript 6 let statements in Node.js.

I hoped for a warning or even an error to alert me to this mismatch, but none appeared. So…

In this post, I’ll explain how to use the package.json file to get warnings and errors when running code on an unsupported version of the framework.

The traffic in Jakarta, like many Asian cities, is notoriously chaotic. Amidst the sea of motorbikes and the apparent disregard for safety, I found profound lessons on the concept of slack.

It took me nearly a year to look beyond the apparent disregard for safety and see the underlying patterns that profoundly impacted me.

In this brief post, I aim to share those insights and perhaps spark some reflections that may resonate with you.

My dear friend Håkan Forss delivered an excellent presentation titled What Traffic in Stockholm Can Teach You About Queuing Theory, which inspired me to pen down these thoughts.

They Never Stop

One striking observation is that motorbikes never come to a halt. Understanding this fact could save your life. Asian motorbike drivers seldom stop, even in the face of imminent danger. This relentless...

I’ve just concluded one of the most challenging yet rewarding projects of my career. In my role as a coach, I witnessed remarkable transformation at a hospital on the brink of collapse, now thriving and profitable within seven months.

At the helm of this turnaround is Dr. Lillian, a responsive and dedicated leader who embraced radical change. I extend my gratitude to her and the entire hospital staff, whose collective efforts made this success possible.

As I bid farewell to the hospital last Friday, I remain vigilant, residing only 150 meters away. But before I depart, I wish to impart some advice to Dr. Lillian for the journey ahead. While rooted in healthcare, these insights hold relevance beyond the hospital walls.

Start with Why

Communicate the purpose behind every action, aligning it with your vision. Continually ask: “How does this action contribute to our vision?” This not only reinforces...

When I first arrived in Indonesia I didn’t think nor knew much about the difference in our cultures. This quite understandable, although in hindsight I should have read up on it a little bit more. Now, as I know more and more, I also get more and more interested and confused about some very basic things in the society.

To not come out as very prejudiced there’s some of disclaimers to be made and I’ll do that throughout the post, but here are few to get started:

1. These are merely my observations after 15 months in the country. I’ve been working with quite a lot of people (met maybe ≈500) and in a few different companies.
2. It’s very easy to jump to a conclusion that some behavior (mine, your or theirs) is stupid or wrong. I don’t want to do that, so in everything I write here I will...

I developed a small application called page-logger for purely selfish and lazy reasons. However, it turned out to be not only a learning experience but also a source of income. In this post, I’ll walk you through the motivations behind its creation, the development process, and how it unexpectedly generated revenue.

Why I Built Page-Logger

After years of using Blogger, I switched to Jekyll hosted on GitHub. While Jekyll served me well, I missed a lightweight Google Analytics feature embedded in Blogger. This feature allowed me to track the reception of individual posts, which I found invaluable. Determined to replicate this functionality, I decided to build my own solution.

How I Built Page-Logger and What I Learned

I opted for Node.js, leveraging the Koa framework. The application essentially comprised two components:

1. An HTTP-accessible API for posting page views.
2. A simple site for viewing the collected data.
...