Begin with the word itself. Àṣà, in Yoruba, sits in a different grammatical and emotional register than its closest English equivalents. Àṣà and the Failed Project? You cannot answer that question without first sitting with the word — and noticing what English doesn't quite have a slot for.
What Àṣà Actually Means
The most commonly cited definition: Àṣà is a Yoruba word for tradition, custom, or culture — but with a particular emphasis. Unlike a Western reading of 'tradition' as fixed inheritance, àṣà names tradition as practice — the continuous, adaptive doing of what has been found to work. It includes language, ritual, food, dress, courtesy, and the unspoken protocols of community life. It is the answer to the question: what do we keep doing, even as everything changes? That sentence is true, as far as it goes. It is also incomplete. Àṣà is held inside a wider Yoruba grammar — a set of related concepts, social practices, and proverbs — that the standalone definition cannot carry.
Customs are the spice of life.Yoruba
The Question This Post Is About
A post-mortem in the spirit of Àṣà. What it surfaces that other post-mortems miss. The question is worth taking seriously, because Àṣà is one of those concepts that loses its shape when handled carelessly — and recovers it as soon as the reader is willing to slow down and listen.
Take a small, ordinary case. A team of nine. A project that was supposed to take a quarter is now in its second. The manager has the option to find a single person to assign blame to and to move on. The Àṣà reading offers a different question: what did we, as a team, fail to make possible for the person carrying this work? Long-running traditions are audited every few years for whether they still serve their purpose. The case is not unusual. The reading of it, in the spirit of Àṣà, is.
A Second Angle
Notice what the case is not asking. It is not asking who is to blame. It is not asking how to make the situation more efficient. It is asking what Àṣà would have us do here, with these particular people, in this particular knot. Long-running traditions are audited every few years for whether they still serve their purpose. The discipline of asking the Àṣà question — instead of the efficiency question, or the blame question — is what changes a working life over years.
Where the Concept Resists
There is a real risk in romanticising Àṣà. The Yoruba / Nigerian traditions that produced it have always also produced internal critics — voices warning against the misuse of communal philosophy to demand conformity, to silence the young, to protect bad behaviour by elders. The honest defender of Àṣà keeps those critics at the table.
What to Do With This
The reading you have just done is one entry into Àṣà. There are many others. Yoruba elders, Nigeria, West Africa writers, and the daily life of communities that have lived this concept for centuries are richer sources than any essay. Treat this as a doorway, not a destination.