Begin with the word itself. Àṣà, in Yoruba, sits in a different grammatical and emotional register than its closest English equivalents. Àṣà in Sales? 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
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
Selling through the lens of Àṣà — and why it produces durable customers, not just deals. 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.
If you take Àṣà seriously at work, the first thing that has to change is the meeting. Not its agenda — its shape. Western meetings are optimised for speed and for the loudest contributor. Àṣà is optimised for something else: for the quality of decisions that hold. Onboarding includes the company's living traditions, not only its policies. The trade-off is real. Meetings under Àṣà take longer. The decisions also unstick less often.
A Second Angle
Parenting through Àṣà is not soft parenting. The phrase 'it takes a village' has been so domesticated in English that it now means almost nothing. The Yoruba / Nigerian version is sharper: the child is not yours alone, and the discipline of raising them well is not yours alone either. Onboarding includes the company's living traditions, not only its policies.
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
There is no certificate at the end of Àṣà. There is only the slow accumulation of choices made differently — meetings shaped differently, relationships tended differently, decisions weighed differently. The reward is not visible. The cost is real. Over time the difference becomes a kind of life.