Most of what is written about Àṣà in English is wrong. Not maliciously — usually it is wrong because Àṣà resists translation, because the concept does not match neatly onto Western categories, because the writers are working with a sentence-long summary instead of a tradition. Àṣà at Work? This essay is one attempt at a more careful answer.
What Àṣà Actually Means
Let me give the canonical definition first, then try to do a little better. 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? The canonical version is correct but tame. The full version of Àṣà is less polite, more demanding, and more interesting. It does not flatter the reader who has just discovered it.
Customs are the spice of life.Yoruba
The Question This Post Is About
How Àṣà reshapes the everyday office — meetings, decisions, conflicts, recognition. 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.
There is a specific application of Àṣà that managers rediscover every few years and act surprised to find: the practice of asking, before any consequential decision, who has not yet been heard from. The question seems procedural. It is not. It is a small Àṣà act, repeated, that changes the temperature of an organisation over years. Team rituals are not abolished when they become inconvenient — they are revisited and renewed.
A Second Angle
In a long marriage, Àṣà is the antidote to the modern romantic fantasy that each partner is supposed to be the other's everything. The Yoruba / Nigerian version is gentler: you are part of a wider weave, and so is your marriage, and the marriage is held in part by the people around it. Team rituals are not abolished when they become inconvenient — they are revisited and renewed.
Where the Concept Resists
Àṣà is sometimes presented as the answer to the diseases of Western individualism. It is not, exactly. It is a different answer to a different question. Pretending it is a drop-in replacement for the modern self-help bookshelf does Àṣà a disservice — and the reader, too. The work of taking it seriously is harder than that.
What to Do With This
What can you do with this? Begin small. Choose one place — one meeting, one relationship, one daily ritual — and run it through Àṣà for a month. Not as a project. As a quiet experiment. Notice what changes. Àṣà is not learned by reading; it is learned by repetition.